Angela
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I wonder if the US will ever abandon the shockingly, openly racist "one drop rule", which essentially equates African ancestry with a stain that, in no matter how inexpressive of an amount, entirely spoils and negates a person's non-African ancestry. This view goes hand in hand with the rule which stated that a black person was worth three fifths of a white one. I find it really strange that even African-Americans still embrace it to this day.
The African-Americans are the ONLY Americans who hold onto it. It's a matter of pride.
Too many people on this forum (not directed at you necessarily) make comments about American history and culture without knowing anything about it.
Nor were the people of the United States the only ones to hold onto distinctions based on percent of ancestry.
Words in Latin America for mixed ancestry people:
During the Spanish colonial period, Spaniards developed a complex caste system based on race, which was used for social control and which also determined a person's rights in society.[22] There were four main categories of race: (1) Peninsular - a Spaniard born in Spain, (2) Criollo (fem. criolla) - a person of Spanish descent born in Mesoamerica, (3) Indio (fem. India) - a person who is a native of, or indigenous to, Mesoamerica, and (4) Negro (fem. Negra) - a person of African slave descent.[22] There were also other caste groups like the Mestizos/Mestizas that had one Spanish and one Indian parent. The Castizos which had one Mestizo parent and one Spanish parent, the children of a Castizo were generally accepted as a Criollo. Mulatto/Mulatta were usually the ones with one Spanish and one black parent, if a mulatto was born in slavery they were considered slaves as well unless the mother was free then they would be free too.."
So, no different than the American terms mulatto, quadroon, octaroon. Mestizo was half and half, castizo one quarter.
I would be very surprised if it were any different in Brazil.
I hardly think this is a better system:
"Unlike the United States where ancestry is used to define race, Latin American scholars came to agree by the 1970s that race in Latin America could not be understood as the “genetic composition of individuals” but instead “based upon a combination of cultural, social, and somatic considerations. In Latin America, a person's ancestry is quite irrelevant to racial classification. For example, full-blooded siblings can often be classified by different races (Harris 1964).[20][21]"
So, of two siblings, the blacker looking one suffers the discrimination while the other one doesn't? Sounds like a great system. In the U.S. the blacker looking one left family behind and "passed". Is that so much worse?
This is what they did in South Africa too, and it was a mess.
See:
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2003/mar/17/features11.g2
"Abraham Laing appealed in vain against Sandra's reclassification as coloured and she ended up in a boarding school 900km from home, lonely, a bedwetter. In 1967 she was reclassified white when the law changed to say the child of two white parents could not belong to another racial group. Blood tests proved she was the biological offspring of Abraham and Sannie."
Plus, if it was considered just fine to look black in Latin American, why did the governments urge the "whitening" of the population?
This attempt to "blame" certain countries for racism while absolving others is ridiculous.
"An important phenomenon described for some parts of Latin America such as Brazil and Mexico is "Whitening" or "Mestizaje" describing the policy of planned racial mixing with the purpose of minimizing the non-white part of the population.[12][13] "
Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter skinned individual in order to produce lighter-skinned offspring.[7]
Blanqueamiento was enacted in national policies of many Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba, at the turn of the 20th century.[8][9][10] In most cases, these policies promoted European immigration as a means to whiten the population.[11]"