Why It Was Easy for Rachel Dolezal to Pass as Black |
Why It Was Easy for Rachel Dolezal to Pass as Black
Pacific Standard
2015-06-15
Lisa Wade, Associate Professor of Sociology
Occidental College, Los Angeles, California
Race is more social than biological.
Source: (1)ne Drop Project
Earlier this year a CBS commentator in a panel with Jay Smooth embarrassingly revealed that she thought he was white (Smooth’s father is black) and last week the Internet learned that Rachel Dolezal was white all along (both parents identify as white). The CBS commentator’s mistake and Dolezal’s ability to pass both speak to the strange way we’ve socially constructed blackness in this country.
The truth is that African Americans are essentially all mixed race. From the beginning, enslaved and other Africans had close relationships with poor and indentured servant whites, that’s one reason why so many black people have Irish last names. During slavery, sexual relationships between enslavers and the enslaved, occurring on a range of coercive levels, were routine. Children born to enslaved women from these encounters were identified as “black.” The one-drop rule—you are black if you have one drop of black blood—was an economic tool used to protect the institution of racialized slavery (by preserving the distinction between two increasingly indistinct racial groups) and enrich the individual enslaver (by producing another human being he could own). Those enslaved children grew up and had children with other enslaved people as well as other whites…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: (1)ne Drop, (1)ne Drop Project, Jay Smooth, Lisa Wade, Pacific Standard, Rachel A. Dolezal, Rachel Dolezal