How the One Drop Rule and Blood Quantum Show Just How Made-Up Race Really Is
When you take the time to understand all the “rules” around race, it becomes so obvious how made-up race and the laws about race really are. They are full of inconsistencies and contradictions and show over and over again that race is used to justify racism.
In this post, we’re taking a look at the one drop rule and blood quantum — which are just two of the many, many examples of how racism is based on a big fat lie.
What is the one drop rule?
The one drop rule is this idea that if you have “one drop” of Black blood in you, then you are considered Black. The one drop rule wasn’t actually made law until 1924, but there were many other laws and cultural understandings that show this is the way that the United States worked well before then.
For example, in European tradition a person’s social status was determined by their father. Yet during the time of enslavement, children with Black mothers and white fathers were considered Black because it meant they could also be enslaved.
Additionally, as Dr. Yaba Blay explains in the article “How the One Drop Rule Became a Tool of White Supremacy“: “The U.S. Census reveals much about the country’s perspective on race. It counts people according to how the nation defines people, and historically, those people counted as Black have been those people with any known Black ancestry. (Black people) are defined by the one-drop rule. No other racial or ethnic group is defined in this way, nor does any other nation rely upon this formula; the one-drop rule is definitively Black and characteristically American.”
What is blood quantum?
Dr. Elizabeth Rule, Director of the Center for Indigenous Politics and Policy at George Washington University and member of the Chickasaw Nation, said in a 2018 episode of the Code Switch podcast: “Blood quantum simply is the amount of ‘Indian blood’ that an individual possesses. … The quantum is a fraction of blood that is derived going back to the original enrollees of a tribe who were counted on Census rolls … and usually those original enrollees had a full blood quantum.”
Dr. Rule continued on to say, “Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship.”
Because tribal membership comes with specific benefits like access to resources and land, if they restrict membership and reduce the amount of people who are Indigenous then the government can justify taking the very little land the they have access to.
See all the contradictions?
So on one hand, if someone has even a drop of Black blood, they are considered Black (because the outcome was advantageous to the dominant culture: more people who were enslaved). Yet someone has to have a certain “amount” of Indigenous blood to be considered Indigenous (again because the outcome is advantageous to the dominant culture: fewer people who have access to tribal benefits).
Dr. Rule explained the connection between these two made-up rules: “The one drop rule measured the amount of ‘Black blood’ that Black people had in society. And that ensured that every person who had at least one drop would be considered Black and would be covered under these discriminatory laws and, even in the earlier days, enslaved. Blood quantum emerged as a way to measure ‘Indian-ness’ through a construct of race, so that over time, (Indigenous Peoples) would literally breed themselves out and rid the federal government of their legal duties to uphold treaty obligations.”
Please note: The effects of racism are very real.
This post is not saying that the effects of racism aren’t real. The effects of racism are not a lie. But race is something that was created to justify enslavement and to justify stealing land from Indigenous Peoples. Blood quantum and the one drop rule being completely in contrast with one another is just the tip of the iceberg. If you really start looking into it, you will be horrified by how much about race doesn’t make sense because it’s made up and built on a big fat lie.
Learn more by listening to the First Name Basis Podcast, Season 6, Episode 1: “Racism is Built on a Big Fat Lie Pt. 1: Blood Quantum and the One Drop Rule.”
