Quote From juno:
"America constructs the idea of being "black" as anyone who has ANY sub-Saharan African ancestry, no matter what that person might look like."
This is probably what confused me; I didn't know that. I mean I'm white but my mother and several of my uncles could probably pass for "black" in the US (in that they're darker than, say, Colin Powell). Which might mean that there's some fairly recent black ancestry, but I wouldn't think of myself as mixed race. Pretty much everyone - esp in the US, I expect - is mixed ethnic by one definition or other.
Yes, you are right that many Americans have a mixed ethnic heritage, including most of the African-American population, where skin tones range from pure white to very dark. But the fact of the " one drop" of African blood in a person's heritage is seen in America to make that person "black" ( meaning of sub-Saharan African ancestry). Why does this rule exist? Its a social definition, not a legal rule, but it came about from the days of slavery, where many enslaved women were raped by white men. This meant that the children born were seen as enslaved, taking the condition and ethnicity of their mother, and not the free white father. This was a justification for men to enslave their own children. A very notable ( and controversial) example of this is Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, who was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. Sally was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife ( they shared a father, the wife was the legitimate white child of the father's marriage, Sally, his daughter from an enslaved woman). Google this, and you can read about the controversy in modern times when African Americans asserted their descent from Thomas Jefferson and the resistance from the "white" descendants of Jefferson to the idea that Jefferson had offspring from Sally Hemings. A tour of his mansion, Monticello--the slave quarters are referred to as servants quarters!!!! No--they were SLAVE quarters, this man OWNED SLAVES!!! His white descendants seem to think that after the death of his wife at an early age, he had no more liaisons with any women ( he would have been oh about 30?)--this just defies common sense.
