Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The one drop rule was a social construction that emerged discursively in US history. The language was first used by the government in the Fourteenth Census in 1920 when the color line was redefined by the Census Bureau. Instead of using the category “mulattoes,” the Bureau adopted the one drop rule. According to it, “the term ‘white’ as used in the census report refers to persons understood to be pure-blooded whites. A person of mixed blood is classified according to the nonwhite racial strain.” Thus, “a person of mixed white … and Negro … is classified as … a Negro … regardless of the amount of white blood” ( Bureau of the Census 1923 ). By 1924 the term one drop rule was also being used in state legislation. For example, in 1924, a Virginia Act for “Preservation of Racial Integrity” defined a white person as someone with “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian” ( Hickman 1967 ). And the Virginia legislature in 1930 defined as colored anyone “in whom there is ascertainable any negro blood” ( Hickman 1967 ). The one drop rule became pervasive and courts ruled on it as a principle of law, particularly in the confiscation of property, or in such codified exclusions as denying legal redress to persons of color. The history of the one drop rule is marked by two major interventions by the powerful in jurisprudential thinking: (1) it was necessary to transform the way blacks ... log in or subscribe to read full text