For Lindsay: Halle & the One-Drop Rule

My good buddy Lindsay asked me about how I felt about Halle's recent comments regarding her daughter Nahla and the so-called "One-Drop Rule." Here is my treatise.

Here is the conversation in question, cited in the March 2011 edition of Ebony Magazine:

Ebony: [Nahla's] father is French-Canadian Gabriel Aubry. Do you consider Nahla to be Black or multiracial? How do you think about it?

Berry: What I think is that that's something she's going to have to decide. I'm not going to put a label on it. I had to decide for myself, and that's what she's going to have to decide--how she identifies herself in the world. And I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her. That's how I identified myself. But I feel like she's Black. I'm Black and I'm her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory.

There's no set-in-stone way to raise a biracial or multiracial child, and trying to raise a child who is secure and happy is hard enough without having to help him/her work through the confusion that often comes with being biracial or multiracial. I laud Berry for not wanting to place labels on her daughter; however, I have a problem with implementing a practice used by slave-masters to oppress black people in one's parenting.

Of course Nahla's black. Halle's half-black, and she'll undoubtedly identify with her mom's heritage. Also, society will see her as black because she has a mother who self-identifies as such. However, Nahla is also white. Her father is white. It'd be erroneous for any of us, including Halle, to act as if that part of her doesn't exist and that we treat her as if that part of her doesn't exist. How can we ask any biracial or multiracial child to shun any part of her/him?

I can't help but wonder if Halle's seeing her daughter as black has to do with the recent firestorm with her ex and Nahla's father Gabriel Aubrey. I wonder if she's so embittered by their break-up and his wanting more custodial rights that it colors the way she sees her child, that Halle wants to see her daughter as identifying more with her in this custody battle than her father. I wonder if it's a way to make her daughter love the part of herself given by her mother more than the part of her given by her father.

So of course having black blood makes you black; however, that doesn't mean that a child has to choose or be exclusively one race or ethnicity. We have to allow children to choose their own identity, and it shouldn't be influenced by society. If we allowed others to define us, we'll be forever miserable. We have to live this life; we have the right to decide who we are, whether we identify as black or white or multiracial. We have the right to love every single part of ourselves.

Let's leave behind slave practices. Why use the antiquated "One-Drop Rule" to govern our relationships and self-identities, a rule meant to oppress that is still doing so by forcing children to deny a part of themselves?

I don't know everything about Halle's situation, but there is more here than is being said. I wish we would stop operating with worthless and baseless traditions that do more harm that good when it comes to how we relate with each other, how we perceive each other, and how we receive ourselves.

That's my answer, Lindsay, and I'm sticking to it!