What Makes you Black?

What Makes you Black?

Ebony Magazine
Volume 38, Number 3 (January 1983)
pages 115-118

Vague definition of race is the basis for court battles

Imagine going to get a passport so you and your spouse can take a vacation in South America. Its all
a formality, you reason; people just want to make sure you’re who and what you say you are. You fill
out the form and, to your bewilderment, a clerk tells you she can’t give you the passport because
you’re of a different race than what you claim to be.

It happened to 48-year-old Susie Guillory Phipps, who lives in Sulphur, La. She had been thinking all
along that she was White, but her birth certificate indicated she was “Colored.”

“I was sick,” she later told reporters. “I couldn’t believe it.” She said she went home crying and told
her husband she didn’t want to take the trip. It was the beginning of a 5-year court battle to get
the State of Louisiana to change her birth certificate and the certificates of her six brothers and
sisters. She also wants the states racial classification law declared unconstitutional. The law,
approved by the Louisiana legislature in 1970, states that a person is Black if he or she has “1/32
Negro blood.” […]

So far, Mrs. Phipps has spent some $20,000 to change her racial status to White. A genealogist
hired by the state has concluded she is 3/32 Black.
 Mrs. Phipps’ case (Susie Smith vs. the State of
Louisiana), which might be decided very soon, is the
latest of a number of similar cases that have
occurred over the years. A celebrated case developed
during the 1920s when Leonard Kip Rhinelander,
the son of millionaire society leader Philip
Rhinelander, contended his wife deceived him about
her race before their marriage

In a later case, Ralph Dupas, a prizefighter who

fought and lost to Sugar Ray Robinson in 1963, was
barred from fighting Whites in Louisiana in the late
1950s when word surfaced that he was Black.
(Louisiana at that time didn’t allow interracial
athletics). He failed in his bid to prove he was White.

Earlier, another Louisiana prizefighter, Bernard

Docusen, wasn’t allowed to fight Whites in Louisiana
because of reports that his mother was Black. He was
later recognized as White when it was discovered his
mother was White.

Just what does make a person Black? The fundamental problem here, according to experts
interviewed for and cited in this article, is that there is no generally accepted scientific definition of
race. Another related problem is the inconsistency in the classification of people in the three
traditional racial groupings — Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid. In current practice, Black genes
define and dominate White genes. One Black ancestor, for example, makes an Anglo-Saxon or a
Chinese person “Black.” But, for some strange reason, the rule doesn’t work the other way, and one
Chinese or Anglo-Saxon ancestor doesn’t make a Black person Chinese or Anglo-Saxon. And it is
interesting to note that if the “one-Black” rule were applied to the other races, the racial composition
of the United States would change markedly. Dr. Munro Edmonson, a professor of anthropology at
Tulane University, says the average American White person has five percent traceable Black genes
and the average American Black person has 25 percent traceable White genes.

Since the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1896, according to Illinois State University sociology
professor F. James Davis, American courts have explicitly or implicitly taken “what is called ‘judicial
notice’ of what is presumed to be ‘common knowledge’—that a Negro is someone with some Negro
ancestry, and who is therefore known in the community as a Negro.” This has also been the general
practice of the Bureau of the Census. […]

The criteria for designating race vary among states, indicating the problem is national. In Vermont,
for instance, state officials classify newborn babies of racially mixed parentage as “mixed.” In North
Carolina, children of racially mixed parentage aren’t classified at all; the only reference to race is to
that of the parents. Officials in Mississippi might resolve the matter by “inquiring of the principals,”
says Attorney General Bill Allain. He adds, “Whether this is a correct assumption or not, I am not
prepared to say, but it seems logical.” In West Virginia, says Assistant Attorney General Micheal L.
Harper, the state’s Department of Health reports that “racial classification is done for the purpose of
statistics only … [and] they use the guidelines set down by the National Center for Health Statistics …
According to those guidelines, a child is classified as Black if either parent is Black.” In Pennsylvania,
“the mother at the time of birth provides the information for the birth certificate,” reports Paul E.
Waters, executive deputy attorney general. “There is no request for the child’s race, only for that of
the parents. No birth certificate in Pennsylvania designates the race of the individual.” Florida
officials, like Philadelphia officials, ask the mother to specify the child’s race. But they will go a step
further and ask other family members. “Sometimes people absolutely refuse to say anything,” says
Gordon Bunch, administrator of the Florida Department of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville. “We
(then) leave the space blank.” In Texas, the father’s race determines the race of the child.

Jack Westholz, the State of Louisiana’s attorney in the Phipps case, has taken issue with the
emphasis on the state’s racial classification “law,” which he says gives the impression that the state is
trying to place newborn babies in racial categories. […] “Today, we do not attempt to classify
anybody by race. We provide racial data in terms that are acceptable to the federal government. We
provide no names, just statistics.” As for Mrs. Phipps’ claim to be White, Westholz says he can offer
no refutation. “She looks like a White person with a good sun tan,” he says. But on the matter of her
mixed ancestry he says, “There are a lot of people in Louisiana with a case like this.”

The concept of “judicial notice” of what is “common knowledge” in the community might be difficult
to satisfy in the Phipps case. During testimony that began in September, Mrs. Phipps testified: “I am
all White. I was raised as a White child. I went to White schools. I married White twice.” But Alcina
Jordan, a first cousin of Mrs. Phipps’ father, Dominic, states in a deposition, “Some people thought I
was White. I told them I was not White, I was Colored.” Of Mrs. Phipps’ father, she states, “He was a
Colored man, just like the rest of us. We were all raised together.” […]

Whatever the outcome of the Phipps case, the problem of racial classification will continue, for the
national definition of race is still vague. In addition, there is an inherent problem with defining a
nonscientific phenomenon such as race. Says Dr. Edmonson, “There is no such thing as a genetically
pure race.”

But for Blacks in the United States, racial identity has had a meaning that transcends scientific
definition. It has nothing to do with racist attempts to form legal categories of separation. Centuries
of common struggles have brought Blacks into a cultural arena where sociological factors—folkways,
religion, music and speech patterns, to name some – have become as pronounced as any set of
physical traits. And whereas, as a rule, Black genes have dominated biologically, they have also
dominated sociologically.

A Black person who appears to be White but who has grown up in the Black community, lived
otherwise as a Black and endured sneering remarks from both sides knows he or she is Black.
Finally, there is the intangible and perhaps abstract feeling known simply as soul. And, like soul, race
is better explained than legally defined.

EBONY – January, 1983