The One-Drop Rule

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Recommended: Racial identity impacted by society

The growth in the multiracial population in the United States of America since the 1970’s has greatly increased and is continuing to increase. Although the number of biracial and multiracial Americans is relatively small to the total population at 5 million, the multiracial population is growing at a rate of ten times faster than that of the White population (Stuckey 2008). These facts weren’t officially known until the United States government’s verdict to allow individuals to claim multiple races on the 2000 US census. Along with these aspects, the increased exposure of multiracial public figures and celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, and Barack Obama, has caused the focus of public discussion and scholarly attention on multiracial people to increase greatly. Much of this discussion focuses on racial identity. Racial Identity is put to question in censuses and other polls, applications, and in personal meetings. When it comes to answering in these situations I believe most biracial White-Black people internally identify as Black, and describe how both Blacks and Whites see them as Black. I argue that the one-drop rule still shapes racial identity.

Blacks and Whites first began mixing significantly in America in the 17th and 18th centuries, between African slaves and the European indentured servants. Fearing that these interracial relationships would tarnish the purity of the White race, states passed laws in the 1660s to prohibit interracial marriage. Despite these strict anti miscegenation laws, the relationships continued, sometimes through consent and other times through force, as White slave owners often raped their Black female slaves. As a result, many multiracial children were born as the circumstance of bru...

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...h to Understanding the Racial Identification of Multiracial adolescents. Conference Papers—American Sociological Association, 1-22

Pearlmann, J. and Mary Waters. 2002. The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Qian, Zhenchao. 2004. “Options: Racial/Ethnic Identification of Children of Intermarried

Couples.” Social Science Quarterly 85:746–65.

Rockquemore, Kerry Ann, and David L. Brunsma. 2002a. Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Roth, W. 2005. The End of the One-Drop rule? Labeling of Multiracial children in Black Inermarriages. Sociological Forum, 20(1), 35-67

Stuckey, M. (2008, May 28). Multiracial americans surge in number, voice. Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24542138/ns/us_news-gut_check/t/multiracial-americans-surge-number-voice/

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