Editing One-drop rule (section)

{{Short description|Historical racial classification rule}}
{{For|a broader view on "race" in America|Race and ethnicity in the United States}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2022}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}
{{Discrimination sidebar|state=collapsed}}

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 [[Demographics of Africa|African ancestry]] ("one drop" of "black blood")<ref name="Davis">Davis, F. James. Frontline.[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html "Who's black. One nation's definition"]. Retrieved 27 February 2015.</ref><ref>Dworkin, Shari L. ''The Society Pages''. [http://thesocietypages.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule-more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/ "Race, Sexuality, and the 'One Drop Rule': More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage"]. Retrieved 27 February 2015.</ref> 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.<ref name=highered.mcgraw-hill>Conrad P. Kottak, [http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072500506/student_view0/chapter5/faqs.html "What is hypodescent?"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100814151158/http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072500506/student_view0/chapter5/faqs.html |date=14 August 2010}}, ''Human Diversity and "Race"'', Cultural Anthropology, Online Learning, McGraw Hill. Retrieved 21 April 2010.</ref>

This concept became codified into the law of some U.S. states in the early 20th century.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sharfstein |first1=Daniel |title=Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860 |journal=Minnesota Law Review |date=2007 |url=https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/627/ }}</ref> It was associated with the principle of "invisible blackness"<ref>{{cite thesis |id={{ProQuest|193505748}} |last1=Cooper |first1=Erica Faye |year=2008 |title=One 'speck' of imperfection—Invisible blackness and the one -drop rule: An interdisciplinary approach to examining Plessy v. Ferguson and Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana }}</ref> that developed after the long history of racial interaction in the [[Southern United States|South]], which had included the hardening of [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] as a racial [[caste system]] and later [[racial segregation|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]].