<p>Someone on another thread said it again: “Where does the “one-drop” rule fit in?” They said it in the context of a discussion about who is black and who isn’t. ]</p>
<p>Why do black people keep holding up a so-called “rule” as if it were gospel truth, carved in granite, an inescapable ball and chain around the necks of every man, woman and child in America? Some black folks even sound proud of the “rule,” they embrace it, they LIKE it. It is almost as if they want to say: “ha, ha, ha, you’re black too, you can’t get away from me/us/it no matter how much you wish you could. You have to suffer being black with the rest of us.” That’s what I hear every time I hear a black person say “you know what they say, just one drop makes you black.”</p>
<p>Why do so many black people (it seems like a lot) embrace a racist contrivance of white North Americans engaged in the importation and buying and selling of human beings? Why do so many black people assume black folks CREATED the rule, so it must be true?</p>
<p>Am I wrong to dislike black people who go around quoting this vestige of black slavery as if it is now and forever an inescapable truth, a permanent stain upon an entire racial group?</p>
<p>"The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry; it is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status.</p>
<p>Well here on CC, many seem to be digging deep for anything that makes them a URM. It’s ufortunate. On a recent thread the student posting forgot he was Hispanic until application time.</p>
<p>Plainsman, it’s not just slavery, it’s discrimination that keeps on keepin’ on. So the thought is that if everyone finally has one drop and then we’re all black maybe the racism will stop.</p>
<p>Oh I don’t know. I haven’t seen too many white folks strung up and hanged in front of the children by black folks who don’t want white folks moving into their neighborhoods or glancing at their daughters, etc. It was less than a generation ago that these lynchings happened regularly. I’d be cautious about white folks, too, if I were black. Oh and the one drop rule applied in slave times. Even if your daddy’s daddy was the plantation owner, you were still a slave if you had a drop of color in your blood. Yes, I agree with Enginox in the end. They’ll look down on you if you’re short, tall, light, dark, male, female, fat, skinny, smart or dumb. Chatty or shy. Fast or prudish. Jewish or Muslim or Christian or atheist. Anything some folks can find to make themselves feel better about being terribly imperfect, unsure and needful. And then they’ll kill to protect what they claim is right. Ahhh, the human condition.</p>
<p>Redroses - I don’t think the OP on the other thread regarding Hispanic origin forgot that he is Hispanic; he is seeking clarification on how others view the answer to this question. He seemed to me to be seeking clarification because he did not want to do anything that others would deem dishonest to gain advantage; I suspect that he has in many other respects pondered the many different ways to answer this question all his life, particularly since his last name is of Hispanic origin. His confusion is common to those of mixed background, college admission is one area where a benefit may be conferred depending on the answer and the college, but the uncertainty of how to answer the question is lifelong and will continue to be so for as long as we continue to feel the need to put any label on anyone in regards to race.</p>
<p>Plainsman, I don’t understand your point. Nevertheless, please check your historical facts a bit more carefully. The standards of race, i.e. ‘what is race and whom is what’ was in large part legislatively dictated and not soley a matter of custom. More than one southern state had SEVERELY strict laws about whom was white and who wasn’t. Many of these laws weren’t stricken or abandoned until relatively recently, as in my lifetime. For an example, the ‘White Citizens Council’ legislation was not expunged until the 1980s-1990s in Mississippi. The White Citizens Councils did not specifically address “miscegenation” as far as I know, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>Plainsmen, I have not noticed what you describe. </p>
<p>“black people keep holding up a so-called “rule” as if it were gospel truth… even sound proud of the “rule,” they embrace it, they LIKE it. It is almost as if t… You have to suffer being black with the rest of us.” </p>
<p>Sure, it’s been brought up at times, but it seems appropriate to the context, which on CC, is college admissions, highlighting “race” as a “social construct”, and different from the “harder” science of genetics.</p>
<p>I don’t know about “wrong”, but I think it’s a waste of energy to dislike someone based on one thing they say.</p>
<p>To be fair to the OP, some blacks use the “rule” as a defense mechanism or as a coping mechanism. Some segments of black culture perceive their lighter-skinned members as “superior” to the darker-skinned ones. I’m sure some lighter-skinned individuals use that perception as a weapon.</p>
<p>I can see some individuals using that as a means to gain college admissions. Don’t many people at Columbia Univ. consider themselves as “mixed race”?</p>
<p>bchan, if he considered himself Hispanic, I think he would have checked Hispanic when he took the PSAT. I thinkk he, like many, are looking for a loophole into a better college.</p>
<p>“I’m “lighter-skinned” and I don’t follow you. Do you mean with regard to “one drop”? How so?”</p>
<p>During the period of American slavery, slaves with a lighter skin tone where generally the offspring of white masters/black slaves and/or slaves that were relegated to indoor work. Slaves that remained in the field, exposed to the sun, probably resented those slaves with lighter skin tone because the former perceived the latter as having an easier life.</p>
<p>The lighter skinned slaves are now in a limbo where the masters do not consider them as equal and the other darker skinned slaves shun them away. It is probable that some lighter skinned slaves then used their lighter skin as a weapon against the darker skinned slaves since it is easier to feel superior to others that are equally or more oppressed than you. In response, the darker skinned slaves may remind the lighter skinned ones that they still have “black” blood in their veins.</p>
<p>Carry that forward in years and you may find altered versions of the original event still playing out.</p>
<p>I guess I’m being dense, but I don’t see how that applies here on CC. In the context of “URM status”, the more “drops”, the less “explaining” you have to do. Where does the “reminding” come in? Maybe you are saying folks with more drops remind others they are “equal”? Or that they have the upper hand? I’m not “feeling” that.</p>