This is PART 1 of a 2-part response to our question: When was the first time you learned about the one-drop rule? Thomas Lopez is President of MASC (Multiracial Americans of Southern California http://bit.ly/28KMb19). He talks to his daughter and focuses on how the one-drop rule affects Latinos, especially when it comes to U.S. Census racial categories.
If you would like to share your One-Drop Rule story, send us an email to onedropoflove at gmail dot com
TRANSCRIPT
Thomas Lopez: Hello. My name is Thomas Lopez and I am the President of Multiracial Americans of Southern California. I’m here with my giggly daughter to talk about how I first heard about the one-drop rule. I’m just not going to talk about that. I’m actually going to talk about how the one-drop rule is still in work today, but there’s a special version of it for Latinos. The one-drop rule.
Daughter: Mm-hmm.
TL: Have you ever heard of the one-drop rule before?
D: Nope.
TL: No? Okay, so the one-drop rule goes something like this.
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: Mainly it had to do with blacks, especially living in the segregated south.
D: Okay.
TL: The way it worked was, if you had any amount of black ancestry then that means you would be counted as black. If you had like a great grandparent that was black, but everybody else in your family was white, they would still count you as black.
D: That doesn’t seem very fair.
TL: Well, it was the law at the time and they called it the ‘one-drop rule’ because it was meaning one drop of black blood made you—
D: Oh, that makes sense.
TL: Well, it does, but it doesn’t make sense ’cause there’s no such thing as black blood.
D: Yeah, I know.
TL: Okay. There’s no such thing as white blood.
D: Blood is the same color.
TL: Right.
D: Red [chuckle].
TL: Blood is blood. Anyway, that’s just what they called it, is the one-drop rule. Now the official laws around one-drop rule are more or less gone. There is something that I came across that has to do with the one-drop rule being applied to Latinos.
D: Okay.
TL: Okay? It is found in the census itself. The census treats Latino identity different from racial identity. They call Latinos an ethnicity and not a race, okay. They do this by asking two different questions.
D: Wait. Pause. What’s the difference between ethnicity and race?
TL: That’s a whole other conversation.
D: Okay.
TL: It’s a good question, but I’m not going to cover that.
D: Yeah, I always get confused.
TL: That’s fine. There is a lot of overlap there, but we don’t have time to talk about that.
D: Okay.
TL: Let’s just suffice it to say that the census considers Latino an ethnicity and not a race.
D: Okay.
TL: Okay? They ask two questions, alright. The first question that they ask is a yes or no question, alright. Are you a Latino, yes or no? Okay. The second question they ask is what is your race. They give you six different races to choose from: white, black, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, Native- American and some other race, okay? Now, starting in 1997, the government changed the forms to allow you to check off more than one race. It used to be you could only pick one race, alright, but now you can pick as many races as you want. You can have white and black and Asian and have those all combined in one race, but oddly enough, they never changed the Latino question, okay. The Latino still today is a yes or no question, are you Latino or non-Latino.
D: Okay.
TL: Okay?
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: If you answer yes, that you’re Latino, then you have a couple more options. You can say Mexican or Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Cuban or some other Latino identity. Actually, the census likes to use the word ‘Hispanic’, so—
D: Okay.
TL: I might jump between the terms Hispanic or Latino.
D: Latino and Hispanic are the same thing?
TL: Yeah, they’re the same thing. Just for conversation’s sake we’ll use them to mean the same thing.
D: Okay.
TL: What’s funny about that question is that it’s a yes or no question. Are you Latino, yes or no? You know me, my father was Mexican-American from El Paso, Texas.
D: Mm-hmm, yeah.
TL: My mother was German-Polish from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
D: Uh huh.
TL: Okay? You—
D: Yes?
TL: – being my daughter—
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: – okay, your mom is Latina and I’m mixed Latino, so you too are also—
D: Latina.
TL: – mixed. You’re Latina, but you also have some German-Polish ancestry too.
D: You can say that you’re Latino and I’m also mixed too.
TL: Right, so you’re two things at the exact same time, right?
D: Mm-hmm, awesome.
TL: If I asked you which are you, are you Latino or are you German-Polish, yes or no.
D: Both. Well.
TL: Yeah, but now you have to pick one. You have to say yes or no. Can you say yes and no at the same time?
D: Not really.
TL: Not really; that makes no sense.
D: It’s a paradox.
TL: Right, that’s a paradox.
D: Yeah.
TL: It makes no sense. When the census changed to allow people to mark one or more categories in 1997, they did not change the Latino ethnicity question and to this day it’s confusing. You might ask what happens if you check off multiple boxes, right?
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: What will the census do? Do you know?
D: No.
TL: Who knows, right? I asked this question for a long time, and it took me awhile to get an answer, but I eventually got a report sent to me from a friend of mine—
D: Yes.
TL: – who was involved with the census, and what the report said.
D: Yeah.
TL: Prior to 2010, okay, the census had this really elaborate procedure—
D: Okay.
TL: – for trying to figure out what ethnicity people are if they marked off multiple boxes or they left it blank. I’m not gonna go into that because it’s long and involved. It’s really interesting, but it is long and involved.
D: Alright.
TL: Then they simplified it and this is straight from the report, okay. I’m gonna read this straight from the report. Okay, now in this report, they’re talking about the American Community Survey or ACS.
D: ACS?
TL: Yeah, ACS. That’s a different study that’s done from the census, but the Census Bureau does both of these studies. If the census adopts a certain methodology for one study, they apply that same method to all of their studies, including the census.
D: If they do this process for one thing, they’re gonna use it for another thing?
TL: Right.
D: Okay.
TL: This report is talking about the ACS, but we can assume that it is gonna apply to the full census.
D: Alright.
TL: Which is done every ten years, right?
D: Okay.
TL: Okay, so here we go. It says, “Beginning with the 2010 ACS, the way multiple origin responses are handled in the Hispanic origin question will undergo some changes. Multiple origin responses will continue to be collected that will be edited to a single response as the Office of Management and Budget mandates. A single origin will be randomly selected from the original reported origins for multiple Hispanic or multiple non-Hispanic responses. On the other hand, part Hispanic responses will be edited differently. All part Hispanic responses will be coded as Hispanic.” In other words, say you marked off two Hispanics like Mexican and Cuban at the same time.
D: Okay.
TL: Alright? They are gonna randomly assign you to only one. You will be Mexican or Cuban. You can’t be both of them at the same time.
D: That’s not very fair.
TL: Doesn’t sound very fair. If you mark both non-Hispanic and Hispanic at the same time, like you marked yes and no at the same time, then they will assign you to the Hispanic category only.
D: Okay.
TL: Remember what I was telling you about how the one-drop rule worked with black people—
D: Yes.
TL: – and, how if you had one black ancestor they counted you as black and ignored all your other ancestry?
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: Right? They’re doing the same thing with Latinos.
D: Okay.
TL: If you or I were to mark off more than one box in the Latino question, they would assign us to only one.
D: Okay.
TL: This is the exact same thing as the one-drop rule, except it’s being applied to Latinos, and that’s as recent as 2010, so it’s still happening today.
D: Yeah.
TL: Yeah.
D: Almost a decade later.
TL: Right, so there’s really nothing—for people like us—
D: Yeah.
TL: – that have this kind of mixed identity, Latino with non-Latino, there’s no real solution for us right now, you know? There’s a problem.
D: Yeah, that’s sad.
TL: Yes, but things are changing.
D: Yay!
TL: Things are changing. Right now the census is considering changes for the 2020 census that’s gonna be coming up in like four years.
D: Okay, yeah.
TL: The official recommendation will be made to Congress in April 2017 and then a final decision will be made in April 2018, okay.
D: Okay.
TL: What they’re thinking of doing is—remember how I told you there were two questions, there was the ethnicity question and a race question?
D: Mm-hmm, yeah.
TL: They’re gonna take those two questions and put them together into one question.
D: I can’t wait for 2018 [chuckle].
TL: There’ll be only one question, right?
D: Yes.
TL: Now Latino is not gonna be a separate ethnicity anymore. It’s gonna be considered a race.
D: Alright.
TL: Now you’ll have seven races to choose from, possibly more, but at least Latino is gonna be there. Now, what’s interesting about that, remember how I said that on the race question they allowed you to mark off more than one box?
D: Yeah.
TL: That means that Latinos are going to get the ability to mark off more than one box.
D: Umm.
TL: You see, so this policy that they had before—
D: Yeah.
TL: – forced me to pick Latino only is not gonna happen. They’re gonna allow Latinos to mark Latino and white, Latino and black, Latino and Asian. Now people like us will be able to mark off Latino and White at the same time—
D: Yeah.
TL: – and they will continue to count that.
D: Yeah.
TL: Now, that’s gonna cause all kinds of other changes, okay.
D: Mm-hmm.
TL: Right now, the number of the percentage of the people in the country that mark two or more races is just under three percent of the total population, okay. When they allow Latinos to mark off two or more races, that number is likely gonna jump from three percent to almost seven percent. That’s a little over 100 percent increase in the 2 or more populations.
D: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It doesn’t sound that big, but it actually is.
TL: Yeah, so that’s gonna be a huge change. What people think of as multiracial is gonna totally change in this country, and now we’re gonna have all this data coming in about people that are mixed Latino and non-Latino, and they’re gonna be counted as multiracial.
D: I get it.
TL: Yeah, so society needs to get ready for this change. The multi-racial community needs to get ready for this change. The state of California is gonna have some problems with it because the state of California is also—
D: Yeah.
(Please see Part 2 of this interview – which will be posted on Wednesday June 29, 2016)
Being White, I always find it interesting that when I say that my kids are Latino, nobody stops me and says “Wait…what?” Either they already know about the one drop rule, or they are shy about asking, or they don’t care about these labels.