New Life for the “One Drop” Rule
by Stephan Thernstrom
from the National Review
Stephan Thernstrom is Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He and his wife Abigail are editors of Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity, to be published by the Hoover Institution Press in June 2000.
“The United States is the only country in the world in which a white mother can have a black child but a black mother cannot have a white child.”
Not long ago, when the civil rights movement was unquestionably on the side of the angels, liberals were fond of pointing that out with a mixture of dismay and smugness. How stupid! they said. You were deemed black if either of your parents were. Indeed, you were deemed black even if your only black ancestor was one great-grandparent the infamous “one drop” rule made it so.
…stranger still- it was actually the dark women of this planet who bore the white race!…talk about some ungrateful insolent high yella childrenz gon’ wild with they pompous wayz…