The One Drop Rule and Colorism: Questions w/ no answers
This is a very difficult discussion because frankly there are no good answers or solutions. but lets dive into this and see where we end up
So the one drop rule is ideology of white racial purity saying that even one drop of black blood makes you black. Now in my lifetime i have considered anyone w/ "black in them" as black particularly because we could relate to "american black urban subculture" <---very important distinction.
Now as i am currently reconstructing my own consciousness i look at the "One Drop rule" and say fuck that. Why is the concept of what is black based of the exclusivity of whiteness. I reject that totally any concept of blackness that is dependent upon whiteness for definition my people are to great for that.
but that then begs the question Who is black...and who isn't black. Thats a hell of a question to answer because of the cultural destruction that Africans in america have suffered at the hands of those of european decent. There are many of us who distinctly show our African heritage in our facial and body structure as well as our skin and hair. So quite frankly What do we do about the black/other non black people? Do they still count? I mean if are still under the working definition of the one drop rule they would be considered black...but since im rejecting that...where do they stand? Hard Question to answer.
This becomes increasingly problematic when we look at it in terms of colorism. The term colorism usually refers to when lighter skin tones are preferred and darker skin is considered less desirable. No matter where i look in a music videos on tv
advertisements rarely do i see a dark skinned black male or a dark skinned black female portrayed together. Generally its dark skinned male and lighter skinned female. Given the pervasiveness of eurocentric beauty standards there is a problem here. Rarely do u see Grace Jones/Alek Wek dark skinned beauty grace a screen w/ black dark skinned male. When talk about black people or people of african descent we are not appreciating the breadth of African beauty. How u gonna talk about black people and not highlight the BLACK woman. Let alone a Black Queen.
These are questions...that don't have answers right now. But are definitely worth discussing. But at the moment i suppose its all about what you are claiming.
3 comments:
i have to say i completely agree with you on that. I am a dark skinned male but my biological father isn't even black, but when you look at me the first thing you think is I am black. My mother is African American and My father is Native American. To be honest I have such an identity crisis sometimes because I don't act like a typical African American male, reason my father isn't African American...so what am I bi-racial? My outwardly appearance says other wise...
I stumbled on your dialogue on HaS the Turtle's blog:
I'm from Trinidad in the West Indies where the majority races are African and East Indian. I'm a product of those and then some (grandfather a Scottish mulatto, great grandfather Chinese). We call mixed race people "dougla" here and it's a thing of which people are proud.
Now, honestly, dougla means "bastard child" in Hindi so the connotation wasn't always good but now it's celebrated.
Cultural identity is a beautiful thing to watch here; I light deyas for Divali, speak a Creole influenced by Yourba and Hindi and look like a little bit of everything. I’ve also noticed that West Indians are very sensitive to when someone is mixed – not in a bad way, it’s just that to us what’s a “dougla” might just be a Black person to a North American.
For example, I’m getting registered for a pap smear, an East Indian nurse is taking my information and she gets to the ethnicity section. She looks up at me, just a glance, and writes “Mixed”. She didn’t ask. A non West Indian may not have seen that as important but she knows it isn’t that simple.
I grew up being called exotic looking. I do have an odd face in a way but I don’t mind it.
I’ll be honest in saying that I prefer people like me who are mixed and who have this strange beauty. It comes from having a canvas that’s one thing and feature from all over the place. My grandmother looked like a very dark skinned Chinese lady. It was strange. I think we look at features and traits and not make blanket classifications based on skin tone.
Of course this has it’s negative side. Being very African comes with a stigma of not being good enough; a woman once told another woman in speaking of me, in particular my hair, “she not no market dog. She have pedigree.” This is because I’m mixed and that corresponds to some, as being “better than”. Then there are the ethnic leaders who call for their people to stay within their own race.
One of my lecturers for African lit is a typical Dougla (having on parent East Indian and one African). Her last name is Bharat which literally means India in Sanskrit. She has very African features though and she totally blew a Sheik’s mind in London when she explained how she came into being. There’s a very strange beauty in being mixed. Once it’s grown into and accepted it’s lovely…:)
My Nigerian professor always says that people who descended from slaves and indentured labourers (the East Indians in Trinidad came as indentured workers) have nothing to be ashamed of; we have a different circumstance and we therefore have a different culture which is uniquely ours. We need to take that goodness and that power and soar.
I agree with you. I recent that our concept of what is black is defined by the concept that our blood corrupts the white line. My definition of Black is simply, if you look black, you are Black. For example, I knew a girl who had a white mom/black father and was black as night almost. Another girl is half black and half white, but looks white. Because you can't tell she is half Black, she will receive all of the benefits from white priviledge, unlike the first girl. The second girl can't truely experience as being Black so I don't consider her to be. I don't consider Berry, Keys, or Carey to be Black for these reasons.
@HaS the Turtle--How stereotypical you act doesn't make you black
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