Notes from 'Race Now: A racial demographic overview of America'

The following post is based on Steve Sailers series, "Race Now." It’s a sidebar to "In a country like no other: America is alone in its endorsement of the 'one-drop' rule."

In a series of four blogs, author Steve Sailer examines America's racial demographics, beginning with his reflections on Henry Louis Gates Jr's. "Exactly How 'Black' Is Black America?"

He rounds out the series with a comparison of American racial attitudes to those of Mexico.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Exactly How 'Black' Is Black America?"

The following are highlights. For a more complete understanding of this article and the rest of Sailer's series, please read the original articles.

• According to Gates, DNA results show that "the common claim that many African Americans make about their high percentage of Native American ancestry is a myth."

• "[T] here has been still another astonishing fact revealed about [African-American men's] paternal ancestry -- their father's father's father's line — through their y-DNA: A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality."

• Meanwhile, "3 percent to 4 percent of people likely to consider themselves as all 'white' have some African ancestry -- between 0.5 percent and 5 percent."
  This is me. At about the time of the Revolutionary War, one of my ancestors was West African. I have a sad view about what probably happened. My earliest American ancestor, a Scotts-Irish immigrant, owned a plantation in South Carolina. I don't know yet how many people he enslaved, and I have no clues yet about the event that resulted in my first mixed-race ancestor. What I do know is that it was likely rape. I've also concluded that this child — or an immediate descendant — probably ended up passing as white, which in itself is usually a tragic story.

Race Now Part 1: Not So Black or White

• The 2000 census was the first to allow Americans to self-identify with more than one race. Author Steve Sailer suggests that "[t]The old 'One Drop of Blood' rule, which said that anyone who has any black ancestry is African-American, appears to be eroding finally."

• California's Racial Privacy Initiative "would ban most uses of racial classifications by the state of California. In its first Field Poll, likely voters favored the Racial Privacy Initiative almost three to two." (NOTE: This initiative failed in 2003. I haven't been able to learn whether a 2004 initiative passed. However, I've read references to California being the only state to ban racial classifications in its data collection.)

• "In Southern states, where the 'one drop rule' had been most ferociously enforced, 'black and other' individuals tend to be even rarer than one would expect judging from their large black share of the population. [Demographer William H.] Frey noted, 'The identification of blacks with their race is much more distinct in the South than in other parts of the country.'"

Race Now Part 2: How White Are Blacks? How Black Are Whites?

• ["{T}he 'one drop' rule helped make African-Americans and European-Americans into two social groups whose members — despite sometimes being highly varied in ancestry — are perhaps more distinct on average in their family trees than the arbitrariness of the 'one drop' would lead you to initially assume."

• "The subject of black-white admixture is particularly complicated because, since the later 17th Century, Americans with virtually any visible sub-Saharan African ancestry (the so-called 'one drop of blood') have been socially categorized as simply African." In 1997, when Tiger Woods won his first Master's, some Black Americans criticized him "for not submitting to the 'one drop' definition." (Woods is half East Asian, a quarter sub-Saharan African, an eighth European, and an eighth Native American.)

• In today's America, the "one-drop" rule has potential econoic consequences. "Political conservatives have taken to denouncing [it] — George Will ... called it 'Probably the most pernicious idea ever to gain general acceptance in America' — perhaps because it is used to determine who qualifies for affirmative action for blacks. Many opponents of racial preferences now argue that it is absurd to award benefits based on this arbitrary definition."

Race Now Part 3: Where Did Mexico's Blacks Go?

Most of Sailer's Part 3 is devoted to Mexico's Black population.

His overview of race in Mexico is in stark contrast to the U.S. historical fixation on the degree to which Black blood qualifies one as "Black." His main point: In Mexico, the one-drop rule is irrelevant, but racism is still present. Colorism is an overriding factor, both socially and economically.

However, he circles back to the topic at hand — the one-drop rule — with a somewhat confusing conclusion: "It's often argued these days that race is purely a 'social construct.' This view often puzzles geneticists, such as the forensic anthropologists who are employed by the police to examine hairs left at crime scenes and determine the race of suspects from their DNA."

I suppose it's possible that his bafflement is rooted in the date of his blog: 2002. Significant advances have been made in the time since.

But in response, I would argue that DNA also allows us to determine the physical characteristics of other mammals, and within each species, there are observable differences in these characteristics.