Editing One-drop rule (section)

==Plecker case==
{{Main|Walter Plecker}}

Through the 1940s, [[Walter Plecker]] of Virginia<ref>For the Plecker story, see {{cite journal | last1 = Smith | first1 = J. Douglas | year = 2002 | title = The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922–1930: 'Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro' | journal = Journal of Southern History | volume = 68 | issue = 1| pages = 65–106 | doi=10.2307/3069691| jstor = 3069691}}</ref> and [[Naomi Drake]] of [[Louisiana]]<ref>For Drake, see {{cite book |first=Virginia R. |last=Dominguez |title=White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana |location=New Brunswick, NJ |publisher=Rutgers University Press |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-8135-1109-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/whitebydefinitio0000domi}}</ref> had an outsized influence. As the Registrar of Statistics, Plecker insisted on labeling mixed-race families of European-African ancestry as black. In 1924, Plecker wrote, "Two races as materially divergent as the White and Negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close contact without injury to the higher." In the 1930s and 1940s, Plecker directed offices under his authority to change vital records and reclassify certain families as black (or colored) (without notifying them) after Virginia established a binary system under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He also classified people as black who had formerly self-identified as Indian. When the United States Supreme Court struck down Virginia's law prohibiting inter-racial marriage in ''[[Loving v. Virginia]]'' (1967), it also declared Plecker's [[Racial Integrity Act of 1924|Virginia Racial Integrity Act]] and the one-drop rule unconstitutional.

Many people in the U.S., among various ethnic groups, continue to have their own concepts related to the one-drop idea. They may still consider those multiracial individuals with any African ancestry to be black, or at least non-white (if the person has other minority ancestry), unless the person explicitly identifies as white.{{citation needed|date=July 2021}} On the other hand, the [[Black Power movement]] and some leaders within the black community also claimed as black those persons with any visible African ancestry, in order to extend their political base and regardless of how those people self-identified.{{citation needed|date=July 2021}}