There is only one nation on the planet where someone who is the son of a white mother and raised by white grandparents can be called "black". Everywhere else on the planet, such a person would be called "white" or "brown" or "mixed-race", and calling him "black" would get you expressions of shock, because the word "black" is assigned to those who have more than 50% sub-Saharan African blood. Indeed, in Latin America if you have one drop of white blood in your veins, you're called "white" -- even if your skin is the same color as Barack Obama's. But those are not the Racist States of America, where if you have one drop of black blood, you're "black" -- even if your mother was white and you were raised by white grandparents within white culture.
This vestige of America's past is explicitly related to racism against African-Americans intended to increase the number of people considered to be second-class citizens and thus exploitable for cheap labor. It started in slave days, when a white plantation owner raped his black maid and she got pregnant. If the resulting offspring were considered white, then the offspring would be a legitimate heir. If considered black, then the offspring would be a slave. So there was every motivation to consider the offspring of a white father and a black mother to be black. Later, during the segregation era, this same consideration was an incentive to continue treating mixed-race offspring as black, because there was always a shortage of cheap labor to work on the cotton plantations to do all the hoeing and picking that was required.
In short, the One Drop Rule is a horrible legacy of America's racist past, which exists only in the so-called "civilized" United States of America and in no other nation on the planet. What is appalling is that you see newspapers like the Washington Post proclaiming "Barack Obama is the first African-American to be nominated for the Presidency" -- despite the fact that Obama was raised by a white mother and by white grandparents, and is, at most, 50% black. But in the Racist States of America, that doesn't matter. You have one drop of black blood in you, you're African-American -- not white, not mixed-race, you're a full-blooded nigger as far as our so-called "liberal" press is concerned. So it goes, just more lies as we pretend to be a "civilized" nation. Sigh.
-- Badtux the History Penguin
I have a number of blood lines in me, but as far as I know there is no nigger in me. Too bad, I would be right proud if one of my ancestors had of screwed a nigger, they seem to have screwed everything else.
ReplyDeleteLanguage! Remember the rules -- only the penguin is allowed to be an ass here. Thanks!
ReplyDeletehere's the rule i figured out while growing up mixed race in arizona (not the most enlightened place in the 50s)
ReplyDeletewhat ever group of my heritage mix is in the majority will identify me as "the other." anytime i want to feel very indian i go hang around with white folks. when i want to feel white i head back to the rez. being in multi-ethnic places like indonensia (where the main definer of "inside/outside" is muslim/not muslim) and hawaii gave him a break. hawaii was a magnet for mixed race couples back then. i have to believe that kansas and chicago were a total shock to him.
there are many writers from the 18th century who remarked with outrage on the amount of "mulatto" or "half-caste" children that populated the yards of the south.
i used to play for a great new orleans piano player who talked about things like "paper bag" clubs in new orleans. if your skin was darker than a grocery bag, you were ineligible.
we've come a good distance in changing things. but we haven't come all that far. boston is more segregated today than selma. southern indiana is the same. arizona isn't far behind.
maybe this will shove the line a few more inches to common sense and simple human decency.
if you kill obama we will blow shit up.
MB, your experience is typical of most mixed-race people in America. Someone who is half Vietnamese and half white (a fairly common mix around here due to our large Vietnamese community) will often be treated as Vietnamese by the white community, and as white by the Vietnamese community.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about the black experience, however, is that someone like Obama who is half white/half black will be treated as black by both the black community and the white community as long as their skin is darker than a deep tan (if their skin is lighter, they will still be considered as black but "passing" by the black community, but the white community probably will treat them as white). The "One Drop Rule" only applies to black-white mixes in America, not to Vietnamese-white mixes, Indian-white mixes, etc. For those other mixes, you revert back to the 50-50 rule that you mention, where the two communities each to some extent view you as a member of the other community.
This is all related to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, where "one drop" of black blood made you legally black. The rules are different for Indians because there the law was always 50% -- you had to prove you were 50% Indian to be considered Indian, if not, you were considered white, at least as far as the law was concerned. Racism, certainly, but different from what blacks have experienced in the United States. It seems somewhat facile to talk about gradations of racism when every sort of racism is evil, but the sort of racism that was exerted against blacks was completely different from that exerted against Indians. Blacks were valued as slaves for their labor and thus lawmakers had every incentive to legally categorize people as black. Society as a whole, both black and non-black, internalized these values. There is no other ethnic minority in America which has ever been categorized this way, a form of racism unique to the American experience.
- Badtux the History Penguin
For your histo-penguin side, I suggest having a squizz (sorry, penguin, not a squid. "Squizz" is Aussie slang for "peek") at this site for archaic vocabulary words such as "octoroon" "quadroon" and -- this one's for you, MB -- "metisse."
ReplyDelete