I am wondering why people who are born from white and black parents still called black. Sometimes even when they are only 1/3 or 1/4 black they are still called black.
In: Biology
Only the US really does this. Most other nations have explicit distinctions between black and partially black (or native and partially native such as in much of south America), which may or may not be further broken down.
In the US it stems from old laws on slavery and later racist laws that mainly used “pure white” as the dividing line. Most other nations either had pressure to recognize the mixed children of wealthy white men, or decided to make multiple classes of people instead of only one dividing line.
It’s often a shock for black Americans traveling to say a Caribbean country to find they aren’t considered ‘black’ there.
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