[Ads-l] big apple (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Barretts Mail]

> On 17 Feb 2020, at 07:31, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
> 
>> On Feb 17, 2020, at 3:37 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> 
>> That's true. BTW, are people familiar with the Chan sisters, Meg and
>> Jennifer? They use their mother's maiden name, Tilly, as their nom du film.
>> There are many Websites devoted to the revelation of the "polluted"
>> ancestry of more-or-less public figures. You'd think that such Web pages
>> would be managed by the KKK. But, in fact, they're run by
>> couldn't-possibly-be-mistaken-for-white members of the relevant "race," who
>> have heartily embraced the one-drop rule. (More cultural appropriation!
>> Won't *nobody* let colored people have *nothing*, just for them!)
>> Oddly, some racist sites claim that the one-drop rule is a black thang,
>> thought up for the purpose of claiming more-or-less important, more-or-less
>> non-black people, e.g.  Barack Obama, Frederick Douglass, Booker T.
>> Washington, Lena Horne, Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, Mariah Carey,
>> Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali, Johnny Mathis, etc. as "black." However, the
>> one-drop rule is a logical extension of the law, originally promulgated in
>> the Virginia Colony, that, if the mother is a slave, then the child is a
>> slave, regardless of the social and/or the racial status of the father: if
>> an ancestor was black, then the descendant is black.
>> 
> cf. the promulgation of “quadroon” and “octoroon”.  If there’s no finer-grained term I assume it's because those making the rules didn’t know the Latin for 1/16. 
> 
> LH  

My recollection is that someone sat down and came up with words for every fraction up to 256ths—not just 1/8ths, but 3/16ths, 5/16ths, etc. I have searched a bit and can’t find any reference to it.

At least hexadecaroon/mustefino/quintroon were in use.

http://www.mixedracestudies.org/?p=1146 <http://www.mixedracestudies.org/?p=1146> has a few more.

This sort of word would still be useful for Native American blood quantum rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Implementation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Implementation>) but AFAIK the fractions, not the words, are used.

Benjamin Barrett (he/his/him)
Formerly of Seattle, WA


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