The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood") [1][2] is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms).

Once an American spoken phrase, the one-drop rule morphed into a legal term used to separate white citizens from all others. It holds that a person with any trace of Black African ancestry (however small or invisible) cannot be considered white.

2010年12月9日 · In the United States, the “one-drop rule” — also known as hypodescent — dates to a 1662 Virginia law on the treatment of mixed-race individuals. The legal notion of hypodescent has been upheld as recently as 1985, when a Louisiana court ruled that a woman with a black great-great-great-great-grandmother could not identify herself as ...

2021年2月22日 · While legally many Mixed-race individuals were considered white in many states at various points of time, socially most whites regarded anyone with any Black ancestry as Black. The message was clear: No matter how white you may appear, if there is but one drop of Black blood in your lineage, you will be considered Black and treated accordingly. *

To meet the requirement to classify draftees by race for World War II and to comply with Virginia law in 1940, state and local officials in Virginia decided that Native Americans with at least one-quarter Indian blood and "no ascertainable negro blood" would be classified as "white" but all others would be classified as "colored."

2024年10月4日 · During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the one-drop rule was a legal and social principle that emerged in the United States. This rule dictated that individuals with even a single African ancestor, regardless of their physical appearance or other ancestral heritage, were classified as Black.

2024年3月6日 · In 1911, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), also known as the “one-drop rule.” This law had two goals: it made interracial “cohabitation” a felony, and it defined as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever,” thus relegating to second-class citizenship anyone accused of having any African ancestry.

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.

2024年11月13日 · The “One Drop Rule” is a racial classification principle that has significantly shaped American history and society. Rooted in the belief that any African ancestry, however minimal, classifies a person as Black, the rule has influenced social, legal, and cultural structures in the United States.

For well over a century, the so-called “one-drop” rule has played a decisive role in the determination of African-American ancestry. That is, any amount of African-American ancestry, no matter how little or how obscure pre-destines the race of an individual to be African-American; regardless of how he or she might actually prefer to be ...