One Drop [Mis]Rule

For John, BLUF:  I used to claim, based on the one drop rule, that I was sure I was a Black, Japanese, Jew, until my Aunt Edra told me to knock it off.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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This is why the issue of Race irritates me.  We pigeon hole people and then they can't get out.  Why is President Obama "Black"?  His Father was from Africa, but he has no family history of being a slave or of suffering under Jim Crow.

This item, by Professor Ann Althouse, makes the case for the ridiculousness of our current Race classification.

White woman with a black husband has 2 children through the implantation of embryos that the clinic identified as a mix of "Hispanic and Caucasian."

She doesn't like having to explain this to those who aren't close to her and she's put in the position of having to identify them by race, including filling out a form that had no "mixed" or "other" category. So she identified them as black. She asks the NYT "Ethicist" if she did the right thing and gets a very long involved answer that includes:♠

Someone might insist that [identifying them as black] was just plain wrong unless they have some actual African ancestry, insisting on the crazy one-drop rule. But adopted children often take on the ethnicity of their parents, so if you and your husband think of his blackness as in part cultural, he is surely entitled to pass it on to his children....

Ah, a cultural thing.  Like the recent Ancestry dot Com adds where someone says he thought he was German when his ancestry was actually Scotch.  Which is why we are all Irish on St Paddy's Day.

On the other hand, if you can't think of yourself as first and foremost American, you might consider emigration as a solution.  We would miss you and feel sorry you left, but we should all live where we are comfortable.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  That she wrote the NYT Ethicist suggests the woman is unlikely some light weight.  She reads The Old Gray Lady.  Probably a Progressive, but someone who reads, thinks and asks questions.