Mon 4 Dec 2006
The One Drop Rule says that in American society if you are even part black African you are considered to be all black African. One drop of African blood is enough.
The actress Halle Berry, for example, looks mostly white (European) but not completely. In Brazil she would be considered mixed, in South Africa, Coloured. But in America everyone regards her as black, the same as Naomi Campbell. The divisions of race are more extreme.
For hundreds of years America has been divided into black people and white people. To be white you have to look like a pure white European. If you look even partly African, you will be considered black.
Whites see blacks, anyone who is visibly African, as inferior. In the past they used this to justify owning slaves. Today it justifies the inequality between the races.
Blacks make a distinction between light-skinned and dark-skinned, but whites do not. To whites black is black. That is what the One Drop Rule is all about.
It is not based on family tree but on how you look.
How much black African blood can you have and still “look white”? If you are one-eighth African or less then you have a chance of looking white enough.
If you “look white” then you can “pass for white”. That would mean moving far away to some place where no one knows your family. Not everyone is willing to do that.
The rule means American blacks are not really a race in the common sense of the word: it includes not just people who are mostly African, but even those who are mostly European by blood!
And even many American whites themselves are hardly pure: more than a tenth are at least one-tenth African by blood according to the latest studies.
So while race is important in America, there are no pure races left!
To Americans, black and white, the One Drop Rule seems like common sense, but it is not applied to any other race. And it is not seen in other countries.
In most places where Europeans and Africans have mixed, the colour line is not so sharp. Those who are mixed are often recognized as being neither black nor white, but something in between - like the Coloureds in South Africa. What makes America so different?
White women.
In British India the colour line between the English and Indians did not harden till white women started coming from England.
The same happened in America. When the English came to America they brought their wives and daughters with them. Other Europeans, by and large, left them at home to keep them safe.
This meant that white men in America had a real chance to marry white and have white children. They had the luxury of disowning any mixed children they had because they would not be their only children. And if they did not disown them, their white wives would see to it that they did.
See also:
- America
- Race in America
- Race in Brazil - where there is more race mixing but no One Drop Rule
- Creoles - in Louisiana also did not practise the One Drop Rule in the old days
- The tragic mulatto
- Britain
- Naomi Campbell
- The word “black”
Wed 24 Oct 2007 at 02:04:32
I knew there’s a difference between U.S. and Latin America is the availability of white women for white men. That means they have a chance to reproduce white offspring and disown darker sons and daughters. America hasn’t come to grips with its racial/sexual past which reverberates in the present: i.e. Strom Thurmond, Don Imus, Johnny Carson’s son’s Black daughter.
Steph
Wed 2 Apr 2008 at 04:00:04
In college I was informed that only like 8 % of the African Americans in America were what could be considered 100% black. You can see it in the all over because people are very beautiful. The mixing of the races has resulted in some very beautiful people. Look at the NBA, I realized I was watching a game a while back and could not discern if the players where white or black when the camera pulled back because so many of the players were very light skinned!blacks.
Mon 28 Apr 2008 at 02:46:06
While you admit there has always been intermixing between cultural groups, you still fall prey to the same concept of “race” that also enforces the colour line.
Race is a construct. There is no black race or white race. The idea of race was created to perpetuate the illusion that Europeans and Africans are completely different types of human beings.
While white and black are still used as catch-all terms and have very real effects on the way we live our lives in the Americas, don’t fall into the trap that race is something scientific or that has a grounding other than one that is systemic, emotional and psychological.
The belief in it has real consequences, and it would be silly to say because you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t matter, because in the end, others do and it will affect how you live. But don’t perpetuate it whenever possible.
Mon 28 Apr 2008 at 09:38:24
Good point.
Wed 30 Apr 2008 at 17:27:26
Race is an anthropological concept. In anthropology, race is not determined by the texture of the hair, or the form of the eyes, or the width of the nose, or the thickness of the lips or the color of the skin. Race is determined by the measurement of the skull.
Usually white people are referred as caucasians which is incorrect. You have white caucasians ( also called nordic type caucasians mainly from Northern Europe), tan caucasians (referred as mediterranean type caucasians, from Southern Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa), dark caucasians from the Sub-indian continent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and islands of the Pacific), and black caucasians from Somalia and Ethiopia.