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The One-Drop Rule

Are you what your father is? According to the American government, No.
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In the United States, any child with one black parent is typically deemed black regardless of the racial categorization of the other parent, regardless of what they look like genetically. The one-drop rule is a sociological and legal principle of racial classification that was historically prominent in the United States asserting that any person with even one ancestor of African Diaspora ("one drop" of black blood) is considered to be black (Negro in historical terms). So with this belief, it kills the theory that people born of two different nations are mixed or biracial. This concept evolved over the course of the 19th century and became codified into law in the 20th century. It was associated with the principle of "invisible blackness" and is an example of the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status. Although racial segregation was adopted legally by southern states of the former Confederacy in the late 19th century, legislators resisted defining race by law as part of preventing interracial marriages. In 1895 in South Carolina during the discussion, George D. Tillman said, "It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of... colored blood...It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed."


This post first appeared on The Brown Girl Dilemma, please read the originial post: here

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The One-Drop Rule

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