{"id":19892,"date":"2013-04-02T22:32:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19892"},"modified":"2013-04-02T22:33:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:33:28","slug":"don-lemon-it-only-takes-one-drop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19892","title":{"rendered":"Don Lemon: It only takes one drop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don Lemon: It only takes one drop<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable News Network (CNN)
\nIn America: You define America. What defines you?<\/a>
\n2012-01-15<\/p>\n

Don Lemon<\/strong>, Anchor
\nCNN Newsroom<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece is part of a three-part series tied to the (1<\/span>)ne Drop Project<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(CNN) – For years, the woman on the left in the photograph below could not be friendly to her own husband in public. She would pretend she didn\u2019t know him or tell people he was her driver. She didn\u2019t want him to be beaten in public as he had many times before.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She learned that particular survival technique from the woman in the photograph on the right, her mother and my grandmother, who had to use it from the 1930s until my grandfather died in the 1960s. Both women were often mistaken for white. And for whatever privileges my aunt and grandmother might have received for their light skin, their husbands paid for it by beatings or threats from white men. One handed-down family story that sticks with me is how my uncle was lucky to have survived a savage throttling in the 1950s after exiting a ferry crossing the Mississippi River<\/a> from Baton Rouge<\/a> to Port Allen<\/a>. Apparently, he and my aunt had let down their guard. They never did it again.<\/p>\n

Heck, as a child, I wasn\u2019t even sure about my grandmother or my aunt. \u201cIs Aunt-ee Lacy white?\u201d I\u2019d ask. \u201cLacy\u2019s black,\u201d an adult would say. Of course the reply was followed by a big laugh and a phrase I\u2019d never forget: \u201cIt only takes one drop.\u201d Meaning it only takes one drop of \u201cNegro\u201d blood to make you black<\/a>…<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here and watch a interview with\u00a0(1<\/span>)ne Drop Project\u00a0author\u00a0Dr. Yaba Blay<\/a> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don Lemon: It only takes one drop Cable News Network (CNN) In America: You define America. What defines you? 2012-01-15 Don Lemon, Anchor CNN Newsroom This piece is part of a three-part series tied to the (1)ne Drop Project. (CNN) – For years, the woman on the left in the photograph below could not be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,13743,8,6462,6940,394,20,842],"tags":[9247,3142,9220,7993,3343,7992],"class_list":["post-19892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-socialscience","category-usa","category-videos","tag-1ne-drop-project","tag-cnn","tag-don-lemon","tag-yaba-a-blay","tag-yaba-amgborale-blay","tag-yaba-blay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}