The One Drop Rule

The One Drop Rule
By KT Kuleck, Kevin Antonio, and Cristina Rangel

The Basics
- The One Drop Rule is the belief that one single drop of African blood makes a person black, therefore they could be considered a slave.
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Unique Aspects
A rule such as this was only ever recorded in the U.S., nowhere else.
No other ethnicity was ever treated so drastically different in the U.S.
Others with a minority in their ancestry did not need to hide it as the African’s did.

Various Other Names
The One Black Ancestor Rule
The Traceable Amount Rule
The Hypo-descent Rule
The hypo-descent rule refers to a person of mixed blood being at their lowest possible ranking.

The Beginning
The idea of the one drop rule has no set past.
It came around in the free states as some sort ideological thought.
It spread to the south and was taken as an unwritten law.
It was not written until the early 1900’s.

Our Opinions
Cristina- I think the one drop rule was wrong because it was used to the white slave owners’ advantage. It ensured that they could rightfully have slaves, even if they were not fully black.
KT- The one drop rule had its advantages, but only for the white people. Black people didn’t have anything to gain. There was no sense of fairness.

Our Opinions Part 2
Kevin- I think that the one drop rule doesn't do any justice on telling someone that they are black. Like if the person is only 25 percent black, then how does that make them full black? They have different racial backgrounds or at least another one, like being half black and half white. So I think they only used this rule for their own personal purposes, so they can still make the blacks feel like they have no part in society.

Sally Hemings
Said to be Jefferson’s lover as well as his wife’s sister.
She was ¾’s white, yet still a slave.
Some of the only slaves Jefferson ever freed were her children.

Applicable Today
The one drop rule still holds true today, though not by law.
Great examples of this would be various celebrities.
Halle Berry
Barack Obama
Alicia Keys
Jordin Sparks
Vanessa Williams
All of these examples are only of half-African descent at most.

Bibliography
Frontline: Jefferson’s Blood http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html
A Knol by Frank W. Sweet http://knol.google.com/k/what-caused-the-one-drop-rule-c16#
One-Drop Rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

The One Drop Rule

by guest98c221 on Jan 05, 2010

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The One Drop Rule — Presentation Transcript