Until very recently, any person with
one drop of black blood was black.
In America's beginning,
there was race-mixing.
Especially among
indentured servants, and slaves.
In 1675, during Bacon's
Rebellion, these blacks and
whites fought the white ruling class
holding them in bondage, and lost.
To prevent future rebellions,
the ruling class introduced one
of the earliest variations of
the one drop of black blood rule.
Transforming a class-based
society into a race-based society.
The purpose of the rule was to
make clear distinctions between
black people and white people.
So while I may not ever be on
the bottom down there with you,
because I can never be a black
person, but I can certainly have
some sort of prestige or social
status, psychologically, being white.
Interracial
unions were outlawed.
Those with a drop of black blood
were pushed into the black.
This one-drop rule defined
slavery, and entrenched the laws
of segregation, until the Civil Rights
Movement destroyed those laws.
But not the one-drop rule, which
reinvented itself into the five
primary race boxes used by
identity politics in its quest
for racial justice.
