By Robert Taylor

In the wake of the claims of Tiger Woods and the election of a mixed race but Black president, a question has been raised in black internet chat rooms around the country as to whether there is a legal or biological definition of who is black.

Actually, there is no law operable today which defines what percentage of “black blood” makes one black. The oft-repeated notion that one drop of black blood makes one black is a cultural definition which has neither a legal nor biological foundation.

The history of the notion can be traced to slavery and the period right after slavery called Reconstruction. Originally, in a bid to stop slaves who had been fathered by white slave owners and overseers from claiming freedom, property rights or possible inheritance, several Southern sates passed laws that in effect defined a black person as anyone with any “discernible” amount of “colored” or “African” blood.

But after slavery ended in 1865, these laws began to either die a natural death or were actually repealed during Reconstruction. The controversy which brought the race definition issue back up again was the infamous 1896 U.S. Supreme Court “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Our high school history classes and Black History Month presentations have given us a distorted idea of who Plessy was and what he was about. We have generally been led to believe that Plessy was a black man arguing that blacks should be allowed the same accommodations as whites. This is not true. Plessy was actually a light skinned black man arguing that “he” should be given the same accommodations as whites because he had “7/8 Caucasian and only 1/8 African” blood. Thus, he argued that he should not be treated as “black” under an 1890 Louisiana law requiring blacks and whites be seated in separate railway cars.

It was the Supreme Court which largely ignored Plessy’s “I am not a negro” argument and told him if he did not think he was black he would have to go back to Louisiana and argue that issue on the state level. The Court then went forward and assumed Plessy to be black and rendered its decision saying a state was within its rights to mandate separate accommodations for blacks in order to keep the races apart.

Thus, the net result of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was two-fold: It legalized the racist “separate but equal” doctrine AND it left an attitude or mood within the nation that the highest court in the land considered all “blacks” – no matter how light in complexion or how absent of African features – to be black. This cultural attitude stuck. Although technically the Supreme Court never ruled on Plessy’s contention that he should be treated as a white man because he had been accepted as white in the Louisiana community in which he lived and because his “African blood was not discernible.”

Nevertheless, the ruling helped to foster the notion that the government considered you black if you had just one drop of “black blood.” But, down to this very day, there is no law operable defining what makes one black, or white for that matter. It is basically a socio-cultural attitude based in major measure on how a person looks.

Simply put, in America, if you “look” in anyway black, you “are” black. That is not law. That is not science. It just is – a practical reality. Thus Tiger Woods’ mother may be from Thailand and Tiger may object to being called black. But it does not make a practical difference.

Further, it may be too late in history as well as potentially dangerous to be tampering with the socio-cultural definition of blackness even though the definition is a product of slavery. When the Census Bureau decided a few years ago to include a category called “mixed race” in the census, many people rightfully saw it as potentially divisive, asking what practical good does the “mixed race” category serve, but to further divide people along largely artificial lines.

Finally, if one just has to ask the question, the real question should not be “who is black” but instead “who is white.” The scientific theories of Evolution and “Out of Africa” are very clear: There is only one “race” on the planet Earth and it had its origin in East Africa (around present-day Ethiopia) and then spread to all other parts of the world. Adapting to environmental conditions such as the degree of sunlight and developing in relative isolation, some groups evolved lighter skins and others evolved darker skins.

Thus technically every person on the planet – from the darkest skinned person in the Congo to the lightest skinned person in Sweden – is of African ancestry. In other words, like Plessy, we all have a degree of “African blood” whether “discernible” or not.

Therefore the answer to the question above is YOU decide if you are Black enough and whether you realize it or not that gives you tremendous power.

Reference: Why Obama is Black, not White

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