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Karen: Good afternoon, professor hemmings. I understand that today,
you will explain the so-called one-drop rule. Professor Hemmings: That's right Karen.
You asked about it in another session and I could not answer in depth.
And so, I thought that I would explain it in detail today.
Karen: I am sure that our viewers are looking forward to it.
The one-drop rule is a U.S. tradition about people of mixed ancestry.
It says that someone of European appearance, is really Black,
like it or not, if she has "one drop" of known African ancestry,
no matter how ancient. The obsolescent notion labels people of mixed
ancestry as merely passing for White.
Recent examples are actors Peter Ustinov and Heather Locklear.
Historical examples are Alexander Pushkin and John James Audobon.
Americans with distant but known African ancestry are often labeled as Black by U.S. press and
public, despite their European appearance,
despite their personal non-Black self-identity. Todays presentation covers six points:
First, the one-drop rule reflects a conflict between two folkloric traditions.
Second, it appears only in the United States. Third, it applies only to the Black White
color line. Fourth, it had no connection with slavery.
Fifth, Black politicians, not White ones, have enforced the one-drop rule
for most of the past two centuries. Finally, since 1990,
the one drop tradition may be fading away in U.S. popular culture.
Why a conflict between two U.S. traditions? The first, is that your racial classification
is determined by your appearance: skin tone, hair texture, facial features,
and the like. The second, is that your racial classification
is determined by your ancestry. The two traditions can contradict each other.
On the one hand, most Americans agree that someone who looks Black, is Black,
even if neither parent self-identified as African American
(U.S. President Obama, for instance). But many Americans also agree that
someone born into the African-American community who looks White and self-identifies as White
is also secretly Black (Carol Channing's father, for instance).
The one-drop rule is 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. They are just passing for tall.
In every other nation, if you look White and consider yourself White,
then you are White. The one-drop rule is unique to the Black White
U.S. Dichotomy. An American may legally claim to be one fourth
Cherokee, one fourth Irish, or one fourth Russian, and
still choose some other ethnic self-identity, such as German.
But an American who admits to being one fourth Black,
is not given such a choice. Unlike every other U.S. ethnicity,
you cannot legally choose to be partly African-American. 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.
The one-drop rule 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. U.S. popular culture as well as academia teach
Americans to blame long-dead slavery for their current polity.
This resembles the way that Americans blame slavery for their racialism, and their endogamous
color line itself. In fact, slavery was ubiquitous throughout
the hemisphere, 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 North Carolina), Hudgins v. Wrights (1806 Virginia),
and Adelle v. Beauregard (1810 Louisiana), established the U.S. case law, that if you
had any discernible European ancestry, you were presumed to be
free. In such cases, 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. The one-drop rule first appeared in
the free states of the Ohio valley in the 1830s.
It was not accepted in the south until long after the Civil war.
It first became statutory in 1910. And did not spread nationwide until the 1920s.
The one drop rule was 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 African-Americans.
During the Jim Crow era, which ended around 1965,
the one-drop rule kept compassionate White families in line by
legally exiling to Blackness any White family who defended African Americans against the
terror. During the Jim Crow era, the one-drop rule
was never 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 an instrument of intra-ethnic
coercion by African-American political leaders.
It is still used thus today. It is used to punish those born into the African
American community who wish to self-identify as
something other than Black in adulthood. It accuses them of being sell-outs, and race
traitors. There are two reasons to think that
the one drop rule may be fading away. First, a recent survey asked:
What "race" is someone with Black ancestry who looks White and self-identifies as White?
Only 18 percent of Americans answered, "Black passing for white."
81 percent? answered, "White." Second, it appears that, since 1990,
intermarried parents may be moving away from the tradition.
One way of measuring the tenacity of the one-drop-rule is by
examining how Black White intermarried parents identify
their children on the census "race" question. If intermarried parents accept African-American
ethnic self-identity while simultaneously rejecting
the one-drop rule, you would expect half of their children
to be identified as White and half as Black. Recall, from our discussion of the heredity
of racial traits, that such children's appearance is symmetrically
distributed. In fact, the children of intermarried parents
have been more often identified as Black than as White
since 1880. This shows that the one-drop rule has been
accepted for many decades. To be precise, the fraction of such children
labeled as White has fallen steadily from 50 percent in 1940
(which is what you would expect from genetics) to 13 percent in 2000.
This graph, taken from the U.S. census shows a steady decline,
over the past 70 years in the number of children of interracial
marriages who are considered white by their own parents.
At first glance, this suggests that the one-drop rule is growing
ever-stronger today among Black White interracial parents.
On the other hand, the fraction of such children labeled as
unmixed Black has also dropped abruptly from 62 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2000.
Again, this chart from the U.S. census shows a sudden drop
over the past decade in the number of children of interracial
marriages who are considered black by their own parents.
How can the fraction of White-labeled children and that of Black-labeled children have both
fallen since 1990? As it turns out, growing numbers of interracially
married parents are rejecting the idea of having only two
choices. This chart superimposes the two previous charts
in order to show what is happening. The white area at the top reflects the fraction
of biracial children labeled as white by their
parents. The black area at the bottom shows
how many were labeled as black. The grey gap in the center shows the fraction
of parents who rejected the dichotomy itself. It shows for each census decade since 1960,
the percentage of children whose parents rejected a binary
choice by either writing in "multiracial," "biracial,"
"none-of-the-above," or by checking multiple boxes.
In 1960, parents were not allowed to check off "other,"
nor to write something in. They had to pick one and only one of the given
choices. In 1970, for the first time, they were allowed
to choose "other." In 1970, four percent of first-generation
biracial children were reported as neither Black nor White.
In 1980, this number had grown to eight percent, and many parents checked both boxes,
despite this being explicitly forbidden by the instructions.
By 1990, the number who rejected choosing between Black and White had grown to thirteen
percent. In 2000, for the first time,
parents were allowed to check multiple boxes and millions of parents jumped at the opportunity.
In the 2000 census, well over half (56 percent) of
first-generation biracial children were coded as belonging
simultaneously to both "races." In conclusion, as shown in other sessions,
the impact of racialism on U.S. society is worsening,
especially in the sense of socio-economic class.
The net-worth gap between White and Black Americans
continues widening. On the other hand, judging by this chart showing
how parents answer the census "race" question about their
children, the notion that if you have even the slightest
African ancestry, you must be Black and nothing more,
seems to be losing its grip on the American mind.
The one drop rule seems to be fading away in America.
And that is my presentation for today, Karen. Thank you for listening.
Karen: Thank you professor. Very interesting as always.
Professor, you said that U.S. racism is worsening. As an example, you said that the net-worth
gap between White and Black Americans is widening.
On the other hand, you said that the one-drop rule
may be fading away. The two observations seem contradictory.
How do you reconcile them? Professor Hemmings: Well Karen, the problem
is that the five most important indicators do not agree.
Three of the five indicators measure the differences in
how Black and White Americans fare in society. Those three indicators are: the test score
gap, the net worth gap, and the crime gap.
The test score gap measures how well African American children
perform in school, compared to White children. The net worth gap measures the financial success
of African American families, compared to white
families. And the crime gap measures the rate of at
which African Americans commit violent crimes or become victims of
violent crime, compared to White Americans.
The other two of the five indicators measure the strength
or harshness of the U.S. race notion itself. One is the rate of exogamy or intermarriage.
The other is the rate of social acceptance of a
multiracial or biracial self-identity. Karen: What you you mean when you say that
they disagree? Professor Hemmings: The three indicators of
African American success or acceptance are steeply worsening
today. The test score gap, the net worth gap,
and the crime gap are all widening. On the other hand, the two indicators of the
strength of the race notion itself are improving.
Both intermarriage and acceptance of mixed-heritage self-identity
are increasing. And so, it seems that African Americans are
not being fully accepted by mainstream society, while at the
same time, people of dual ancestry are not always seen
as African Americans. Karen: All in all then professor,
is the fading of the harshly defined U.S. color line a good thing?
Professor Hemmings: I wish I knew. I suppose that it depends on your vision of
the ideal society. Let me answer with an example.
There is a New World society today that lacks the endogamous
barrier of a color line, where people marry one another without
regard to their fraction of European versus African ancestry,
where everyone is mixed to a greater or lesser extent,
where the Jim Crow cataclysm never happened, and where the notion of a one drop rule is
laughed at. This society is found in Latin America.
And yet colorism is worse in Latin America than in the United States.
People who look more European have more doors opened to them
throughout their lives: schools, jobs, political and social status,
all depend on how European you look. Indeed, advertisements specify that this position
or that, is open only to applicants who look mostly
European. Is such a society better or worse than the
United States, where African Americans are segregated in
fact, but civil rights laws forbid overt colorism?
I cannot answer. Karen: I see. When you put it that way, it
is a difficult choice. Well, we are out of time again,
so we must bid our viewers good bye. This is Karen Sharpe.
Professor Hemmings: And Randolph Hemmings. Karen: Signing off.