Obama and the One Drop Rule

According to press releases, next year America will have her first president of African descent. Barack Hussein Obama, politically dismantled former P.O.W. and war veteran John McCain and his maverick sidekick Bullwinkle-er, Sarah Palin with the greatest of ease (Joe B. helped too). Now that it's official, America's true racist feelings are emerging in a place where tongues and opinions are rarely held-the cyber-world. Those who have a hard time with a HNIC (if you don't know what that means, watch Stand and Deliver starring Morgan Freeman), are declaring President Obama bi-racial, which begs the question, has any of them ever heard about the One Drop Rule?

For those of you unfamiliar, the one drop rule, which actually was enacted into law in the early 20 ^th century, stated if you had one drop of African blood, you were African. According to Wikipedia, the 1910–19 decade was the nadir of the Jim Crow era. Tennessee adopted a one-drop statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Virginia in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931. During this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirtysecond) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto. Madison Grant of Virginia in The Passing of the Great Race wrote: "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a negro is a negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew."¹. Obviously, the rule was important enough to require the enactment of laws. When the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967) outlawed Virginia's ban on interracial marriage, the one drop rule was declared unconstitutional.

The rule may have been considered unconstitutional, but the sentiment behind it remained intact. A mixed race child of African descent is still considered black-even in poverty stricken, war-torn Vietnam. Bi-racial Vietnamese conceived during the war by African-American members of the military are still scorned in Vietnam. Racial identity, as it relates to African blood, is still a major global issue and Obama's election proves that, although we may elect a mixed-race black man to the highest office in our country, accepting his black side is difficult to say the least.

Another point of contention in cyberspace is whether or not he's African-American. Most people say he is not which is the epitome' of ridiculousness because he is more African-American than American born blacks since his father was African. American born blacks are really just Americans. The only connection we share with Africa and Africans exists in the similarities of our skin colors-and one might even argue that those similarities are questionable.

What's most upsetting is that we have to have this conversation at all. Aside from the racial rhetoric, what we all can agree upon is he is darkest President we've had to date. And that darkness is similar to a group of Americans that were once slaves in this country. Disassociate him from black Americans if you wish, there's no arguing the previous two sentences.

I think this is a perfect opportunity for those of us who simply find it hard to accept blacks as fellow countrymen to seek and destroy that internal illness that exists within. That illness that causes you to feel better about yourself because you're not black. I've heard it said in many different ways, I may be poor, but at least I'm not a nigger! or No matter how fat and ugly I get, I can still get me a nigger or Just take it and I'll call the cops and say a nigger stole it. I'm talking about that kind of sickness. Let's find a way to analyze and eradicate it. I know I'm wasting words because racist whites will never give up their animus towards blacks. In some ways, I feel that racist whites are direct descendants of indentured servants who, along with some blacks, arrived prior to slavery and were considered a lessor class of people. It wasn't until the institutionalization of slavery that these whites gained favor amongst the ruling class and were placed in positions of authority over their former fellow (black) indentured servants. The fear of returning to the lower rung of society spawned a hatred for what and who they used to be, and a desire never to return. The mere sight of a slave reminded them of their former less than existence and it was incumbent upon them to prove to the ruling class that they could keep the nigras in their place. Many a slave were beaten, raped, lynched, and murder all in their attempts to demonstrate to the ruling class their ability to maintain order. Well, you can stop now, the ruling class really never saw a difference, and most likely never will.

I don't quite know what the future holds for a country so divided by the simplicity of color-one can only hope that we rise above the pettiness of our dermatological differences and find commonalities that could be instrumental in not only restoring our perception of greatness, but exceeding our previous ideologies and truly building an amazing nation none of us could ever imagined being blinded by something so silly as a one drop rule.

'Nuff said.

TPOKW