{"id":5195,"date":"2004-05-28T15:58:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-28T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2021-06-12T02:58:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T02:58:07","slug":"alice-mason-and-the-one-drop-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2004\/05\/28\/alice-mason-and-the-one-drop-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Mason and the “one drop” myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.newyorkmetro.com\/nymetro\/news\/people\/columns\/intelligencer\/1133\/<\/a>
\nMarch 1, 1999<\/p>\n

The surprising background of one of New York’s most celebrated party-givers is revealed in Lawrence Otis Graham’s new book, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class. Graham reports that Alice Mason, the exclusive real-estate broker whose fund-raising helped put Jimmy Carter in the White House, was born into a prominent black family in Philadelphia. “Her father, Dr. Lawrence Christmas, was a successful dentist and one of the founders of the Philadelphia chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest and most prestigious black college fraternity in the country,” writes Graham. Mason has been at least as successful in the world of high-end Manhattan real estate, tossing famous black-tie dinner parties with the likes of Barbara Walters, Dominick Dunne, Mike Wallace, and Woody Allen. Although she’s always been in touch with her sister, who lives on Manhattan’s West Side, she hasn’t kept up with her sister’s daughter, Elektra Records president Sylvia Rhone. “I just met her about three weeks ago,” says Mason. “I had actually seen her when she was 4 or 5 years old, and I haven’t seen her since. But she’s a great success, and I’m proud of her.” The real-estate doyenne explains, “There are many people with family members who live on both sides. I’ve led this life for over 45 years, and it’s all a state of mind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alice Mason, of course, is not from a “black” family but from a whiter “mulatto elite” family. Most of the burden for keeping this charade must lie with the “mulatto elite” themselves for accepting the myth that they are all one “race” with blacks because they are too gutless to say otherwise (and have often made political and professional careers for themselves by trading on “black” political power). The result is that the public does not have a vocabulary to describe them. The “black blood” in Hispanics, Arabs, Melungeons, etc. can be ignored precisely because they have a separate name and emphasize that they are not the same people as “blacks.” The “mulatto elite” thus legitimize the ODR with the “gentlemen’s agreement” that those groups with a name can avoid the stigma. This is one of the main reasons that black and black-identified elites fear the “multiracial” option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.newyorkmetro.com\/nymetro\/news\/people\/columns\/intelligencer\/1133\/ March 1, 1999 The surprising background of one of New York’s most celebrated party-givers is revealed in Lawrence Otis Graham’s new book, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class. Graham reports...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,141],"tags":[121],"class_list":["post-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-d-powells-view","category-news-clips","tag-biracial-and-multiracial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-1lN","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/AD-Powell.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7207,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions\/7207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}