The One Drop Hapa Rule

Interracial Children, a fast growing minority

George Winkel is a regular participant on the Asiaphile & Sellouts Homepage he and his Chinese wife are the proud parents of one son.

Lack of Studies

There are curious voids in the research of the whole field of interracial relationships. What work has been done is said to be mostly psychological probes of people who cross black-white racial lines (looking to see what's wrong with them!). See a fine article on this research bias on Deb Brown's INTERracial Magazine.

I find another influence developed over the past 25-30 years, too. It turns out, interracial marriage is unpopular with the mainstream minority civil rights leadership. As you might guess, Black-White marriages draw the most fire (and attention) owing to their tendency to directly contradict mainstream civil rights (e.g., NAACP) pontifications about the chronic white racism permeating American society (allegedly). The contradiction is focused in the Black/White children. A growing schism is developing in the Black community over whether such kids are "biracial," or whether they are "just Black." A controversial new syndicated newspaper comic strip, "The Boondocks," sometimes satires this Black "One-Drop Rule" custom. Some of those biracial black kids are grown up, and madder than hell. See their arguments fiercely opposing "One-Drop" "Black" automatic racial labelling at

One Drop Rule

So what is this so-called "One-Drop" rule? Well, during the Jim Crow years many states actually had laws defining a "white person" as one having no non-White blood. It was outright racist White supremism -- a diabolical sort of racial quarantine. The same Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), Supreme Court decision legalizing our interracial marriages also overturned these One-Drop provisions. Nonetheless, by then black people had fatalistically accepted the One-Drop custom; and the post-King NAACP civil rights leadership boosted the rule, too -- sort of as their sheep dog -- because it rounded up Blacks feeling tempted to stray or "pass" into a White, Indian, or Hispanic self-identity. But what they seem to not realize or care about is the harm One-Drop does. It has degenerated into loathsome Social Darwinism, a throwback to an "evolutionary ladder," with "pure" Whites at the very top. (Can the KKK and NAACP actually collaborate in this?!) "Lesser" races are lower rungs on the ladder. White blood tainted with any of these (even "one" drop) is kicked out and down the ladder to membership in the non-White race. (Thus HIF tells our Eurasian kids they're not good enough for their White European relatives, they're only little "Asians.") Beneath the ladder is a sub-human sump. No matter what other-race relatives you have, one drop of African blood, and you belong in this sump. "Your're Black!"

One Drop Rule - Equal Opportunity Discrimination

I use to think One-Drop racial annexation only happened to Black-mixed. Not so. The big La Raza Latin civil right org (NCLR) is trying to put the same moves on Hispanics who might feel tempted to stray into "whiteness." And don't look now, but Hapa Issues Forum (HIF) is bent on doing exactly the same (One-Drop and all) to our Eurasian children. (They call our kids "Hapa" -- derogatory Hawaiian slang, for "half-white foreigner.") HIF, cooinging like a nun, softy reproves us for our our Asian-White interracial marriages ("What about the children?"); it comforts young college Hapas (most of its membership seem to be U.C. Berkely students) for their "tragic" mixed birth. Basically, I see HIF as a "One-Drop" brainwashing machine attempting to turn bright young Eurasians into Asian-American clones of Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, Kwasi Mufume, Jesse Jackson ..., etc.

Unfortunately, it sometimes succeeds.

So, my guess is, the lack of research on Black-Asian families is because these are double minorities. The incentive to stamp them out or neutralize their contradiction of the racist-America message is far less. The whole transracial minority civil rights establishment runs on combatting White racism and the "white power structure," and such. Although Black-Asian families are part of the troublesome interracial/multiracial community too, they do not so blatently contradict the White institutional racism paradigm to which NAACP, NCLR, HIF, and the numerous other organs of the national civil rights establishment, have become addicted. (BTW, these same "liberal" civil rights orgs blocked inclusion of a "Multiracial" 2000 census category. They disregard anyone's wishing not to take part in their contentious minority racial turf-wars.)

See back editions of "Boondocks" comic strip, dates April 28-29; May 5, 6, 8, 11-12, 24-29; June 6, 28

The Problem with the One Drop Rule

The harmfulness to everyone of the One-Drop myth, especially to Black children is obvious. It gives anyone non-Black an incentive to distance themselves from Black if they are not white. I believe this effect drives Asians and others toward White, away from Black. The census interracial marriage figures show it -- Black-Asian or other-minority, marriages are very rare. The warmer relations between Black and White almost certainly result from the fact that One-Drop gives Whites no such incentive to distance themselves from Black -- White are "pure White" by definition under the rule. Similarly, by defining Black as "inevitably Black," the One-Drop rule creates a psychological safety net for all non-Blacks at Blacks' expense. However low an Asian or White may plunge, he or she will always be above "them." What NAACP One-Drop boosting fools don't think of or care about is the reverse effect: At a tender age One-Drop hammers a ball and chain around every little black child's heart.