The Pocahontas Exception
lrb.co.uk
lrb.co.uk
> Virginia’s notorious Racial Integrity Act of 1924, for the first time in the US, legally defined ‘white’ with reference to genealogy – a negative one-drop rule – as someone with ‘no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian’.
> But there was a problem. Many of the ‘first families of Virginia’ prided themselves on being descendants of John Rolfe, an early settler at Jamestown, and his wife, the Indian ‘princess’ Pocahontas. The new ‘one-drop rule’ meant that they might find themselves prohibited from marrying a white person – or even classed as ‘coloured’ themselves. After much negotiation and resistance an exception was made. It remained unlawful for ‘any white person in this state to marry any save a white person’, and ‘white’ remained defined as having ‘no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian’, but ‘persons who have 1/16 or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons’ – the so-called ‘Pocahontas exception’.
"Are you part native American?"
(In fairness to them though, native blood in the South is not unlikely after several centuries)
A lot of people believe they have native American ancestry. Something like a million Americans claim they have a Cherokee ancestor, and quite a few claim it was a "Cherokee princess", even though the Cherokee never had that sort of social system.
DNA testing, which is NOT the same as tribal citizenship nor cultural affiliation, often shows these people have no Native American DNA. While you say "not unlikely", thing is, early 19th century ethnic cleansing meant there weren't that many Native Americans left, and there were strict miscegenation laws, making it, yes, rather unlikely.
This belief appears to be the continuing legacy of pre-Civil War Southern culture, when southern whites romanticized their underdog position in supporting slavery with the expelled Cherokee, while also wanting the status of being descended from royalty. See https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/10/cherokee-blood-w... , which further points out:
"Shifting one’s identity to claim ownership of an imagined Cherokee past is at once a way to authenticate your American-ness and absolve yourself of complicity in the crimes Americans committed against the tribe across history."
Lol. Years later, when the whole Sen. Warren thing happened, I chuckled and thought to myself "these Southern girls.. it never fails!" (Warren's from OK)
(Europe has its own, different notions of race which are equally “obvious” to Europeans.)
This said, at least in my case (in Europe), I grew up learning that there is no such thing as "human races". I only have the concept of races in biology, and therefore I don't use that word for humans. So that's a difference I would see with the US (where "human races" is a concept that does not seem negative).
Saying something is fuzzy is not the same thing as saying it's arbitrary. Everything in life is fuzzy except made up abstractions we define to not be so. That doesn't mean concepts and categories themselves don't have meaning or "exist".
It’s a question of degree. Race is just too fuzzy / too arbitrary. If you want to do science and ask questions about ancestry, you ask questions about ancestry. Race is too much of a social / political construct, and the actual “definitions” of race are too arbitrary and mired in history to be useful to most scientists (with obvious exceptions, like sociologists studying race).
“Asian culture” is pretty damn broad anyway. Asia accounts for nearly 60% of the world’s population, so any inferences you make about Asian culture, generally speaking, are going to be nigh worthless.
Science isn't the only determinant of what is real. Asian culture is real in its own sense, even if it resists scientific understanding. Likewise for race: when I say a white person, you know pretty much exactly what I mean, so it's real (even if it's fuzzy).
"Something is going on when you compare a gyro and a falafel."
Congratulations on spotting that. Sure, their bread wrapping is different and their fillings are different, and yet they are also both just food with the same essential fillings-in-bread form, and there is no justifiable reason to use the differences to decide who gets treated well and who doesn't.
We do not have positive discrimination that gives privileges to style reeves in the US. And since your race is apparently declarative, I wonder, as a white blue eyed guy, of I could identify as an Afro-American and make use of them?
What does this mean?
I mean, race is a social as well as political construct so... you can try.
Actually, if a European talks about human races, to me it quickly sounds racist (coming from older people it will just sound colonialist/old school, and a little bit racist, I guess). Whereas it seems like it is a common concept in the US, and not necessarily negative.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology)
To apply for Hawaiian homelands land lease you may be: any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.
Guess who was shipwrecked in the Islands before 1778? Spaniards. You think someone with Spanish/Euro "race" blood can get a Hawiian Homelands lease? Fuck no.
Also see racist policies of American Samoa.
American notions of race when referring to the citizenry is quite different than the constructs the government puts us in. We have mixed-race marriages between people of already mixed races, genetic testing that undermines any illusions of a concept of "racial purity", and if your family has been in America for more than say, four generations, you probably have family lore of interracial marriages and dalliances. There are also broad studies[1] indicating some boilerplate assumptions of mixed race.
So maybe better to refer to the American government's notions of race when we're thinking about the checkboxes, because that's who publishes the stuff. Many, many American citizens have views that are no more nuanced than this narrative, but I think that's decreasingly the case, and enough so that painting "American" views on race with such a broad brush is.. overly broad. If you're sensing some defensiveness here, I think it's frustration that we all know the checkboxes are inherently flawed, they don't reflect lived experiences, but somehow we as a country keep having this national conversation that can't get outside the boxes. Very frustrating.
Plus, they follow an arc of descent ignoring usually 50% of any back branch they take.
We're all descenders from very lucky mitochondria.