"Black" in America - or How do we define groups?

Great Debates
1

Given: a variety of group identities are sociologic constructs. Among them racial and religious groupings.

How are these groupings formed?

Bloodlines. For example you are Black or Jewish or Irish-American or whathaveyou because your parents were.

Superficial appearance. Black by virtue of having some external physical characteristics. Meet some stereotype of looking Jewish, etc.

Shared cultural attributes: values, style of dress, speech, attitude.

All well and good and very often all of the above are in agreement. But what happens when these attributes conflict?

As a case study, what makes one “Black” in America?

Is it bloodline, and how much of your bloodline is of African heritage to be Black in America? Why should many prominent “Blacks” be any more declared “Black” than white or Indian given the mix of genetic backgrounds that are in the family trees of most American “Blacks”?

Superficial appearence? Would this qualify someone as “Black” even if they weren’t of African heritage but say some combination of other ethnicities?

Cutural values? What does “acting Black” in today’s America mean?

Please note: this is as a case study. Jewish could be substituted with equal complexity. How many times are we told some famous person was a Jew even though they are entirely areligious or even converted out of the faith, but because they were born to a Jewish parent (and by most Jewish conventions a convert is still a Jew)? Yet my daughter, adopted from China and converted as a baby, is a Jew too.
Irish-American and other national identifications also need apply: bloodline for a national group membership after generations born elswhere? But let’s stick with one case study for now. How is membership in this group determined, what factors override which and why?

2

Easy. Because our society has always practiced the irrational “one drop rule”.

For instance, I’m an amalgam of black, Native American, and European ancestry. During slaves times, I would have been black and thus, subject to enslavement. During the Jim Crow days, I would have been black and thus, subject to overt discrimination. The same “rules” apply today, even though the game has changed. In the US, to be black means to be mixed essentially.

I think as race relations continue to change, we’ll see this change as well.

(Black people get weird treatment when it comes to who’s who. Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, and Dean Cain are, for all intents and purposes, treated as white men even though they are “biracial”. Halle Berry, Shumar Moore, and Jada Pincket are technically just as white, but are treated as minorities.)

I know the term “black” is a catch-all term for heavily pigmented people in general, not just African descendents, in many countries. In the US, though, “black” is more specific. An indigenous Australian is not a black person in the US, even though they may look superficially “black”. However, they may be able to “pass” as one.

There are no unifying values among black Americans, although there is definitately a culture that times us together. The language we speak, the styles of religion we practice, the traditions we have, the intonation of our voices…these things can be used to identify “blackness”. That said, there is no such thing as “acting black” if we want to be smart and not rely on stereotypes. Even if this isn’t true, the absence of “acting black” would not make someone “white” by default.

3

Monstro,

So you go by the “one drop rule”? At least in so far as to say that “Black” in America is a bloodline question and any significant bloodline traced to African ancestry makes an individual “Black”?

And that this standard applies to group membership as self-identified the same as to group membership as identified by others?

Yet you give good counter examples to your own rules in males stars who apparently are of mixed heritage but are identified as “White”. What is different for them? Would there be the same perception if they were rappers who dressed the part?

Finally the related note: to what extent is “Black American” cultural identity dominanted by an urban poor faction? In a country where a sizable fraction of Blacks live in poverty and many middle class Blacks raise their families in or near poor neighborhoods even though they are not themselves poor, it is no surprise if such is so. And how does this effect young Blacks who have been raised in mixed middle class communities? Especially as they go into a broader world (say just High School or college) where a larger proportion of Blacks have been raised in urban poor communities. With whom are their cultural values tied together? And why?

4

I go by “percieved as a descendant of U.S. slaves”, but some people disagree with me.

I’m right, though.

5

There is no such thing as “should” when it comes to racial classifications. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you attempt to make race conform to logic-driven expectations. For centuries, the black label has been applied to people without regard to reason. Now that we are in a more enlightened day, many people are starting to question that which has been in effect from square one. They make the unfortunate mistake of trying to make the system align with reason, when such a thing is impossible.

As a black woman who is relatively racially ambigiuous in appearance, I spent many days in my childhood trying to figure out why I was called black instead of brown. Clearly, my skin was not black, so why was it more correct to call me black than what my color actually was? Silly, silly girl I was, and thankfully this stint of naivety was short-lived. It didn’t take me too much time to figure out that the white-black system of categorization has always defied logic, so why pretend now that this illogical concept can be made more logical with the addition of a few more amendments?

The one-drop rule has been the governing principal behind American race for centuries. Even though now we recognize it as being “incorrect” doesn’t mean it actually is any more incorrect than calling Rice and Powell (who I assume are included in your reference to “prominent” blacks) something other than black.
If consistency is worth anything, they are just as black as any other black American, because that’s what they would have been fifty, one-hundred, or three-hundred years ago. Now we could suddenly change the game and say that the black label doesn’t adequately describe who they are, but why do that? It would make much more sense to do away with the white-black thing altogether. In the meantime, since that doesn’t seem possible at the moment, we can at least not try to validate the idea of racial classifications by inventing new things to call ourselves..

Black has always meant mixed, as monstro pointed out. To be a descendant of American slaves just about automatically means that you are mixed with Euro, African, and Native American blood. It is a given. That’s why I’m always surprised when people try to dispute my race when I tell them I’m black. It’s like, don’t they know that “blackness” encompasses a very diverse range of racial makeups? Does that reality make sense? Of course not. But saying I’m black makes just as much sense as saying I’m anything else.

6

Another stereotype that we’d all be better off getting rid of. In another thread, I challenged someone to come up with actual statistics for how many blacks were “urban poor”. I forget what the actual number turned out to be, but it was well below 50%. Well below.

7

Really? I haven’t found an urban/rural breakdown, yet, but it was only in 200 that the percent of blacks living at or below poverty levels got down to a bit over 30%. Prior to that, as recently as 1996, back poverty exceeded 39% and from 1975 through 1995 black poverty exceeded 40% in every year–often exceeding 45%.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov3.html
Given that DSeid’s actual phrase is “sizable fraction” (which I would consider 30% to be) and that white poverty percentage runs a fairly consistent 1/3 of the black percentage, I am not exactly sure what your objection is.

8

2000, not 200, of course.

9

Uh John? That was me and you are mistaken if you feel that what you did in that thread http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=230717&highlight=black was show that such a contention is just a stereotype. You did get me to state with more precision, as I have here.

Of course “poor” and federally defined “poverty” are not the same critters, but it can clearly be said that a large fraction of American Blacks live in or near urban poor communities. I’d call a quarter a sizable fraction to have living in conditions that meet federal poverty levels, a family of three living off of less than $15K/yr. That is still reality in this country. Lack of equal early educational opportunities combined with a society that showcases Black comics and athletes and rappers more than Black scientists and academicians lead many Black children to falsely believe they have a better chance to be an NBA star than to be a successful scientist. (While I bet even today there are many many more successful Black scientists than there are Black professional athletes.)

You with the face,

The problem with getting rid of distinctions all together is is that we’d always create them. We all constantly try to create shortcuts to predict peoples other characteristics based on easily observable traits and by what groups people are identified with, we at least pretend that they can tell us that we share some cultural aspects tie us together. If they don’t exist we create them in our imaginations. I am sad to say that I think that such is an unavoidable part of human nature. Thus my interest in how we form our group identities and how much we allow ourselves and our experiences to be molded by cultural expectations inherent to them. If we can’t rid ourselves of them, we should at least be conscious of what we are doing as we do it.

10

Interesting. And yet when I go to this site, also from the census (linked from your site), the number is reported as 24% for 2002, and 23% for 2001 (I rounded off to whole numbers). I wonder which is correct?

11

Hey, you’ve got a better memory than I do! But if you say a “stereotype” based on 25% of a given population is justified in any way, then we’ll have to disagree about that.

12

I believe that one can identify oneselves racially in two ways: politically and personally. Halle Berry is politically black. Meaning, if she had been born in the 1800s, she would have been a slave. If she had been born in the 1900s, she would have been barred from water fountains and train cars. If she was TaNequa Smith and had been caught on survelliance video holding up a bank, she would be identified as a “black” woman. Politically, she is a black woman because she is treated as such.

Now, her identify on a personal level may be entirely different. She may choose to claim whiteness and blackness. She may eschew race labels all together. But when it comes to interacting with society at large, it’s the political identity that greets the world. That’s why she has never equivocated when it comes to claiming her “blackness”. She didn’t create the game; she’s only playing it. Having her change how she identifies herself for the sake of accuracy would be silly and unfair.

When people see me, they may not be able to tell right away that I’m black. But they damn well know I’m not white. If I went around saying I was “white”, I’d get laughed off the stage, by both whites and fellow blacks.

They are not black, that’s the difference. I didn’t make the rule up, nor am I justifying it. The “one drop rule” only applies to black blood. People who are mixed with Asian or Native American ancestry are allowed to “escape”.

Huh?

I don’t think the “urban poor faction” dominates anything except maybe the perceptions of white Americans when they think about black people. Most black people are not urban or poor. To be sure, poor blacks probably think their lifestyle is typical of black Americans, but middle-class blacks probably think theirs is the same way.

I was brought up in a middle-class household in urban Atlanta. I went to high school with other black kids like myself. There were wannabe thugs and gangstas, but there were intellectual types, herbal-smoking artistic types, preppy types, ultra-religious types, and non-descript types like myself. To us, “blackness” meant hanging out with other black folk and having street wisdom (or being grounded and practical, not condescending and snobbish–traits we tended to associate with most of the whites at our school). It didn’t mean talking a certain way or dressing a certain way or being “stupid”. You could listen to Dr. Dre or the Black Crowes and be equally “black”.

College was the same way in my experience.

I’m aware that there is this idea among some youngsters that acting “black” means being self-defeating, but I wasn’t affected by any of that. Nor do I think most middle-class kids are affected by it if their parents are raising them right.

13

How much of that “below poverty” is equivilant to “urban poor”?

14

Sorry. On reviewing that page (I wish it had been laid out better in .pdf), I find that the high figures I quoted were limited to “under 18” and that on a separate chart the category “18 to 64” has much lower numbers, usually between 20% and 25% over the last 30 years.
(The black percentages still run about three times the rates for whites, but they do not often exceed 25%.)

15

by Dseid

I am not saying we should pretend that there is no such thing as race. What I’m saying essentially is that one can’t, on one hand, recognize that our concept of race is fabricated from rules that were invented to serve an agenda much more sinister than pragmatic categorization (which I hope you understand), and on the other hand, try to make racial classifications square with reason. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the OP, though. My impression is that you are questioning the validity of calling some black people “black” as opposed to something else that you think is more accurate. Is this what you are doing, or are you saying you do not understand how black people are called “black” in the first place?

I am sad to say that I think that such is an unavoidable part of human nature. Thus my interest in how we form our group identities and how much we allow ourselves and our experiences to be molded by cultural expectations inherent to them. If we can’t rid ourselves of them, we should at least be conscious of what we are doing as we do it.
[/quote]

16

Uh, ignore last paragraph.

17

My sister’s husband is black (meaning, he’s got a mixture in him) and we’re white.

When my sister gave birth to her first son, there was some argument with her husband about how to classify the boy’s race. Her husband (my BIL) was emphatic that the boy was black. My sister fought that, saying that she contributed just as much DNA to him as he did. Finally the husband relented and the boy (and their other boy too) are considered “mixed.”

These boys look—hmmm—maybe black, maybe latino, maybe middle eastern.

Was my sister wrong in insisting that these boys be considered “mixed”? (That’s how they filled out forms which ask for the kids’ race.)

18

Some additional income data -
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h05.html
2001 Median income Whites 44,517 mean 60,512
2001 Median income Blacks 29,470 mean 39,178

So Whites make about 50% more than Blacks in America on average.

Location -
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/eop/ca/pdfs/ch2.pdf
As of 1996 data more than 50% of Blacks lived in central cities and more than 50% of Whites lived in suburbs.

Mostly urban and relatively poor compared to the majority on average. I stand by it.

Monstro, I had misunderstood your reference - I thought that you were telling me that Keanu Reeves and Johnny Depp each were part Black but were percieved as White because of some “weirdness” but that females in the same position were percieved as Black (To which I thought, wow, I didn’t know that.) … and I now take it that the point is that their mixed heritage does not include Black and that such is your point. Oh.

And as to your comment about Black middle class kids not being effected by it … in my community bordering on Chicago we have (oversimplifying some) two populations of Blacks: Upper middle class blacks, well educated, often professionals, who live most often in the same blocks as others of their SES; and lower SES Blacks who more often live in the apartment buildings bordering with the city and are a greater number overall of the town’s Black population. The grade schools are local to section of town and our school tends to be fairly homgenous socioeconomically both White and Black. At Middle School the town all comes together across SES into two schools. It is here that the smaller number of upper SES Blacks go to school with the lower SES Blacks and identity issues get played out for some. Some of my neighbors have decided to keep their Black kids (boys in particular) out of the public Middle School and HS and go to Catholic school to avoid the feared possibility that their boys will be unduly influenced to not achieve academically by the lower SES kids. I do not know if it is a just fear or not, but I know that is a fear that they have and that some have acted upon by avoidance.

19

yosemitebabe

I don’t think she’s wrong, per se. But what does having a “mixed” label communicate that “black” does not? That one of the parents is white? Okay. If that is something your sister thinks is worth pointing out, that is fine. However, it is important that she recognize that the black label does not exclude white parentage. Black = “mixed”. Black does not mean 100% African stock. If it did, then there would be but a very few actual black people in this country, and most of them would be African immigrants.

If I had kids with a white man, I would identify the kids as black no matter how they looked. Not only because black = mixed, but because to call them anything else (except human, of course) would be like saying there was something wrong with being called black, when there is not. It is okay to be black even if you have blonde hair and blue eyes. Why? Because it is a meaningless construct at the end of the day. A label.

I look forward to the day when everyone is black. The one-drop rule may have been spawn out of evil, but it may be what eventually causes the undoing of race as we know it. That will be a good thing, IMO.

20

IMO, these kids and their peers will throw around the term “biracial” as easily as we throw around Black and White, especially in CA.

So, we went from “urban poor” to “urban relatively poor”. Whatever…