Halle Berry and the 'One-Drop Rule'

• The one-drop rule was created by slave owners in the 17th century, to maintain as slaves people who otherwise would be considered free. In the British colonies of North America the rule was that a white person could not be a slave. English Common Law had a rule that said that the legal and social condition of a newborn was acquired from his father. What that rule implied was that if the father was a free man, his children were going to be free, even if the mother was a slave woman. Slave owners realized that this Common Law rule could be a threat to the ownership of some of his slaves, because since the establishment of slavery in the colonies, black and mullato slave women were giving birth to children that were white or with a lighter skin than their mother. If a white person could not be a slave and a black slave woman give birht to a white or lighter skin child, clearly the father was a free man and that child had a right to be free. To prevent this, in the North American British colonies were slavery was accepted, adopted the rule that was practiced in the colonies of Civil Law European nations with colonies in the New World. These countries were Spain, Portugal and France. In the colonies of those countries the rule applied was a rule that came from the days of the Roman Empire. It was named Partus Sequitur Ventrem in latin language. Partus means newborn, sequitur means following and ventrem means womb, the newborn follows the womb. If the newborn child came from the womb of a free woman he was free, if the newborn came from the womb of a slave woman he or she was a slave, even if the father was a free man. The first colony to adopt this rule by legislation was Virginia and in the term of 20 years all the Brittish colonies that practiced slavery adopted this partus sequitur ventrem rule. But now they had a problem, for one part there was a rule that said that no white person could be a slave and now they have this new rule that said that the condition of slavery of a newborn was going to be determined by the legal status of the mother regardless of what was the skin complexion of the newborn. What they were going to do with children of white complexion born of a slave woman? Which rule was going to be applied? If they applied the rule that said that no white person could be a slave, the child would be free. If they applied the partus sequitur ventrem rule the child was a slave. What did they do? They invented a new rule, the one-drop of blood rule, which said that if the newborn child was of white complexion or phenotype he could not be considered white because since he was born from a slave woman, that circumstance implied that someone in the child and mother ancestry was black, because whites could not slaves, and that drop of blood from one of their ancestors would classify this newborn as negro or black, and as a consequence, a slave.

• I am a victim of divorce. My parents divorce was finalized 3 days after my 5th birthday, and these custody cases can get ugly. I have seen stories of 2 sided celebrities, where what you see in public is not how they are in private. This kid is mixed, it is neither black or white. I have 2 mixed cousins. I don't believe that Gabriel is a racist, the N-word accusation was just a low blow put out there by a desperate mother trying to hold on to custody of their kid. Remember when Denise Richards made the false claim that Charlie Sheen molested their kids? Desperate mothers, regardless of racial makeup, do these types of things in custody cases all the time.

• It wasn't / isn't a "notion." In 20 states it was the law. Notion--whats wrong with you?

TotalComments: 3