The "1 Drop Rule" explained and how it's tied to AfroAmerican identity

[IllmaticDelta]

I posted this in another thread before but I'll post here. It's a myth that white americans created the One Drop Rule. That honor goes to early afrodescended, FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR in the 1800s, North Eastern USA (the actual source for the modern afram identity). It wasn't really a law by white people until the 1930's.

3 -You are not even reading what you are posting. You are just making it easier for me.

"northern free afroeuropeans already had the "black" concept before there was a one drop rule.....douglas was still on the southern mulatto tip until he absorbed their ways."

I POSTED THIS:

"The end of the eighteenth century brought a new discourse that focused on blood and genealogy to explain blackness and this influenced the rise of the eventual one drop rule. For example, in 1785, Virginia legally defined a Negro as an individual with a black parent or grandparent (Davis 1991). Prior to 1785, a mulatto could own up to one half ”African blood.” With the 1785 law’s enactment, anyone having one quarter or more of African blood would be considered a Negro and presumed to be a slave."

One Drop Rule - Sociology of Race - iResearchNet





What are the biggest differences between this law in Virgina 1785 and the one-drop rule that came almost 2 centuries later?

Dude the One Drop Rule that came later says ANY % of african or known afican ancestors would make one black. Someone like Johnny Depp would be "black" under the one drop rule

Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky,[11][12] the youngest of four children of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells),[13] a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer.[14][15] Depp is of mostly English ancestry, with some ancestors from elsewhere in Europe. He is descended from a French Huguenot immigrant, Pierre Deppe or Dieppe, who settled in Virginia around 1700.[16] He is also of 3/2048 African descent, as he descends twice over from an African slave whose biracial daughter, Elizabeth Key Grinstead, was the first woman of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in North America to sue for her freedom from slavery and win (in 1655).[17][18]

Johnny Depp - Wikipedia








whereas the viginia law from 1785 doesn't. So if you were 1/8 black, you weren't considered "negro"

Douglass was born in 1818, by 1838 he was 20. The law that i posted, with the concepts of the one-drop rule, were applied in 1785 or 18th century. But i also gave examples of cases before.

dude we have actual census records from his time to show how they listed/considered mixed types

That label has been the lone constant in an ever-evolving checklist of identities that reflect the changing demographics of this country — and the changing language the government has used to define it. In 1790, the three categories available were "free white females and males," "all other free persons" and "slaves." By 1830, that last category had splintered into "slaves" and "free colored persons." By 1890, the census separately counted blacks — now all legally free — as "blacks," "mulattos," "quadroons" and "octoroons."

Blacks, like whites, are the only other group continuously identified by the census since 1790, although the language used to refer to blacks has changed in ways the Census Bureau is surely not proud of today. In the second half of the 19th century, census data helped drive scientific theories of race that were used at the time to justify discrimination. That's why the census added "quadroons" and "octoroons" as categories in 1890. These were the instructions given that year to enumerators:

Write white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian, according to the color or race of the person enumerated. Be particularly careful to distinguish between blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. The word 'black' should be used to describe those persons who have three-fourths or more black blood; 'mulatto,' those persons who have from three-eighths to five-eighths black blood; 'quadroon,' those persons who have one-fourth black blood; and 'octoroons,' those persons who have one-eighth or any trace of black blood.

The term "mulatto" didn't vanish entirely from the census until 1930. (aka when the real one drop rule took over)

 

[IllmaticDelta]

repost

As you can see, the laws began to be prepared, way before James Mcune Smith, since he was born in 1813. And was initially applied, even though with a different name, way before James Mcune Smith. Again, Black Americans were forced to embrace blackness, as being african descendant, no matter the phenotype or skin color.

no, there was a mulatto buffer tier prior to the one drop rule is the point that you're missing. See Douglass story went he escaped from the south and went north and met up with black yankees like, Mccune Smith


Differences in identification or "Blackness" of Black Yankees vs their Southern counterparts

Douglass considered himself to be neither White nor Black, but both. His multiracial self-identity showed in his first autobiography. Introducing his father in Narrative, Douglass wrote, “My father was a white man.” In this text, his mother was a stranger whom he had never seen in daylight, he could not picture her face, and he was unmoved by news of her death.4 Not only did Douglass adopt a fictional Scottish hero’s name, he emphasized his (perhaps imagined) Scots descent through his father. When visiting Great Britain in 1845-47, Douglass extended his stay in Scotland. He immersed himself in Scottish music and ballads, which he played on the violin for the rest of his life. Having plunged into a Scottish ethnic identity, Douglass wrote to his (then) friend, William Lloyd Garrison, “If I should meet you now, amid the free hills of old Scotland, where the ancient ‘black Douglass’ [sic] once met his foes… you would see a great change in me!”5 Upon arriving in Nantucket, Douglass hoped to represent a blending of both endogamous groups, a man who was half-White and half-Black:

Young, ardent, and hopeful, I entered upon this new life in the full gush of unsuspecting enthusiasm. The cause was good, the men engaged in it were good, the means to attain its triumph, good…. For a time, I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped.6

But acceptance by White society was out of reach for Douglass. He discovered that, in the North, there was no such thing as a man who was half-Black. White ships’ caulkers in New Bedford denied him a chance to work at his craft because in their eyes he was all Black.7 When he joined the Garrisonians on a boat to an abolitionist convention in Nantucket, and a squabble broke out because the White abolitionists demanded that the Black abolitionists take lesser accommodations, Douglass found himself classified as Black by his friends. Later in Nantucket, Douglass so impressed the Garrisonians with his public speaking that abolitionist Edmund Quincy exchanged reports with others that Douglass was an articulate public speaker, “for a ******.”8 Repeatedly, Douglass tried to present himself as an intermediary between America’s two endogamous groups. But the Garrisonians made it clear that he was expected to present himself as nothing more than an intelligent “Negro.” He was told to talk only about the evils of slavery and ordered to stop talking about the endogamous color line. “Give us the facts [about being a slave]. We will take care of the [racial] philosophy.” They also ordered him to “leave a little plantation speech” in his accent.9 In their own words, they wanted to display a smart “******,” but not too smart.

Douglass’s cruelest discovery came after he broke with the Garrisonians and went out on his own. Abolitionist friends of both endogamous groups had warned him that there was nothing personal in how Garrison had used him. The public did not want an intermediary; they wanted an articulate Black. Douglass soon discovered that his friends were right. His newspaper, The North Star,failed to sell because it had no market; White Yankees wanted to read White publications and Black Yankees wanted to read Black ones. Indeed, Black political leaders resented Douglass’s distancing himself from Black ethno-political society. There was no room in Massachusetts for a man who straddled the color line.

Douglass dutifully reinvented himself. He applied himself to learning Black Yankee culture. “He began to build a closer relationship with… Negro leaders and with the Negro people themselves, to examine the whole range of Negro problems, and to pry into every facet of discrimination.”10 Eight months later, The North Star’s circulation was soaring and Black leader James McCune Smith wrote to Black activist Gerrit Smith:

You will be surprised to hear me say that only since his Editorial career has he seen to become a colored man! I have read his paper very carefully and find phrase after phrase develop itself as in one newly born among us.11

From that day on, Douglass never looked back. The public wanted him to be hyper-Black and so hyper-Black he became. His later autobiographies reveal the change.12 Narrative (1845) says that his “father was a white man,” My Bondage and My Freedom (1854) says that his father “was shrouded in mystery” and “nearly white,” and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882-1892) says flatly, “of my father I know nothing.”13 Narrative says that his mother was a stranger whose death did not affect him, and Bondage and Freedom reports that he was “deeply attached to her,” Life and Times says that “her image is ineffably stamped upon my memory,” and describes her death with “great poignancy and sorrow.”14

And yet, although he donned a public persona of extreme Blackness, he continued to see himself as half White Scottish in his private life. When he eventually married Helen Pitts, a woman of the White endogamous group, even close friends were bothered by the mismatch between the public and private Douglasses.15 In a speech in 1886 Jacksonville, Florida, Douglass justified his intermarriage on the grounds of his own multiracial self-identity. According to James Weldon Johnson:

Douglass spoke, and moved a large audience of white and colored people by his supreme eloquence. … Douglass was speaking in the far South, but he spoke without fear or reservation. One statement in particular that he made, I now wonder if any Negro speaker today, under the same circumstances, would dare to make, and, if he did, what the public reaction would be; Douglass, in reply to the current criticisms regarding his second marriage, said, “In my first marriage I paid my compliments to my mother’s race; in my second marriage I paid my compliments to the race of my father.”16

* * * * *

The clash between how Douglass saw himself in 1838 and the public persona that he was forced to portray, was due to the presence of African-American ethnicity in the North.17 Free citizens of part-African ancestry in the South, especially in the lower South, lacked the sense of common tradition associated with ethnic self-identity. This essay traces the emergence of African-American ethnicity and the subsequent evolution of the color line in five topics: Origins of African-American Ethnicity explains how the imposition of a unique endogamous color line eventually led to the synthesis of a unique ethno-cultural community in the Jacksonian Northeast. African-American Ethnic Traits outlines the customs of the Black Yankee ethnic group to show that they gave birth to many of today’s Black traditions. The Integration versus Separatism Pendulum introduces a debate that has occupied Black political leaders since colonial times. The Color Line in the North contrasts the harsh enforcement of the intermarriage barrier in the free states with the more permeable systems of the lower South (as presented in the preceding three essays). The National Color Line’s Rise and Fall concludes this section on the endogamous color line by presenting two graphs. The first shows that which side of the endogamous color line you were on was most hotly contested in U.S. courts between 1840 and 1869. The second shows that the color line grew abruptly stronger during Reconstruction, was at its harshest during Jim Crow, and began to recover only around 1980.

Essays on the U.S. Color Line » Blog Archive » The Color Line Created African-American Ethnicity in the North

northern free afroeuropeans already had the "black" concept before there was a one drop rule.....douglas was still on the southern mulatto tip until he absorbed their ways.

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black yankees were the first "One Droppers" (see Fred Douglass story) even before white people made it a rule. The most prominent early advocate/promoter of "black" identity was an afro-european, black yankee from the North

James McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865)

was an American physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author. He is the first African American to hold a medical degree and graduated at the top in his class at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was the first African American to run a pharmacy in the United States.

In addition to practicing as a doctor for nearly 20 years at the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan, Smith was a public intellectual: he contributed articles to medical journals, participated in learned societies, and wrote numerous essays and articles drawing from his medical and statistical training. He used his training in medicine and statistics to refute common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine, and society in general. Invited as a founding member of the New York Statistics Society in 1852, which promoted a new science, he was elected as a member in 1854 of the recently founded American Geographic Society. But, he was never admitted to the American Medical Association or local medical associations.

He has been most well known for his leadership as an abolitionist; a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, with Frederick Douglass he helped start the National Council of Colored People in 1853, the first permanent national organization for blacks. Douglass said that Smith was "the single most important influence on his life."[1] Smith was one of the Committee of Thirteen, who organized in 1850 in New York City to resist the newly passed Fugitive Slave Law by aiding fugitive slaves through the Underground Railroad. Other leading abolitionist activists were among his friends and colleagues. From the 1840s, he lectured on race and abolitionism and wrote numerous articles to refute racist ideas about black capacities.

The first African American to receive a medical degree, this invaluable collection brings together the writings of James McCune Smith, one of the foremost intellectuals in antebellum America. The Works of James McCune Smith is one of the first anthologies featuring the works of this illustrious scholar. Perhaps best known for his introduction to Fredrick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, his influence is still found in a number of aspects of modern society and social interactions. And he was considered by many to be a prophet of the twenty-first century. One of the earliest advocates of the use of "black" instead of "colored," McCune Smith treated racial identities as social constructions, arguing that American literature, music, and dance would be shaped and defined by blacks.

The absence of James McCune Smith in the historiographic and critical literature is even more striking. He was a brilliant scholar, writer, and critic, as well as a first rate physician. In 1882 the black leader Alexander Crummell called him "the most learned Negro of his day," and Frederick Douglass considered him the most important black influence in his life (much as he considered Gerrit Smith the most important white one). Douglass was probably correct when, in 1859, he publicly stated: "No man in this country more thoroughly understands the whole struggle between freedom and slavery, than does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his understanding."

As a prose stylist and original thinker, McCune Smith ranks, at his best, alongside such canonical figures as Emerson and Thoreau. His essays are sophisticated and elegant, his interpretations of American culture are way ahead of his time, and his experimental style and use of dialect anticipates some of the Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1920s. Yet McCune Smith has been completely ignored by literary critics; and aside from one article on him, he has remained absent from the historical record.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Keep up the good work.

 

[xoxodede]

@IllmaticDelta why do you think Frederick Douglass decided to identified as both White and Black?

Because his view was not the norm from what I have learned.

Personally, I feel like he did so to open doors and be viewed as somewhat different by Whites.

Mainly cause his skintone - didn't showcase what "mulatto" was viewed as - meaning lighter skintones. Even though we all know you can be mixed and not be light -- or have so-called "mixed features."

For example, take Charley Patton -- he self-identified as "black" -- as did his parents and family.

Knowing he like many were mixed due to enslavement of his ancestors -- his parents were enslaved. He could have possibly passed -- yet -- he chose not too. People now want to claim him as everything + mixed with Black. Even though on all records -- he is listed as "black." FamilySearch

 

[IllmaticDelta]

@IllmaticDelta why do you think Frederick Douglass decided to identified as both White and Black?



Because his view was not the norm from what I have learned.

Personally, I feel like he did so to open doors and be viewed as somewhat different by Whites.

when/by the time he became a voice for the "negro" community, I think he was solidly "black" identified

Mainly cause his skintone - didn't showcase what "mulatto" was viewed as - meaning lighter skintones. Even though we all know you can be mixed and not be light -- or have so-called "mixed features."

Douglass looked mulatto in those times if you compared him to a darker skinned type

Take example Charley Patton -- he self-identified as "black" -- as did his parents and family. Knowing he like many were mixed due to enslavement of his ancestors. He could have possibly passed -- yet -- he chose not too. People now want to claim him as everything + mixed with Black. Even though on all records -- he is listed as "black." FamilySearch

yea, patton looked whiter than Douglass for sure but he never identified as anything other than "Black".

....white researchers of the blues have a habit of bringing up his white/indian admx because they tryna lay claims to the Delta Blues through him. It's been said that Patton and the guy below were half brothers

 

[xoxodede]

when/by the time he became a voice for the "negro" community, I think he was solidly "black" identified



Douglass looked mulatto in those times if you compared him to a darker skinned type

yea, patton looked whiter than Douglass for sure but he never identified as anything other than "Black".

....white researchers of the blues have a habit of bringing up his white/indian admx because they tryna lay claims to the Delta Blues through him. It's been said that Patton and the guy below were half brothers

I know! LOL. He know damn well - Charley was not his "half-brother" -- he said that for clout. But, white folks eating it up -- and claiming the lie as truth.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I know! LOL. He know damn well - Charley was not his "half-brother" -- he said that for clout. But, white folks eating it up -- and claiming the lie as truth.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

@ 36:54 2 of Charley Pattons modern day, blood relatives

 

[xoxodede]

@ 36:54 2 of Charley Pattons modern day, blood relatives

We have to do a Gospel thread.

My dad was a gospel DJ and in a Quartet when he was younger -- and I was raised on Gospel Quartets -- and the history and music is just . Even if you are not a Christian....

 

[IllmaticDelta]

We have to do a Gospel thread.

My dad was a gospel DJ and in a Quartet when he was younger -- and I was raised on Gospel Quartets -- and the history and music is just . Even if you are not a Christian....

I made one a while back

The AfroAmer sacred song (negro spiritulas-gospel) tradition appreciation and it's impact thread

 

[xoxodede]

I made one a while back

The AfroAmer sacred song (negro spiritulas-gospel) tradition appreciation and it's impact thread

Thank you!


I'll add to it as well. It's some quartets and artist that I want to add.

 

[Pit Bull]

The way cacs try to claim Charley Patton really be pissin me off. Know damn well when he was alive he was treated like any other black person in fukkin Mississippi. My great grandparents was mixed looking black people from MS. They lived in the same county, in the same decade that Charley Patton died. So that subject hit close to home for me. They ain't get no love from no fukkin crackers.

Plus he learned to play from share croppers so what that tell you? They buggin anyway. Patton's voice is enough to let me know he black. nikka sound just like my grandaddy.

All that ole Indian and white bullshyt is trash. nikkas don't even claim white blood like that no matter how mixed, and the nikkas who claim Indian, cacs tell them it's a lie but they still turn around and use that to disassociate the art they covet from the people they hate.

 

[xoxodede]

The way cacs try to claim Charley Patton really be pissin me off. Know damn well when he was alive he was treated like any other black person in fukkin Mississippi. My great grandparents was mixed looking black people from MS. They lived in the same county, in the same decade that Charley Patton died. So that subject hit close to home for me. They ain't get no love from no fukkin crackers.

Plus he learned to play from share croppers so what that tell you? They buggin anyway. Patton's voice is enough to let me know he black. nikka sound just like my grandaddy.

All that ole Indian and white bullshyt is trash. nikkas don't even claim white blood like that no matter how mixed, and the nikkas who claim Indian, cacs tell them it's a lie but they still turn around and use that to disassociate the art they covet from the people they hate.

Exactly.

Same here with my maternal Great Grandparents. Nobody claims anything but Black.

I even seen native americans in the comments talking about - "yeah - Charlie's Cherokees" -- and "us natives got soul."

The Cherokee tribe -- who are trying to claim Mr. Patton were slave owners and to this day - have the same level of racism against us as Whites -- cause they are basically WHITE.

 

[Pit Bull]

Exactly.

Same here with my maternal Great Grandparents. Nobody claims anything but Black.

I even seen native americans in the comments talking about - "yeah - Charlie's Cherokees" -- and "us natives got soul."

The Cherokee tribe -- who are trying to claim Mr. Patton were slave owners and to this day - have the same level of racism against us as Whites -- cause they are basically WHITE.

Just absolutely disgusting

Cherocacs

 

[IllmaticDelta]

at this entire thread being an elaborate justification of pawg chasing while still putting up a pro black facade.

.....this thread has 0% anything related to "pawg chasing"and the pro-black angle is real, nothing fake about it