Picture of us, a Belarussian and Puerto Rican, soon-to-be-married, couple. When we started dating, every time I said he is belarussian to my friends and family, I heard the “oh improving the race amiga”. I think is our colonial mind, in which status in society was determined not by wealth but by skin color. Marrying an european (or anybody of whiter skin) meant improving our status and family lineage (See “Regla del Sacar “or “Gracias al Sacar”as opposite to the “one- drop-rule”. ). Sometimes I wonder, is it possible that we are racist against ourselves? Can it be that the Spanish colonial social-structures are still deeply engrained in our minds, even if we want to deny it? We complain racism we face in USA, but we forget the racial dynamics we face in own countries.
Therefore, being 25% black (one black grandparent) does not equal “being black”.
I say this because I’m fed up of being told I’m crazy, or getting looks because I’m 25% black AND IDENTIFY AS WHITE.
Guess what? My kids are white; I’m not a different race from them. I gave birth to them, they share my genetics.
What’s sad is the fact that I’ve heard such ignorant things directed at us, such as: “that’s not her mother, she’s what you call an au pair” “oh, is he an albino black kid?” “She looks just like her brother!!” “Oh, you’re the mother? They must look like their father, then”
I will never identify as black, because I’m not culturally or even really racially black. And honestly, I don’t have any connection or desire to connect with blacks.
I grew up in an upper middle class white home and never thought I wasn’t mixed or culturally white/European, so…
I am who I am. If it’s becoming more accepted to be trans*, then it should be accepted that I’m a mixed white person.
How Jim Crow Practiced Paper Genocide Against Native American Indians.
Jim Crow laws were a set of oppressive laws that reclassified Native American Indians into the category of Colored.
Jim Crow reached their greatest influence during the decades of 1910, 1920, and 1930.
Among them were hypodescent laws, defining as black anyone with suspected black ancestry, or even those with a very small portion of black ancestry. Tennessee adopted such a “one-drop” statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923.
Fact: the State of North Carolina vital records began using the one drop rule law in labeling Indians Colored BEFORE Walter Plecker initiated it in Virginia.
Birth records were also “delayed” in states enforcing the one drop rule, they were filed late to make these oppressive racial changes. The Virginia law which allowed for delayed birth registration declared its own purpose differently; its formal title was “An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity,”and it went into effect in 1924, this also occurred in North Carolina as well as in other states. Virginia began the one drop rule in 1924, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Oklahoma in 1931.
During this same period, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah retained their old “blood fraction” statutes de jure, but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto.
The one drop rule was overturned in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court, the one drop rule is illegal.
But before this time many Native American Indians were not allowed by law to claim a legal status as Indian due to white vital records officials and census takers enforcing the one drop rule and through government records suppressed an Indians Native blood ancestry on official documents. So when people ask why didn’t Natives have records changed back to Indian?
A law prevented this from being done, and any Indian born before 1967 who wasn’t living on a government regulated Indian reservation, or in a community with a massive Indian population was forcefully listed as Colored by vital records offices.
We are not Black We are not White We Are Not Latino
Picture of us, a Belarussian and Puerto Rican, soon-to-be-married, couple. When we started dating, every time I said he is belarussian to my friends and family, I heard the “oh improving the race amiga”. I think is our colonial mind, in which status in society was determined not by wealth but by skin color. Marrying an european (or anybody of whiter skin) meant improving our status and family lineage (See “Regla del Sacar “or “Gracias al Sacar”as opposite to the “one- drop-rule”. ). Sometimes I wonder, is it possible that we are racist against ourselves? Can it be that the Spanish colonial social-structures are still deeply engrained in our minds, even if we want to deny it? We complain racism we face in USA, but we forget the racial dynamics we face in own countries.
But you wouldn’t know that by looking at me. I’m the typical American mixture of various European ethnicities (aka white), and I have Cherokee lineages as well (documented, not just family lore). While doing some genealogical work I decided to have my genome fully sequenced in case there were additional clues I could gain that way and for health reasons to identify any genetic markers for various diseases. I did the full genome sequence because I have a disease (sarcoidosis) that most often occurs among black females of which I’m neither (by appearance, although by one-drop I’m black), and although medical experts currently say there is no genetic tie-in (that it isn’t handed down from generation to generation) things may change in the future. I have my full genome sequence in the event that some new discovery occurs. And there it was, somewhere around 1.2% African. I asked someone in technical support if I was reading it correctly and interpreting the results accurately. The answer I received was essentially “it isn’t there unless it’s there.” You don’t have African markers in your DNA unless there is an African ancestor in your lineage.
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Mayra Velez
Paper Genocide,
