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Halle Berry versus the one-drop rule

In the Black community, our race is extremely important to us. Halle Berry, who is of Black and Caucasian decent, has a daughter, Nahla, by Gabriel Aubry, a French-Canadian and Caucasian male. Questions arose about what race she considers her daughter to be. “What I think is that that’s something she’s going to have to decide,” she said.

Nahla’s parents, who are in the middle of a custody battle, are taking things back to the nastiest time in history. Both parties have thrown each other’s names in the mud but after Aubry’s alleged racism, Berry is firing back.

“I’m not going to put a label on it. I had to decide for myself and that’s what she’s going to have to decide-how she identifies herself in the world. And I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her. That’s how I identified myself. But I feel like she’s Black. I’m Black and I’m her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory.”

“The ‘one-drop’ rule refers to Jim Crow laws passed in the South during the 20th century to further disenfranchise African Americans,” in the words of abcnews.com. Although it varied from state to state, if a person had one drop of Black blood, they could not be considered Caucasian.

That mindset goes against Aubry who allegedly doesn’t like when Nahla is called Black.

“I identify as a Black woman, but I’ve always had to embrace my mother and the White side of who I am, too,” Berry told Ebony magazine. “By choosing, I’ve often [wondered], ‘Well, would that make her feel like I’m invalidating her by choosing to identify more with the Black side of myself?'”

Race has and always will be a major topic of discussion. Langston Hughes wrote, “You see unfortunately, I am not Black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the work ‘Negro’ is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the work is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore Black. I am brown.”

According to blackhistory.com, “Before 1930, individuals of mixed European and African ancestry were generally classified as ‘mulattoes,’ sometimes as Black and sometimes as White.

The “one-drop” rule is genuine ignorance. In my opinion, if America were based on this rule, everyone would be considered Black.

There isn’t one person on this earth that can say they’re purely Black, Caucasian or any other race. I don’t believe that it is fair to consider a child is Black when the father is not Black and the mother isn’t fully Black.

Even questions about President Obama’s citizenship have come into play since his campaigning began. His nationality was questioned because of his father’s African lineage. This was said despite him being born in America.

Things of this caliber need to be left in the past. As a race, we’ve grown too much to result back to these mindsets. We especially don’t need to be teaching the upcoming generation the mindset of ignorant people.

Custody battles tend to bring out the worst in people. Hopefully, it is all worked out so that Nahla can grow up without race being a major issue.

She will already have a hard time growing up without the racial issue between her parents.