The One Drop Rule, also known as hypodescent, says that in American society if you are even part black African and look it you are considered to be all black African. One drop of African blood is enough to make you black.
The actress Halle Berry, for example, is half white. In Brazil she would be considered mixed, in South Africa, Coloured. But in America everyone regards her as black, the same as Naomi Campbell. The divisions of race are more extreme.
For hundreds of years America has been divided into black people and white people. To be white you have to look like a pure white European. If you look even partly African, you will be considered black.
Most white Americans see blacks, anyone who is visibly African, as inferior. In the past they used this to justify owning slaves. Today it justifies the inequality between the races.
Blacks make a distinction between light-skinned and dark-skinned – colourism – but whites for the most part do not. To whites black is black. That is what the One Drop Rule is all about.
It is not based on your family tree but on how you look.
How much black African blood can you have and still “look white”? If you are one-eighth African or less then you have a chance of looking white enough.
If you “look white” then you can “pass for white”. That would mean moving far away to some place where no one knows your family. Not everyone is willing to do that.
The rule means American blacks are not really a race in the common sense of the word: it includes not just people who are mostly African, but even those who are mostly European by blood!
And even many American whites themselves are hardly pure: more than a tenth are at least one-tenth African by blood according to the latest studies.
So while race is important in America, there are no pure races left!
To Americans, black and white, the One Drop Rule seems like common sense, but it is not applied to any other race. And it is not seen in other countries.
In most places where Europeans and Africans have mixed, the colour line is not so sharp. Those who are mixed are often recognized as being neither black nor white, but something in between – like the Coloureds in South Africa. What makes America so different?
In British India the colour line between the English and Indians did not harden till white women started coming from England.
The same happened in America. When the English came to America they brought their wives and daughters with them. Other Europeans, by and large, left them at home to keep them safe.
This meant that white men in America had a real chance to marry white and have white children. They had the luxury of disowning any mixed children they had because they would not be their only children. And if they did not disown them, their white wives would see to it that they did.