Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
If anything, the public debate around race and science has sunk into the mud. To state even the undeniable fact that we are one human species today means falling afoul of a cabal of conspiracy theorists. The “race realists,” as they call themselves online, join the growing ranks of climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers in insisting that science is under the yoke of some grand master plan designed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. In their case, a left-wing plot to promote racial equality when, as far as they’re concerned, racial equality is impossible for biological reasons.
On November 5, 2011, the 39th day of our 45-day Kickstarter campaign, we reached our goal. One year later, it is with great pride and gratitude that I announce that the (1)ne Drop Onliine Exhibition is complete! The website now features 56 contributors representing 20 countries and countries of origin. In addition to the portraiture of Noelle Théard, Director of Photography, the project also features the work of well noted photographers, Rushay Booysen (South Africa), Janet E. Dandrige, Guma (Brasil), Akintola Hanif, Ayana V. Jackson (France), and Richard Terborg (The Netherlands).
From a Kickstarter campaign to the inspiration behind CNN’s Black in America 5, this project has blossomed in ways that I could have never imagined one year ago. I will forever be grateful for your continued support.
“Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud!” The James Brown classic shed light on the revolution of how descendants of the African Diaspora would begin to self-identify. Replacing racial identification terms such as “negro” and “colored,” the use of the word “Black” was another step in the direction of breaking the chains of the oppression and injustice that plagued the African American for centuries.
Today, the term “Black” is commonly used to identify African descendants across America and other countries alike.
But what is it to be Black? How do the descendents of Africa define “Blackness?” How do we as African Americans visualize a Black person?…
…In recognition of such issues, Yaba Blay, PhD, visiting Assistant Professor of African Studies at Lafayette College, and renowned photographer, Noelle Théard, have collaborated on a multi-tiered media project (1)ne Drop, to open the discussion on the “other” faces of Blackness. Using the “one drop rule” as a reference, however not affirming or confirming its historical implications, the project will challenge the narrow yet commonplace perceptions of Blackness through a series of essays, personal insights, one-on-one conversations and video interviews with individuals who are not typically embraced as Black within our society.
“This project opens the conversation about the ways in which skin color politics works for people with lighter complexion. It’s not just about the complexion, but rather the interplay between complexion and physical appearance with racial identity,” explains Yaba Blay, PhD.
A New Orleans native, Blay’s impetus for starting such a venture spun from personal experience. Growing up in a society with an undertone of racial consciousness, and a high population of Creoles and Mulattoes, Yaba had a heightened sense of racial politics within the Black community and the underlying sensitivities regarding skin color and racial identity…
…“As a professor, I teach my students about the concept of the Diaspora and that there are Black people of African descent all over the globe. However, I guess there was some sort of separation for me between the theory and the practice. As I was sitting on the panel, and Rosa [Clemente] was identifying as an African woman, I was thinking ‘but you’re Latina,’ and I was taken aback and fascinated by the concept that somebody who has the option to be something else, chose to identify as Black.”…
Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Lafayette College
Have you ever heard of the (1)ne Drop Project? I never had until I spoke with its pioneer, Yaba Blay, visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Lafayette College.
Blay studied people who identify as black but don’t who don’t exactly look black (many are often mistaken for Latino) to find out how they define their ‘blackness.’
She uses portrait documentaries (book and film), photography exhibitions, and public programming for the purpose of raising social awareness and sparking community dialogue about the complexities of Blackness as both an identity and a lived reality.
The (1)ne Drop effectively seeks to challenge narrow, yet popular perceptions of what “Blackness” is and what “Blackness” looks like.
(1)ne Drop basically hopes to awaken a long-overdue and much needed dialogue about racial identity and skin color politics.
I am often envious of my friends who can recite stories about ancestors that have been handed down through generations. I can’t do that. As a descendant of slavery in America, that hasn’t felt possible for me. Truthfully, I didn’t think about it much until a few weeks ago, after I was asked by CNN’s In America team to write about the impact of a mixed racial background on my life, the idea that “one drop” of black blood makes you black.
In that article, I wrote about how my aunt and grandmother in Louisiana often were mistaken for white. I wrote about the extremes they went to in order to protect their husbands, who were black, from beatings by white men, or worse.
As I began to write the article, I sent a text message to my mother asking that she email photos of my aunt and grandmother. She sent me what she had, but asked why I wanted them. I told her I’d call to explain once I got home that evening.
When I finished the draft of the article, I zipped off a copy to her via email. A few minutes later, as I was driving home from work, my phone rang. When my mother began to tell me the stories of my aunt and grandmother, I had to pull over in a parking lot to take it all in. Some of it I knew. Much of it I didn’t…
Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Editor’s note: Yaba Blay, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Africana studies who teaches courses at Lafayette College. Her research focuses on black identity, with specific attention to skin color and hair politics. She is the recipient of a 2010 Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant through which she embarked upon the book project, (1)ne Drop: Conversations on Skin Color, Race, and Identity.
I always thought I could spot a Black person anywhere. My eyes were trained in New Orleans—home to a historically preeminent group of folks who self-identify as “Creoles.” Many of them would make it a point to announce that they are different—not White, not Black, but “Creole.” A mix of African, Native American, French, and sometimes Spanish heritage, some Creoles are light-skinned enough to be mistaken for—or “pass”—for White people. We call them “passé blanc.”
One of my favorite pastimes as a youth in New Orleans was “picking out Black people” – people whom everyone else might have thought were White or “something else,” but whom I knew for a fact were Black. Somehow. Without even knowing it at the time, I had blindly accepted the “one-drop rule,” the early 1900’s law turned social rule that held that anyone with 1/32 of “African Black blood” was Black. And somehow I made it my mission to identify that “one-drop” any chance I could get. Maybe it was my way of retaliating against those who didn’t want to be associated with my kind – those whom I felt were somehow rejecting their own kind.
In my limited experiences, it seemed that people whose physical appearance gave them the “option” to be something else, chose to be something else. So in my adult life, when I left New Orleans and began to meet people who were very adamant about their black identity, even though they could have easily identified as “mixed” or “Latino” or “Creole” or could have even “passed” for white, I found myself intrigued. On one particular occasion, I was on a panel hosted by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI); and for as “learned” and as well-versed as (I thought) I was in global skin color politics, I found myself somehow taken aback each time either of my co-panelists, whom I would have identified as “Latino/a,” self-identified as “Black” and “African.” In that moment, I felt ashamed of myself for questioning their identities based upon the stereotypical visions of “Blackness” that lived in my head. Afterwards, as I continued to struggle with myself, I knew that I wanted to do something with my feelings that could be useful to others like myself. I wanted to explore the “other” sides of Blackness.
Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Lafayette College
(1)ne Drop author, Yaba Blay, will appear on the weekend edition of CNN Newsroom with Don Lemon on Sunday, January 15, 2012 during the 7:00 pm-8:00 pm hour (EST).
