Meghan Markle’s blackness is not on her skin, it is on the colonised minds of humanity!
#Estarsense
This post deals with one of the most debilitating cultural conditioning that needs immediate and swift overhauling and conditioning – race and identity.
I decided to write this post because for the umpteenth time I refuse to identify my daughter as just black, and I am sick to death of people (especially black people) judging me because of it. To many, this might come across as a rant because the issue of race and identity is always a contentious one, but I need to get it out. I also got myself embroiled in a hot debate on the same issue on some website.
Research has shown that most mixed-race people struggle to develop a clear sense of their identity, not because they don’t know what or who they are, but because other people expect (actually, they demand) them to identify with one race more than another. This is especially most prominent for anyone of any heritage mixed with black.
This is why: — (This is an explanation from a revered academic and researcher in all things related to race)
The one-drop rule
“In America there exists the one-drop rule which originated during slavery. It stated that if there was but one drop of black blood in an individual, that person is considered black. The whites wanted to keep their bloodlines ‘pure’. The one-drop rule, also known as hypodescent dates to a 1662 Virginia law on the treatment of mixed-race people.”
I am not shooting the messenger here, but there are so many things wrong with the above statement it makes my skin crawl. The absurdity is beyond insanity. Let’s consider just a few points: –
- First… 1662? Really?
- Second… there exists… means it is still happening — there was some research as recent as 1992 where the US government denied a woman to claim ‘being Caucasian’ because one of her great-great-great-great-great parents was black, despite every other parent since then been white.
- Third… the whites wanted to keep their bloodlines ‘pure’ — yet in that era, it’s safe to say that at least 99% of mixed-race new-borns were not conceived in love or consent. If they wanted to keep their bloodline pure, they should have kept their pants zipped. Pardon the vulgarity. Plus who is to say whose bloodline is purer than another, mixed or otherwise.
- Fourth… hypo means less than or under or below e.g. hypothermia — less body heat, hypotension — less blood pressure etc etc — which means the whites deemed the offsprings as ‘less than’ descendants.
The one-drop rule is despicable and should have been abolished from the subconscious years ago.
I can safely speculate that the reason they developed this rule was that those men neither wanted those children nor loved them or the women they raped. They merely saw black people as slaves and women as sexual objects to play with. Pregnancy and the subsequent children were a by-product of their animalist lust, utter disregard and disrespect for human life, and a nuisance.
Therefore, the only logical thing to do, (in their coloniser minds), was to automatically assign the children to the lower status so they can increase the slave population. It may have worked then, but in today’s world it is ridiculous, stupid and wouldn’t/shouldn’t hold water in anyone’s mind.
So, why do people still insist on automatically assigning a mixed-race person to the black part of the parents? This is the very definition of mental slavery. Just because some white coloniser created the one-drop rule to suit him, doesn’t mean we (present-day sane and free people) should continue the tradition. It is flawed and should be eradicated. The problem is with people ‘automatically assigning’ a race based on nothing but one parent being black, and then going one step further to demand it. Is this mentality of the one-drop rule so ingrained in people’s subconscious that they can’t reason? People should not be forced or guilted into identifying as something based on a centuries-old rule that was created to divide and conquer.
An ex-colleague once described my daughter as a beautiful black girl. I said thank you and politely told her she was mixed-race. Her face dropped! It was like I’d just told her my daughter was half-alien. Her reply floored me, “be that as it may she’s still black.”
So, I asked her this question.
“What is your opinion if my daughter’s father went about identifying our daughter as white? After all, he can argue, she looks more white than black — she hasn’t got dark skin or gravity-defying hair.”
Her answer, for me, proved just how ingrained most people’s subconscious is with the one-drop rule.
“Well, he couldn’t because all mixed-race people are black.” She said without flinching.
“Says who? And why? Why can’t they just be mixed race.”
“That’s just how it is.” She said.
In my opinion, it would be unfair to disregard the 50% black African DNA in her. So, then what right do I have to disregard her 50% White DNA? That would be insensitive and discriminatory.
However, imagine if this rule never existed? Imagine if people were identified by their names and not skin colour? Or by their country of birth? Or by their country of origin? Besides all human beings are brown — it only depends on how rich your skin is in melanin. Peel the skin off and everything else looks the same — bones, muscles, brain matter and blood. Probably the only differentiating feature would be whether one was male or female. Race and identity are human-made to rule and divide.
Once upon a time, Meghan Markle had to check a box to indicate her ethnicity and only had 4 choices — white, black, Hispanic or Asian. This is what she said “There I was (my curly hair, my freckled face, my pale skin, my mixed race) looking down at these boxes, not wanting to mess up but not knowing what to do. You could only choose one, but that would be to choose one parent over the other — and one half of myself over the other”.
Of course, I respect all people and how they chose to identify as, but please don’t force it on others especially when your argument is based on coloniser-slave mentality.
Who knows maybe one day everyone will belong to just one race and identity — human.
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