this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Is Colin Kaepernick black in America? I can see he wears his hair long now but in the UK you'd just say he looks vaguely mixed race. Very Caucasian features actually, kind of looks French-Algerian.
Being light skinned doesn't make him less "black"
What else would make him less black?
You don't understand:
A white woman can have a black baby.
A black woman cannot have a white baby.
This is very normal and makes perfect sense. Stop looking at it closely.
There's the "One Drop rule." (Wikipedia)
"The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")[1][2] is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms). It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.[3]
This concept became codified into the law of some U.S. states in the early 20th century.[4] It was associated with the principle of "invisible blackness"[5] that developed after the long history of racial interaction in the South, which had included the hardening of slavery as a racial caste system and later segregation. Before the rule was outlawed by the Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia decision of 1967, it was used to prevent interracial marriages and in general to deny rights and equal opportunities and uphold white supremacy."
I think that means technically everyone is Black.
It does, but in reality it's only if people know it. If your skin, name, nose, or actions shows your ancestry to be anything other than a certain in-group, then expect less rights. The in-group has changed over the years, but in the past it was only Anglo-Saxon, with Irish and Italians excluded. Some fringe groups are still racist against them, but in general anyone darker than a tan (though if of Latino heritage, tan still may be too far) and for some Jewish people (and no, I don't mean those supporting Palestine or objecting to Israel, I mean real antisemites) are automatically seen as worse, and often times it's subconscious.
I've seen racism against just my first name. I worked for a mom and pops computer store, was one of their techs. Someone with what I was told was a southern/redneck accent called in, and when told Chatoyer would be the name of the tech, they said "what the hell kinda name is Shatiyay, then hung up."
I don't have proof, but I'm 100% sure it has cost me job opportunities as well. Not necessarily from overt racism. Some people here just don't want to deal with anything that makes them uncomfortable or they assume would make them uncomfortable. "What if we get his name wrong and he gets angry about it? John has similar qualifications, let's just get John" etc. I know a boss who passed up women (despite having hired women before and after the one I'm talking about) because he was worried the other guys on the team might talk to frankly or curse too much for a woman.
That's hilarious, I will never understand America.
The thing is it's not about being "black", it's about not being white.