February is famously Black history month, but that is not why I am writing about race or racial classification. I am writing about it because of the boundless interest in—negative or positive—and the confusion concerning miscegenation in this country. There are three major things that influence my point of view and expertise: my own large extended family (which includes the above categories); study of linguistics, genetics, and anthropology; and what the country of Brazil decided to do a few years back: reclassify everyone based on phenotype (appearance).
Let’s start with Brazil. It is that large country in South America that President George Bush was so unfamiliar with that Condoleezza Rice had to tell him privately: “Brazil is a black country.” In fact it is the blackest country outside of Africa.
Here's how one online encyclopedia explains it:
The Brazilian system of racial classification is far more complex [than the one-drop rule]. In Brazil, people are assigned to racial groups based on what they look like—their skin color, hair type, and facial features—regardless of their ancestry. As such, individuals may be assigned to different racial groups than their parents, siblings or other relatives. Moreover, how individuals are classified racially does not depend solely on their physical appearance. Social class, education, and manner of dress all come into play in assigning someone to a racial category. As Brazilians put it, “money whitens,” so the higher the social class, the lighter the racial category to which an individual belongs.
I first learned about Brazil’s re-classification efforts from a documentary. It means that siblings can be classified as white, black, or mulatto based on the “tests” that were in place. Unfortunately these tests included such things as illiteracy or abject poverty. So if one was fortunate enough to look white but was born poor and illiterate then one could still not be classified as “white.” Black became the default race in Brazil for anyone who did not have all the markings of a “white.” In countries such as Brazil, illiteracy is a big deal because public education is not available in extremely rural areas or in the huge, poor black ghettos.
Why are things so simple in this country? We might gain some insight into it by looking at Brazil’s buzzword: “money whitens.” That is a sword that cuts both ways because it confers on those with the proper phenotype the ability to earn more over their lifetime than their blacker brothers and sisters.
Article comments
1 - Joanne Huspek
Interesting article. I also don't see the point of the "one-drop" rule. It only works for those who are black, but not for anyone else. Why should that be? Because I am 1/8 American Indian, by that standard I should be considered American Indian. But according to the tribe, both I and my father are not considered so. And in my father's case, who was born in the 1930s, my grandmother put "white" on the birth certificate for the obvious reasons that she didn't want him to be discriminated against since she was half Ojibwe.
I do not consider our President to be Black, nor Tiger Woods, or anyone who is of mixed ethnic heritage. Why isn't Obama just as white as he is Black? Why isn't Tiger just as Asian as he is Black?
In my mixed up pedigree (including white, Asian and native American)- where do you put me? I participate in many survey web sites and the first thing they ask after age is what race you consider yourself to be. I am annoyed when I cannot check more than one box.
And what is really difficult to comprehend is that when a person is of mixed racial background, their life experiences are like no other, no matter what box you try to put them into, this from personal experience.
Thank you for your article. It was worth the read.
2 - Heloise
It is called hypo descent. And it should also apply to native Americans. It don't bcz money is involved. And we all got some Indian in us my friend but we all don't have African blood. Least ways we can trace. Not talking about the motherland as cradle here. Hypodescent means the raciest mix that is the least powerful politically or in the eyes of the world. Blacks would be the least or last. Only if your race but only if that race is non white does the rule apply.
Joanne you are white end of story. One good friend from a while back had long blond braid down her back and a cute square nose her mom was half Cherokee and they did not want to be white. But they and you are white. Her dad was Anglo too. That should be races above.
It is quite clear I think.
3 - Jean
My goodness, tri-racial people in the South have been dealing with this issue for generations, and we considered it no big deal, we knew the majority of the country was not enlightened, and we didn't care. We knew of our tri-racial mixture, so we talked among ourselves of our own family traditions- where it mattered the most. On my mother's side her maternal grandmother was the daughter of an African slave man and a Choctaw "cook" - full blood from the Anderson Plantation in Mississippi. Her grandmother, married a German logger in Mississippi. So on my mom's side, she is African, Choctaw and German. Her father, was African, Cherokee and Chinese (many Chinese men took African American wives down in Mississippi - see the book "Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton") So my mom passes on African, Choctaw, German, Cherokee and Chinese DNA. On my father's side we bring in African/Cherokee/Irish on his father's side and African/Cree on his mother's side. So in effect our family diverges on many racial lines. We're proud of it, and we pass it on.
4 - Chicano
Joanne Huspek You dont consider Barack Obama to be black?
Studies published by the peer review Journal pnas found white people are the product of admixture or mixing between Africans and East Asains, therefore white people are the product of mixed and mixed haveing mixed. So im guessing as white people owe there existence to mixing your gonna now demand all white people stop calling themselves white, and u no longer view whites as white due to the fact white people came from mixing between two non white people?
Some how i dont think you will stop viewing people as white, despite the fact white people only exist because East Asians and Africans began haveing mixed race children and we now call them white.
5 - Heloise
I agree that is how mexicans have become classified, not just labelled as white.