David A. Hollinger

The one drop rule & the one hate rule

Two portentous practices within the black. Comparativists have long noted public discussion of ‘race’ in the United the peculiar ordinance this mixture- States since the late 1960s are rarely ana- denying principle has exercised over the lyzed together. One is the method by history of the United States. Although it which we decide which individuals are no longer has the legal status it held in ‘black.’ The other is our habit of conflat- many states during the Jim Crow era, ing the mistreatment of blacks with that this principle was reinforced in the civil of nonblack minorities. Both practices rights era as a basis for antidiscrimina- compress a great range of phenomena tion remedies. Today it remains in place into ostensibly manageable containers. as a formidable convention in many set- Both function to keep the concept of tings and dominates debates about the race current amid mounting pressures categories appropriate for the federal that threaten to render it anachronistic. census. The movement for recognition Both invite reassessment at the start of of ‘mixed race’ identity has made some the twenty-½rst century. headway, including for people with a The prevailing criterion for deciding fraction of African ancestry, but most who is black is of course the principle of governments, private agencies, educa- hypodescent. This ‘one drop rule’ has tional institutions, and advocacy organi- meant that anyone with a visually dis- zations that classify and count people by cernable trace of African, or what used ethnoracial categories at all continue to to be called ‘Negro,’ ancestry is, simply, perpetuate hypodescent racialization when they talk about African Ameri- 1 David A. Hollinger, a Fellow of the American cans. Academy since 1997, is Preston Hotchkis Professor This practice makes the most sense of American History at the University of Califor- when antidiscrimination remedies are in nia, Berkeley. He has written extensively on the view. If discrimination has proceeded on history of American science, religion in America, and the changing role of racial and ethnic factors 1 For a more extensive account of the historic role of the principle of hypodescent, see my in the country’s history. His two most recent books “Amalgamation and Hypodescent: The Ques- are “Postethnic America” (1995) and “Science, tion of Ethnoracial Mixture in the History of Jews, and Secular Culture” (1996). the United States,” American Historical Review 108 (5) (December 2003): 1363–1390, from © 2005 by the American Academy of Arts which several paragraphs in this essay are & Sciences drawn.

18 Dædalus Winter 2005 the basis of the one drop rule, so too impoverished European ethnics, and The one drop rule should antidiscrimination remedies. But gays and lesbians, were less successful & the one even when antidiscrimination remedies in gaining entitlements during the so- hate rule are not at issue, most Americans of all called minority rights revolution be- colors think about African American cause they were not perceived as vic- identity in either/or terms: you are tims of white racism. Yet the of½cials black, or you are not. It is common for who designed entitlement programs for people to say, “I’m half Irish and half the purposes of remedying white racism Jewish” without one’s listener translat- often homogenized those descent groups ing the declaration into terms other than colloquially coded as black, brown, red, the speaker’s. One can even boast, “I’m and yellow. There was a good reason one-eighth Cherokee” without causing for this. White racism was real, had ex- the listener to quarrel with that fraction pressed itself against every one of these or to doubt that the speaker is basically a color-coded groups, and was a problem white person. But those who say things in American life that demanded correc- like “I’m half Irish and half black” are tion. generally understood really to be black, The notion that all descent groups and “I’m one-eighth African American” whose ancestry could be located outside is not part of the genealogical boasting Europe were like blacks, however, had that infuses American popular culture. not been prominent previously in the The second portentous practice is the proclaimed self-conception of these treating of all victims of white racism nonblack minority groups, nor in much alike, regardless of how differently this of what public discussion there was of racism has affected African Americans, their history and circumstances. The Latinos, Indians, and Asian Americans, histories of each of these communities to say nothing of the subdivisions within were almost always presented to their each of these communities of descent. own members as well as to the society at When federal agencies developed af- large in terms that took their differences ½rmative action programs in the late into account, including the speci½c ways 1960s, they identi½ed Asian Americans, in which whites had abused them. These Hispanics, and Indians along with Afri- histories, moreover, were usually about can Americans as eligible groups. As particular descent groups, such as Chi- John Skrentny has shown, entitlements nese Americans or Mexican Americans, for nonblack groups were predicated on rather than about what came to be called the assumption that such groups were ‘panethnic’ groups, such as Asian Ameri- like blacks in their social experience.2 cans and Latinos.3 Japanese Americans Other disadvantaged groups, including women, impoverished Anglo whites, 3 For two overviews of the development of 2 John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolu- ‘panethnicity,’ see Jose Itzigsohn, “The Forma- tion (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Har- tion of Latino and Latina Panethnic Identities,” vard University Press, 2002). For a vigorous cri- and Yen Le Espiritu, “Asian American Paneth- tique of this book, see Victoria Hattam, “The nicity: Contemporary National and Transna- 1964 Civil Rights Act: Narrating the Past, Au- tional Possibilities,” in Nancy Foner and thorizing the Future,” Studies in American Politi- George Fredrickson, eds., Not Just Black and cal Development 18 (Spring 2004): 60–69, fol- White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives lowed by a generally convincing response by on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United Skrentny, “Policy Making is Decision Making: States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, A Response to Hattam,” 70–80. 2004), 197–216, 217–234.

Dædalus Winter 2005 19 David A. had been subject to property-owning black model’ to their own group they Hollinger on restrictions and had been incarcerated had a better chance of getting the sym- race without due process during World War pathetic attention of of½cials and courts. II, and all but a few immigrants from White racism thus ironically came to be Asia had been denied naturalization assigned the same capacity traditionally until 1952. Immigrants from Mexico had assigned to one drop of black blood: the always been able to achieve citizenship capacity to de½ne equally whatever it touched, and were not included in the miscegena- no matter how the affected entity was tion laws that prevented nonwhites from constituted and what its life circum- marrying whites, but these immigrants stances might have been. We have been and their descendants had been subject living by a principle of white racist hy- to other abuses, including school segre- povictimization: we can call it the one gation and exclusion from juries in many hate rule, with the understanding that jurisdictions until courts eliminated the colloquial use of ‘hate’ follows the these practices in the decade after World language conventions of recent years, War II. Mexican Americans, moreover, when we speak of ‘hate speech’ and despite their overwhelmingly immigrant ‘hate crimes.’ origins, did come from a country that Both the one hate rule and the one had lost territory to the United States, drop rule have recently come under in- and sometimes de½ned themselves as a creasing pressure. But before I take up conquered people, like the Indians. The these pressures and suggest some of the Indians themselves had their own story, potentially deep changes in American featuring deaths on a horrendous scale race discourse they might produce, I through disease and genocide. But be- want to clarify the historical circum- yond emphasizing these and many other stances that have endowed these rules differences, spokespersons for these with such force. nonblack groups sometimes partook of the antiblack racism of the white majori- The property interests of slaveholders ty. As late as the early 1960s, for exam- and the social priorities of Jim Crow rac- ple, spokespersons for Mexican Ameri- ism are central to the principle of hypo- cans in Los Angeles made a point of say- descent. Keeping the color line sharp ing that their community wanted little facilitated the enslavement of children to do with blacks in the same city. begotten upon slave women by white Utterances of this latter kind dimin- men. The offspring of these couplings ished rapidly in the late 1960s as political would grow up as slaves in a race-spe- alliances were forged between black ad- ci½c slave system. The principle was vocacy organizations and organizations sharpened under Jim Crow, when oppo- speaking for other descent groups. The sition to social equality for blacks was idea that Asian Americans, Latinos, and well served by a monolithic notion of Indians were indeed like blacks gained blackness accompanied by legislation ground and was marked vividly with a that outlawed as miscegenation black- designation especially popular in the white marriages but that left less strictly 1980s: ‘people of color.’ The downplay- regulated any nonmarital sex in which ing of the differences between nonblack white males might engage with black minorities and blacks was practiced ½rst females. Some slave-era and Jim Crow by of½cials and then by activists who governments did employ fractional clas- came to understand that by applying ‘the si½cations, providing distinctive rights

20 Dædalus Winter 2005 and privileges for ‘octoroons,’ ‘qua- But what about nonblack victims of The one drop rule droons,’ and ‘mulattoes,’ but this frac- white racism? Awareness of the reality & the one tional approach was hard to administer, of discrimination against nonblacks led hate rule invited litigation, and blurred lines that to the conclusion that all ethnoracially many whites preferred to keep clear. de½ned victims of white racism might ‘Mulatto’ was dropped from the federal as well be made the bene½ciaries of the census after 1920, and more and more same new set of entitlements being de- state governments went the way of Vir- veloped in the civil rights era, even in the ginia, whose miscegenation statute as absence of anyone’s having lobbied for revised in 1924 classi½ed as white only a that result. (Indians, to be sure, were person “who has no trace whatsoever of always subject to an additional, separate blood other than Caucasian.” set of programs following from the dis- The combination of these miscegena- tinctive constitutional status of Indian tion laws with the principle of hypodes- tribes.) When the Equal Employment cent consolidated and perpetuated the Opportunity Commission (eeoc) de- low-class positions of African Ameri- signed its precedent-setting employer re- cans in much of the United States. By porting form (eeo-1) in 1965, the eeoc marking all offspring of white-black included Indians, Asian Americans, and couplings as bastards, governments in Latinos along with African Americans as many jurisdictions prevented these off- the groups to be counted in relation to spring from inheriting the property of a its mission. In fact, the eeoc was almost white father. Although the legendary entirely concerned with African Ameri- Virginia statute, along with all other ra- cans: what percentage of those employ- cial restrictions on marriage, was invali- able were actually employed in a given dated in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court labor market? At the public hearing de- in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the one signed to collect reactions to this report- drop rule classically formulated in the ing form, no voice mentioned even in Virginia statute was not affected in passing the situation of the nonblack its capacity as a convention operating minorities.4 throughout American society. Tradition- Virtually everyone in power at the al white racism perpetuated this conven- time assumed the nonblack minorities tion, but so, too, did the social solidarity to be so tiny a part of the picture as to re- of an African American community quire no discussion and to entail no poli- whose borders had been shaped by that cy dilemmas for the future. Support for racism. It is no wonder that the of½cials, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for the courts, and advocacy organizations that speci½c mission and methods of the designed and defended af½rmative ac- eeoc established under its terms was tion measures showed no interest in deeply informed by a popular under- mixture. Even if ‘light-skinned blacks’ standing of the history of the victimiza- had sometimes experienced a less con- tion of African Americans in particular, sistently brutal style of discrimination and not by any comparably deep under- than that experienced by the darkest of standing of the acknowledged mistreat- African Americans, there was no doubt ment of Latinos and Asian Americans. that any person perceived as having any To call attention to this truth about the black ancestry whatsoever was rightly civil rights era is not to downplay the included in the antidiscrimination rem- reality of white racism against nonblacks edies being developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 4 I owe this information to John D. Skrentny. Dædalus Winter 2005 21 David A. in American history right up to the time hate rule and stimulated a genuine effort Hollinger on of½cials and courts acted. Rather, the to confront the distinctive history and race point is that remedying the abuse of needs of the several nonblack groups on nonblacks was almost an afterthought each group’s own terms. But the system to remedying antiblack racism. then in place created a huge disincentive for such a rethinking: the black model Nothing illustrates this fact more dra- was working quite well. It helped get the matically than the lack of sustained attention of of½cials and courts, en- public debate on the eligibility of immi- abling them to recognize and under- grants and their offspring for af½rmative stand the victimization of nonblack action. This silence resulted partly be- minorities. As early as 1968, the Chicano cause the Latino and Asian American youth activists in Los Angeles were de- populations were still small (about 4.5 claring “Brown and Black” to be one and percent and 1 percent, respectively, in the same. As the most careful scholar of the census of 1970), and because the Im- that episode has observed, writers in the migration and Nationality Act of 1965 Chicano movement’s magazine La Raza, that eventually transformed the ethnora- even while surrounded by older Mexican cial demography of the United States, Americans whose group advocacy had and revolutionized the meaning of eth- been based on the af½rmation of white noracially de½ned entitlements, was not identity, “asserted that Mexican identity, expected to signi½cantly increase immi- when measured in terms of history, ge- gration from Latin America and Asia. ography, oppressions, and dreams, was Yet the numbers of Latin American functionally black.”5 Hence the one hate and Asian immigrants mounted in the rule was quietly enacted by a variety of 1970s, yielding more and more nonblack nonblack advocacy groups as well as by Americans who were not the descen- of½cials and courts. dants of those Chinese American, Japa- Neither the eeoc nor anyone else de- nese American, and Mexican American signing and approving af½rmative action families that had been abused in the programs predicated on the ideal of pro- United States, and who were thus less portional representation seems to have analogous than were nonimmigrant anticipated what could have happened if Latinos and Asian Americans to the de- one or another of the designated groups scendants of enslaved Americans. In- came to be overrepresented instead of deed, the number of new immigrants underrepresented. In the late 1960s and between 1970 and 2000 who were eligi- very early 1970s, there were very few ble for at least some af½rmative action Asian Americans, Latinos, and Indians bene½ts came to about 26 million, the in most of the same employment and same number of eligible African Ameri- educational spaces in which African cans as measured by the census of 1980. Americans were underrepresented in re- More strikingly yet, many of the new lation to their percentage in the total immigrants and their children proved population. Instead of inquiring into the able, especially in the Asian American speci½c causes of the underrepresenta- case, to make their way around racist tion of the various groups, one could as- barriers in education, business, and the sume with some justice that behind all workforce that continued to inhibit the cases was white racism of one degree or progress of African Americans. 5 Ian Haney López, Racism on Trial: The Chicano This emerging social reality might Fight for Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap have triggered a rethinking of the one Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 167. 22 Dædalus Winter 2005 another. The one hate rule was good ing rigor the different historical circum- The one drop rule enough. At least for a while. stances of the various American ethno- & the one But as the numbers of Asian Ameri- racial groups popularly called ‘minori- hate rule cans increased dramatically through ties’ or ‘people of color.’ That literature chain migrations in the 1970s and 1980s, recognized, for example, the unique leg- and began to affect the public face of acy of slavery and Jim Crow for African American society especially in Califor- Americans, and assessed the pre-immi- nia, a striking challenge to the one hate gration social position and commercial rule appeared. It became hard to over- experience for many Asian Americans.6 look that Asian Americans, even if sub- Bengali engineers and Chihuahuan agri- ject to discrimination as ‘foreign’ and cultural laborers really did bring differ- thus ‘not really American,’ were over- ent pre-immigration experiences and represented rather than underrepresent- skills to the United States. Not innate ed in many universities and professions ‘racial’ characteristics, but empirically and among high-income householders. warrantable social conditions could illu- Well before the end of the 1980s, the minate the contrasting destinies of dif- Census Bureau reported that average ferent descent communities in the Unit- family income for Asian Americans, ed States. Yet public policy discussions even when the income for recently ar- did not take much advantage of the invi- rived immigrants from Southeast Asia tation offered by Asian American suc- was included, was higher than that for cess to rethink the one hate rule. Far non-Hispanic whites. Asian Americans from it. were quietly dropped from some private af½rmative action programs (not from A mark of the persistence of the one those operated by the federal govern- hate rule is its dominance of President ment), but what public discussion there Clinton’s Initiative on Race, as displayed was of the success of Asian Americans in One America in the 21st Century: Forging was clouded by the problematic concept a New Future, the 1998 report of the Ini- of ‘the model minority.’ The idea that tiative’s advisory board. Although the African Americans, Latinos, and Indians impeachment of Clinton distracted at- had something wrong with them struc- tention from this document at the time turally–some genetic inferiority or of its release, it is the only major presi- deeply embedded cultural de½ciency dent-sponsored assessment of race since from which the wonderful Asians were the Kerner Commission’s report of thir- free–was sometimes implied, and was ty years before. The very banality of One of course vigorously contested. America in the 21st Century renders that Given the prior assumption that all document all the more revealing a de- ethnoracial minorities were more or less pository of publicly acceptable ‘race equally the victims of white racism, how talk’ in the United States at the turn of could one talk about the success of Asian the twenty-½rst century. Americans without appearing to deny Central to that talk is the assertion that the power of white racism or to engage, any differences between the particular however subtly, in a racist discourse varieties of ‘racial’ discrimination and against African Americans, Latinos, and 6 See, for example, Grace Kao, “Asian Ameri- Indians? That this pitfall could indeed cans as Model Minorities? A Look at Their be avoided was proved by a growing aca- Academic Performance,” American Journal of demic literature exploring with increas- Education 103 (February 1995): 121–159.

Dædalus Winter 2005 23 David A. abuse are incidental to what those vari- groups. Not a single one of the advisory Hollinger on eties have in common, and the assump- board’s recommendations speaks to the race tion that the same set of policies can deal speci½c claims of African Americans on with virtually all those varieties of disad- the national conscience. Yet blacks, and vantage. The advisory board does point blacks alone, inherit a multi-century (with a series of “signposts of historical legacy of group-speci½c enslavement episodes,” which they distinguish from and hypodescent racialization long car- the “comprehensive” history they dis- ried out under constitutional authority claim) to a handful of particular experi- in the United States. ences: the conquest of the Indians, the The contrast between the Asian Amer- enslavement and segregation of black ican experience in recent years and the people, “the conquest and legal oppres- African American experience during the sion of Mexican American and other same period is systematically deempha- Hispanics,” the “forced labor of Chinese sized by One America in the 21st Century. Americans,” and the “internment of Only in a footnote and in one easily Japanese Americans.” Even “new immi- missed chart does the advisory board grants” from Southeast Asia “continue acknowledge that by the end of the to feel the legacy of discriminatory laws 1980s Asian Americans had achieved against Asian Paci½c Americans because an average annual family income higher they continue to be perceived and treat- even than that of non-Hispanic whites, ed as foreigners.” In keeping with this and almost twice that of blacks and His- last observation, which incorporates the panics. Repeatedly, the advisory board most recent of voluntary immigrants tries to shoehorn the Asian American into the same frame with the descen- experience into the space prescribed for dants of slaves and of the conquered and it by the one hate rule. In a single sen- ruthlessly slaughtered indigenous popu- tence, the advisory board praises law lation, the advisory board offers the fol- enforcement agencies for investigating lowing summary of the salient history: both the decapitation of a black man in “Each of the minority groups discussed Texas and the death threats to sixty above share in common a history of Asian American students at a campus in legally mandated and socially and eco- California. A statement in the text to the nomically imposed subordination to effect that “criminal victimization rates white European Americans and their are signi½cantly greater for minorities descendants.”7 and people of color than for whites, es- This perspective informs the entire pecially with regard to violent crime,” document, especially the advisory makes no distinctions between the board’s recommendations. All but ½ve groups. But if one turns to the footnote of the more than ½fty recommendations documenting this statement, one learns are general to all victims of racism. Four that while the homicide rate is 58 per of the ½ve exceptions deal with the spe- 100,000 for African Americans and 25 cial problems of Indians and Alaskan per 100,000 for Hispanics, it is only 8 per natives, and the ½fth calls for better 100,000 for Asian Americans, which is data-gathering on nonblack minority close to the 5 per 100,000 for whites. Thus the proximity of Asian Americans 7 Advisory Board to the President’s Initiative to non-Hispanic whites in one statistical on Race, One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future (Washington, D.C.: Government sector after another is downplayed, ig- Printing Of½ce, 1998), 37–38. nored, or concealed. Many of the charts

24 Dædalus Winter 2005 in the report that show inequality by school diploma, only 31 percent of The one 9 drop rule ethnoracial group omit Asian Ameri- Hmong Americans do. How recent the & the one cans altogether. This is true of charts immigration and how strong or weak hate rule showing rates of college enrollment, the class position of the group prior to median weekly earnings of male work- immigration clearly make an enormous ers, and employment–all of which con- difference. This is true not only for Asian trast whites to blacks and Hispanics. Americans but also for Hispanics. For The advisory board is understandably instance, sociologists have explained re- determined to refute the myth that “the peatedly that recent illegal immigrants problem of racial intolerance in this from Mexico encounter the United country has been solved,” but in its re- States and its white racism differently luctance to particularize and measure than do Cuban Americans whose fami- the dimensions of this problem and to lies have been in the country for several deal directly with the reasons why some decades, or than do descendants of earli- Americans mistakenly believe the prob- er generations of migrants from Mexico lem to be solved, it ends up weakening who have more opportunities to learn its case.8 Asian American success in English and to take advantage of what- overcoming the worst consequences of ever educational opportunities are at white racism is the elephant in the advi- hand. sory board’s room. So great is the variety of experience At stake is the more precise location among Hispanics that the Census Bureau of the barriers that inhibit Americans of would do well to think carefully about various communities of descent from the basis for continuing to treat Hispan- participating more fully in the life of the ics as a single category at all. The census nation. The more con½dent we can be might drop this quasi-racial category about the social location of those barri- and count instead those inhabitants who ers, the more likely we are as a nation to identify with descent communities from develop policies that target remedy to Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Domini- wrong in the effort to achieve a more can Republic, Haiti, and other such de- equal society. If economic and social ½ning points of origin. Instead of count- conditions antecedent to immigration ing ‘Asians,’ the census might count are signi½cant factors in explaining the people who trace their descent to China, relative success many Asian American Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India, Iran, the groups have achieved, that suggests that Philippines, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, white racism does not always have the etc. Any public or private agency that same effect on everything it touches, but wished for any reason–including the rather affects those objects differently design and implementation of antidis- depending on how those objects are con- crimination remedies–to treat all His- stituted. panics or Asians as a single group could Even One America in the 21st Century easily reaggregate the groups counted approaches this insight when it distin- separately by the census. Or a given guishes between the different destinies agency might conclude, on the basis of of Asian American groups, noting in a what it learns about the social and eco- footnote that while 88 percent of Japa- nomic circumstances of particular nese Americans between the ages of descent communities, and on the basis twenty-½ve and twenty-nine have a high of its analysis of where responsibility for

8 Ibid., 46, 48, 65, 71–72, 75, 81, 128, 131. 9 Ibid., 126. Dædalus Winter 2005 25 David A. a given case of disadvantage lies, that Conley has found that when blacks and Hollinger on some groups need af½rmative action and whites with the same property holdings race others do not. Breaking down Hispanic (as opposed merely to the same income, into the actual descent groups that exist which is a less substantial indicator of in the United States would facilitate this. economic position) are compared, the So, too, with Americans of Asian de- gap between black and white perfor- scent. Neither Hispanics nor Asian mance on Graduate Record Examina- Americans have an experience as uni½ed tions and in several other arenas of as that of African Americans, and the achievement diminish to a point of sta- Census Bureau needs a better justi½ca- tistical insigni½cance.12 Class position, tion than it has offered until now for the when accurately measured, makes a for- use of these panethnic, ‘racial’ catego- midable difference. What our social sci- ries. By rejecting racial and quasi-racial ence is telling us today is not that white categories, the census can liberate itself racism has disappeared, nor even that it from de facto responsibility for deciding is unimportant, but that it interacts with who is eligible for this or that pro- a variety of other realities to create the gram.10 patterns of inequality that social policy Analysis of different segments of the must address. black population, too, yields more pre- cise information about the location It is in the context of these social scien- of the barriers to full participation in ti½c ½ndings that the status of ‘under- American life. Black immigrants from represented minorities’ invites reexami- the Caribbean and their descendants nation with an eye toward better under- are more likely than the American-born standing those patterns of inequality. heirs of the Jim Crow system to advance When the ideal of proportional repre- in education and employment and to sentation entered af½rmative action marry outside their natal community. So directives and jurisprudence in about too are black immigrants from Africa, as 1970, a major objective was to get be- the public has recently been reminded yond ‘intentional’ discrimination in or- by the remarkable career of Illinois poli- der to confront prior, structural condi- tician Barack Obama, elected to the U.S. tions producing inequality. But by pro- Senate in 2004.11 Moreover, Dalton moting the idea that the mere fact of un- derrepresentation constituted evidence 10 This suggestion about the census is a varia- tion on proposals made during the 1990s by a of discrimination, however indirect, number of demographers and social scientists. of½cials and courts deflected attention See, for example, Margo Anderson and Stephen from any and all possible speci½c expla- E. Feinberg, “Black, White, and Shades of Gray (and Brown and Yellow),” Change 8 (1) (1995): 15–18, esp. 18. The substitution of the racial the questions that story raises about black categories with more speci½c demographic cat- identity and the dynamics of black progress in egories would provide individuals greater op- the United States today are explored in Scott portunity to declare their cultural identity Malcomson, “An Appeal Beyond Race,” The while also enabling public and private agencies New York Times, August 1, 2004, IV, 5, and to pursue antidiscrimination remedies on more William Finnegan, “The Candidate,” The New empirically warranted grounds. Yorker, May 31, 2004, 32–38.

11 Obama, the keynote speaker at the Demo- 12 Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the cratic National Convention in July of 2004, is Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America the son of a black immigrant from Kenya and a (Berkeley: University of California Press, white mother from Kansas. His life story and 1999).

26 Dædalus Winter 2005 nations for why a particular descent Jewish Americans, South Asian Ameri- The one drop rule group might be underrepresented in a cans, and Japanese Americans in the do- & the one particular employment or educational mains of American life where African hate rule sector. What was lost in the process was Americans and Latinos are underrepre- an ability to deal forthrightly with the sented? The failure to pursue this ques- appearance of Asian Americans as an tion implicitly strengthens largely un- overrepresented minority. expressed speculations that Jews and Underrepresentation and overrepre- Asians are, after all, superior genetically sentation constitute a logical syndrome. to African Americans, Latinos, and Should we not expect the same princi- American Indians–the groups whose ples of causation to apply to both sides underrepresentation is constantly at of the phenomenon? Might what we issue. learn about the overrepresentation of Yet the grounds for avoiding talk about particular descent groups–Korean the overrepresentation of Jewish Ameri- Americans and Jewish Americans, for cans and some groups of Asian Ameri- example–help us to understand the un- cans diminish, if not disappear, once the derrepresentation of others, and vice relevant statistics are explained by tak- versa? This might seem obvious, but the ing full account of the conditions under analysis of overrepresentation, and of which the various descent communities the historical processes by which ethno- have been shaped.13 Avoiding the forth- racial groups that were once underrepre- right historical and social-scienti½c sented have become overrepresented, study of the question perpetuates the usually stops with the white color line. mysti½cation of descent communities The Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and the and subtly fuels the idea that the ques- Jews, we say, became white. But invok- tion’s answer is really biological, and if ing whiteness does not carry us very far. made public will serve to reinforce in- Appalachian whites are not overrepre- vidious distinctions between descent sented in the medical profession and in groups. The open discussion of overrep- the nation’s great universities, and some resentation will not be racist if it pro- ‘people of color’–Chinese Americans ceeds on nonracist assumptions. We will and South Asian Americans, for exam- not understand patterns of inequality in ple–are. the United States until overrepresenta- Jewish experience since 1945 is the tion and underrepresentation are stud- most dramatic single case in all Ameri- ied together and with the same methods. can history of a stigmatized descent The one hate rule is an obstacle to such group that had been systematically dis- inquiries. But if the overrepresentation criminated against under the protection of African American males in prisons of the law suddenly becoming overrepre- can be explained, as it often is, with ref- sented many times over in social spaces erence to slavery, Jim Crow, and the larg- where its progress had been previously inhibited. The experience since 1970 of 13 For an exploration of this terrain, see my several Asian American groups is a sec- “Rich, Powerful, and Smart: Jewish Overrepre- ond such dramatic case. These cases of sentation Should Be Explained Rather Than success invite emphasis and explanation Mysti½ed or Avoided,” Jewish Quarterly Review in relation to explanations for the social 94 (Fall 2004): 596–602. The most ambitious and convincing study of Jewish success is Yuri destiny of other descent-de½ned groups. Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Prince- What explains the overrepresentation of ton University Press, 2004).

Dædalus Winter 2005 27 David A. er history of the institutionalized de- scent racialization of the latter came to Hollinger on basement of black people, so, too, can be more widely recognized as an index race the overrepresentation of Jewish Ameri- of the unique severity of antiblack rac- cans and Korean Americans in other ism in the United States. No wonder social spaces be explained by historical some frustrated African American activ- conditions. ists campaigned for group-speci½c repa- rations. Hence the weakening of the one So the one hate rule, however sensible hate rule and the development of a criti- it may have seemed when informally cal perspective on the one drop rule pro- adopted in the 1960s and 1970s, is in- ceeded dialectically. The more fully we creasingly dif½cult to defend. And the understand the unique invidiousness of less blinded we are by it the more able the principle of hypodescent as applied we are to see the unique invidiousness to ‘blacks,’ the weaker the hold of the of the one drop rule, its ironic twin. The one hate rule; and the weaker the hold practice of hypodescent racialization has of the one hate rule, the more able we entailed an absolute denial of the reality are to confront at long last the excep- of extensive white-black mixing. It has tionally racist character of the one drop embodied a total rejection of blackness rule.14 and it has implied a deep revulsion on the part of empowered whites. This va- 14 For critical suggestions based on an earlier draft, I am indebted to Victoria Hattam, Jen- riety of white racism was cast into bold nifer Hochschild, Joan Heifetz Hollinger, Ian relief in the 1980s and 1990s by the dra- Haney López, Rachel Moran, Robert Post, Ken- matic upsurge of immigration from neth Prewitt, John Skrentny, Werner Sollors, Latin America and Asia. The ½rst of Eric Sundquist, and Kim Williams. For other these immigrations displayed from the assistance I want to thank Jennifer Burns. start an acknowledged and often cele- brated mixture of European and indige- nous ancestry, and produced children who married Anglos at a rising rate and who were not subject to hypodescent racialization as Latinos. The new immi- grants from Asia married Anglos at a considerably higher rate than Latinos did, and their offspring were not socially coerced to identify as 100 percent Asian. Only a few years earlier, when af½rma- tive action and the allied initiatives that eventually came to be called ‘multicul- turalism’ got started, the assumption had been that all the standard minority groups were clearly bounded, durable entities, kept in place by the power of white racism and by the internal adhe- sives of their communities of descent. But the experience of nonblack minori- ties was suf½ciently different from that of African Americans that the hypode-

28 Dædalus Winter 2005