{"id":41433,"date":"2015-06-16T19:45:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T19:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41433"},"modified":"2017-03-01T22:24:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T22:24:54","slug":"rachel-dolezal-isnt-alone-my-family-history-proves-choosing-a-racial-definition-is-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41433","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Dolezal isn&#8217;t alone \u2013 my family history proves choosing a racial definition is hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/jun\/15\/bliss-broyard-father-black-roots-race-ethnicity-rachel-dolezal\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Dolezal isn&#8217;t alone \u2013 my family history proves choosing a racial definition is hard<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/a><br \/>\nMonday, 2015-06-15<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/blissbroyard\" target=\"_blank\">Bliss Broyard<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Bliss Broyard\u2019s father kept his black roots a secret his whole life. Her journey of self-discovery led her to the understanding that believing the results of a DNA cheek swab to be more meaningful than one\u2019s experiences is a ridiculous notion<\/em><\/p>\n<p>How do you determine who is black? Is it simply a matter of inheritance \u2013 you are what your parents are? Does having a black grandparent make a person black? Must she have been raised as black, in a black community? Is one black ancestor, one drop of blood, enough?<\/p>\n<p>These were the kinds of questions asked during the legal trials undertaken in the late 19th and early 20th century throughout southern and midwestern US states, to determine a person\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d racial identity. Then, as now, ancestry trumped lived experience. In <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ohio\" target=\"_blank\">Ohio<\/a> the courts ruled that having 50% black ancestry, a single black parent or two mixed parents, made a person black \u2013 and hence socially and politically inferior \u2013 while in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louisiana\" target=\"_blank\">Louisiana<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cone drop\u201d rule<\/a> prevailed, and any traceable amount of Negro ancestry denied one certain legal rights, including the right to vote and the right to marry a person of another race&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/jun\/15\/bliss-broyard-father-black-roots-race-ethnicity-rachel-dolezal\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bliss Broyard\u2019s father kept his black roots a secret his whole life. Her journey of self-discovery led her to the understanding that believing the results of a DNA cheek swab to be more meaningful than one\u2019s experiences is a ridiculous notion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,1245,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[5427,1871,20241,2103],"class_list":["post-41433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-anatole-broyard","tag-bliss-broyard","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41433","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=41433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51977,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41433\/revisions\/51977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}