I don’t know…would be good
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Otherwise known as the One Drop Rule, something peculiar to America.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html
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The Census Bureau is seated right where our ethnoracistsociographic rubber meets the statistical road. When they were preparing the 2020 census, there was a good story on NPR about this “problem”. many people don’t comply with sorting themselves in the authorized ways of the past, or simply have no idea how those categories apply to them.
This is actually an issue at my house. My youngest is by gene pool Chinese, has albinsim and is being raised by white parents in a nearly entirely white community. What’s her race or ethnicity? What “color” is she? As a family we need to figure out, if there are any legal implications for how she answers, and she’s going to have to decide. Context, I think will matter, as well as precisely how the question is worded.
The questions have honestly become nonsense.
Do other countries ask about things like race and ethnicity on legal forms? Census, school registration, background checks, and the like?
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Yes, they do in UK, and latest census asked for religion and sexual orientation too.
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Sadly it’s not just peculiar to America. I was called ‘stupid’ for suggesting there’s ‘half-white’ and it was explained to me you’re either 100% White or not. People who are paler than some White people I knew are called Black, even though they’re probably at least 80% White.
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In the U.S. census there is a question about race/ethnicity but nobody has to answer it. And while Americans are theoretically required to answer the census, they can easily get out of it.
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The One Drop Rule in America states that you are Black if even just one of your ancestors is Black. What is interesting is that you are not considered White if just one of your ancestors is White.
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But don’t we all have Black ancestors, if we take it far back enough?
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Great point!
I’ve met some people check their “23 and Me” and find that they had a significant amount of Black ancestry more recently, as well. Sometimes it’s really important, as anemia of some sorts can go with Black or Mediterranean ancestry. I bet most of us have blood or marriage relatives who are minorities now–more than would have been common a couple of generations ago. Maybe that will help the general shift in perceptions.
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Isn’t the One Drop Rule just a sad antiquated curiosity? Living in a southern state, I have never seen it applied except perhaps for some wanting to be included in a minority group and claiming status. The only real ethnicity hurdles I am really aware of are the ones requiring a certain percentage to be considered part of a Native American group, which are pretty well defined.
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Yes, which is another strange part of the rule. This may be why evolution is looked down on in some groups within the US.
There are also cases of people being hoisted by their own petard. White supremacists have sent their DNA in for ancestry tests, and wouldn’t you know it some of those results include African markers.
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I worked in a reservation in Arizona for a month in training, and that was pretty interesting–my roommate was married to someone from another tribe, and said his kids could not get any money from either tribe, as their rule was you had to have more than 50% to participate (even though they were 100% Native American). On the other hand, there were quite a few blond haired, blue eyed folks who claimed at least one distant Cherokee ancestor coming to the clinic–as the rules for Cherokees were much more lax.
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That’s funny, and not a real surprise. One reason why racism (especially white supremacy) is so stupid – it’s like taking personal credit for the fact that your great- or great-great-grandmother wasn’t born in West Africa… and then it turns out she was! XD
I know that I have no non-European ancestors for at least 7 generations (probably at least 15, given that all of them came from northwestern or central Europe), but knowing that with confidence is unusual.
The closest connection for me that I am aware of is that my father has some third cousins who may be 1/16 Cherokee (if so, they are half-third cousins). The aunt that they are descended from claimed to be half Cherokee, and looked plausibly so, but I have been told that given what she was like, that could also have just been for the shock value (she was born about 1855).
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Close to unknown in Canada, except for first nations status. When it appears, it is always voluntary. Census is nosier.
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For me the very question asked in the title is nearly insane – talking about what “Americans today believe.” Are you redefining “Americans” according to some set of beliefs? The very idea of “real Americans” especially with the idea of them being “white” sounds ludicrous to me. What do the native Americans believe? What do the African Americans believe? What do the people raised in the various countercultures of the 20s, 50s, and 60s believe? How about German Americans (a group so large at one time that German was nearly the language of this country)? Italian Americans? Irish Americans? Polish Americans? Sheesh… how is the question in the title even coherent? This sounds fable worthy… the kind of fantasy reality that creationists have created.
For me… reading about this “one drop rule” was like watching an episode of the Twilight Zone.
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It’s essentially asking the reader to imagine a poll of Americans who are asked if people should be judged by their character instead of their skin color. Americans in this context would be citizens of the US. One could say that everyone living in North and South America are Americans, but like many things in this world the citizens of the US are a bit stingy with what they will share.
On a slightly different note, there was discrimination against many different “white” groups who immigrated to the US. The Irish and Italians also had to fight against anti-Catholic discrimination.
Pretty crazy, right?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html
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I dare you to call a Canadian an American 
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You folks are asking the wrong question.
The right question is, “Does God guide evolution? or Does God guide history?” Dr. Graves said God gives a choice, either practice social justice or become extinct.
Does God bend evolution and history toward the side of justice so that we will go extinct if we ignore God’s Will? YES
One might as I am be tempted to ask if we are talking about what is right, then does God even have to bend anything?
two questions in this are…
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Is it true that God bends evolution and history to force us to obey the arbitrary made up rules of religion?
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Doesn’t goodness have its own natural logical reward?
what do you think?
For me it seems the answers are obvious
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With the great diversity of religion and its arbitrary rules, the evidence suggests that the answer is no to this question.
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Yes. Cooperation is the most successful survival strategy. However… that doesn’t mean that things cannot get stuck in a rut going the wrong direction. There is no guarantee in evolution that it will find the best solutions. Sometimes it doesn’t. And some very nasty behaviors can make efforts at cooperation next to impossible. So it is ALSO entirely possible that God has acted correctively to get the world out of ruts like this. I think the extinction of the dinosaurs and the Biblical flood are examples of this.