Literature Review #3, Who is Black?

 

Author

Floyd James Davis had a long, varied, and distinguished career. He attended St. Augustine College in Raleigh, North Carolina for two years. He also fought honorably in both World War Two and the Korean War, obtaining the rank of Corporal.  He also earned a Mechanical Machinist License from the Florence Darlington Technical College, working in manufacturing for a total of 25 years. He was an activist and active member of the NAACP as the Treasurer of the South Carolina State Conference of Branches for the NAACP, as well as being the Regional Coordinator of Region Seven and later the President of the Hartsville Branch of the NAACP. It should also be noted that he served on several committees for the City of Hartsville and was a member of the Hartsville Chamber of Commerce. Floyd’s accomplishments reach far past this, but suffice to say that he’s written a whopping six books on the topic of social justice and functions on top of his activism; Society and the Law: New Meanings for an Old Profession (1962), Social Problems: Enduring Major Issues and Social Change (1970), The Collective Deginition of Deviance (1974), Minority-Dominated Relations: A Sociological Analysis (1978), Understanding Minority-Dominant Relations: Sociological Contributions (1979), and finally Who is Black?: One Nation’s Definition (1992). This life’s work of social activism makes him and his book a perfect source.

Summary and Value

Who is Black? focuses on how the United States has defined blackness and who counts as black since before the birth of our nation. It is a study of human and social rights as they relate to race and what factors and histories play a role in these rights. This includes inter-racial marriage (formerly known as miscegenation), the hypodescent laws of the “one-drop rule”, multi-racial identity, and more. It has also been updated in 2001 to address changed in the one-drop rule. This book is an in-depth view of race in America and how we as a nation, society, and culture, have approached it throughout our history.

Key Terms

Hypodescent: “the automatic assignment by the dominant culture of children of a mixed union or sexual relations between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group.”

Miscegenation: “the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types.”

One-Drop Rule: a specific form of hypodescent which focuses primarily on black or afro heritage and assigning legal status, privileges, or limitations thereof.

Quotes

“Now you must understand that this is just a name we have. I am not black and you are not black either, if you go by the evidence of your eyes… Anyway, black people are all colors. White people don’t look all the same way, but there are more different kinds of us than there are of them. Then too, there is a certain stage [at] which you cannot tell who is white and who is black… Looks don’t mean much. The things that makes us different is how we think. What we believe is important, the ways we look at life” (Gwaltney, 1)

“The nations’ answer to the question ‘Who is black?’ has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry… this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.” (Davis, 5)

“Although various operational instructions have been tried, the definition of black used by the Census Bureau has been the nation’s cultural and legal definition: all persons with any known black ancestry” (Davis, 11)

“Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world… The one-drop rule has long been taken for granted throughout the United States by white and blacks alike, and the federal courts have taken ‘judicial notices’ of it as being a matter of common knowledge… Most Americans seem unaware that this definition of blacks is extremely unusual in other countries, perhaps even unique to the United States, and that Americans define no other minority group in a similar way.” (Davis, 13-15)

Citation

Davis, F. James. 2001. Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press (pp. 1-18 and 31-58)