- Oct 8, 2005
- 1,599
- 65
some thoughts...
I agree "one drop" has outlived its usefulness but replacing it with a black version of an aryan rule would be worse.panafrica said:It is both genocidal and suicidal to keep expanding the definition of blackness and dilluting ourselves to include people of "mixed heritage" in order to play a numbers game. Now when I'm talking about mixed heritage I mean "direct" mixed heritage, meaning a person's parent or grandparents. Mixed heritage does not include someone's distant ancestor who was dragged behind the bushes by their white slave master 200+ years ago. It is unrealistic to automatically include people of mixed heritage as black, when they often don't to see themselves as black and their tendencies are towards further mixing with non-blacks.
I agree with your post until you get here. We're not expanding the definition of blackness to include people of mixed heritage, it ALREADY does. Since we both see real threats to our continued existence, I'm not seeing that now is the time for RESTRICTING that definition. I also don't understand how one can arbitrarily decide what percentage of blackness qualifies one to be black. What makes a non-black parent or grand-parent the cut-off? Why not great grand, or great-great grand?
Throwing out mixed heritage people from black identity will most certainly further shrink the pool of who is black; however, it is necessary! It is better to build with a strong and smaller base, than to mix a people so far and so fast that they become lost in that mixture! Black people are only created by black men and black women having babies together! Blacks and whites don't make black babies. Blacks and Asians don't make black babies. Blacks and Indians don't make black babies. Blacks and Hispanics don't make black babies (unless of course the Hispanic partner is black).
They don't? Why not? A black/white IR couple has a possibility of producing offspring that is as much black African in appearance as most black Americans. If that child identifies themselves as black who are we to say they are not? More importantly, what advantage have we gained by doing so?
Our beliefs to the contrary and the adoption of the one drop rule (not just by its white architects but by blacks themselves) is why we've gotten to our current situation.