Posted: Mon 08 Sep 2008 16:34 Post subject: The One-Drop Rule
The One-Drop Rule
The one-drop rule is the U.S. tradition that someone of utterly European appearance who rejects an African-American self-identity is "really Black," like it or not, due to having “one drop” of known African ancestry, no matter how ancient. The notion labels such people as merely "passing for White." Recent examples are New York Times critic Anatole Broyard (a real person) and Anthony Hopkins’s character in the film "The Human Stain" (a fictional character). Such people are involuntarily classified as members of the U.S. Black endogamous group by press and public despite their European appearance and their freely chosen non-Black self-identity.
Manifestation of Conflict Between Two Myths
The one-drop rule is a manifestation of the conflict between the U.S. myth that "race" is determined by appearance (skin tone, hair texture, facial features) and the contradictory but equally strongly held myth that "race" is determined by ancestry. ("Myth" in this context simply denotes a mandatory belief taught to young Americans in order to exemplify social standards that they will be expected to follow in adulthood.) On the one hand, most Americans agree that someone who looks Black is Black, even if their parents did not self-identify as African Americans (African-looking immigrants from Cuba, for instance). But most Americans also agree that someone born into the African-American community who looks completely White is also Black in some intangible sense.
Unique to the United States
It is hard for residents of other countries to grasp that the notion of invisible Blackness is widely accepted, and often legally enforced, in the United States today. To most people around the world, the claim that someone "looks White but is really Black" is as nonsensical as saying that someone "looks tall but is really short, just passing as tall" or "looks fat but is really thin, just passing as fat." In every other nation on earth, if you look White and consider yourself White, then you are White.
Unique to the Black/White U.S. Dichotomy
An American may legally claim to be 1/4 Cherokee, 1/4 Irish, or 1/4 Russian and still choose some other ethnic self-identity (German, say). But an American who admits to being 1/4 Black is not given such a choice. Unlike every other U.S. ethnicity, you cannot legally choose to be partly African-American. The one-drop rule is enforced at the highest levels of the U.S. federal government. If you check off more than one "race" box in the U.S. census and one of the boxes was "Black" then you are classified as solely Black, no matter how many other boxes you checked. (See for example New Life for the "One Drop" Rule or New Policy on Census Says Those Listed as White and Minority Will Be Counted as Minority.)
Historically Had Nothing to do With Slavery
Like most U.S. myths regarding that nation's unique endogamous color line, folkloric tradition says that it has something to do with slavery. Specifically, popular culture as well as U.S. academia, liberals as well as conservatives, teach Americans to blame long-dead slavery for their currently enforced polity. (This resembles the way that Americans blame slavery for their racialism and their endogamous color line, although slavery was ubiquitous while the latter phenomena remain unique to the United States.)
The actual legal connection between slavery and physical appearance was precisely the reverse. A person of any visible European ancestry was presumed to be free. The court cases Gobu v. Gobu (1802 NC), Hudgins v. Wrights (1806 VA), and Adelle v. Beauregard (1810 LA) established the U.S. caselaw that if you had any discernible European ancestry you were presumed free, and the burden was on the alleged slave owner to prove that you were legally a slave through matrilineal descent. This law was then followed in hundreds of court cases without exception until U.S. slavery was ended by the 13th Amendment.
Even a cursory examination of the historical court case records shows that the notion of invisible Blackness first appeared in the free states of the Ohio valley in the 1830s, was not accepted in the south until long after the Civil war, and first became statutory in 1910.
Historically Enforced More by Blacks Than by Whites
Except for one 50-year period of U.S. history, the one-drop rule has been believed more strongly and enforced more harshly by African-American political leaders than by White Americans.
The exceptional period was the Jim Crow era of state-sponsored terrorism against its African-American citizens. During the Jim Crow period, which ended around 1965, the one-drop rule kept compassionate White families in line by legally exiling to Blackness any who defended Blacks against the terror. During this period, the one-drop rule was never legally applied in court to any family who self-identified as Black. It was used only against Whites.
In all other periods, from the 1830s to today, the one-drop rule was and remains an instrument of intra-ethnic coercion by African American political leaders against those born into the African American community who choose to self-identify as something other than "Black" in adulthood.
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 {Posts: 180 } Location: Southern California
Posted: Tue 09 Sep 2008 15:26 Post subject:
Frank, that is an informative article. Even though this system may have been unique here in the US, I was wondering if there was any somewhat similar system in place during the apartheid era in South Africa? That is;exactly what criteria was used to differentiate between "white" and "coloured"? Was there some certain "cutoff" percentage of indigenous mixture within a "white" indivdual to still maintain the "white" label? Or, would any known indegenous mixture within a so-called "white"-appearing individual relegate him to the "coloured" classification? Just wondering....
I was wondering if there was any somewhat similar system in place during the apartheid era in South Africa? That is;exactly what criteria was used to differentiate between "white" and "coloured"?
During apartheid, South Africans routinely switched group membership by requesting it from their local Race Classification Boards. Although the bureaucracy was cumbersome and inconsistent, it enabled change. Individuals were often classified differently from their siblings and parents, and some people changed more than once. South Africans could appeal local reclassification decisions to the national Population Registration Board, thence to the Supreme Court. Like U.S. draft boards of the 1970s, South Africa’s local Race Classification Boards reflected local public opinion and often found it helpful to cooperate with those wanting to upgrade from Black to Coloured or from Coloured to White. School principals of schools for children of the White endogamous group could keep up enrollments (and funding) by getting some Coloured children reclassified as White members. But if they pushed too hard, they risked having the whole school reclassified as a school for members of the Coloured endogamous group.
Of course, apartheid is now gone, along with entire bureaucracy of "Race Classification Boards." Hence, it is even harder to say how South Africans sort themselves out today. I guess the short answer is that I do not know, but I have never seen any suggestion of anything like a one-drop rule or its associated notion of "passing" in South Africa. To the contrary, if you looked White, you could apply and be granted such a change to your national ID card, even while your parents and siblings remained Coloured.
The only example that I have been able to find, outside of the U.S., Jews during the Nazi era, and the Hindu caste system, of a notion of invisible "race," is the burakumin of Japan. They are a despised caste historically derived long ago from a Hindu unclean caste. Here is an excerpt from Japan’s Burakumin: An Introduction:
Quote:
Over the years, many more residents have shifted out of their buraku altogether, a process known as “passing”. Although attitudes towards current and former buraku residents have mellowed since the 1960s and 1970s, “passers” may still be liable to discrimination if their buraku connections are subsequently discovered. Accordingly, even today, former buraku residents are very careful about divulging their buraku connections, including even to close friends.
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