One drop theory
- This article should be merged with one-drop rule
The One drop theory is the belief that a person with any traceable non-white, especially African ancestry, should be regarded as not being "white," irrespective of the person's own apparent physical characteristics (even "one drop" of non-white "blood" disqualifying the person from being reckoned as white). The idea behind this belief is to discourage miscegenation by treating all offspring of same as "non-white" and then discriminating against them accordingly.
As an alternative to this theory, various terms were coined, during the 19th Century, to denote persons with varying degrees of African ancestry; these terms included mulatto for one-half black, quadroon for one-quarter black, octoroon for one-eighth black, and quintroon (or much less commonly, hexadecaroon) for one-sixteenth black. These terms (with the arguable exception of mulatto) are rarely if ever used today.
Though rooted in slavery, the theory still carries considerable weight in American society, as even most African-Americans self-identify as "black" if even the slightest evidence of African ancestry is present (and the mass media tends to concur).
Black Americans also use many slang terms among themselves to describe the varying shades of skin tone found among them, including chocolate for a dark-skinned African-American and high yella for a light-skinned one. These latter expressions are not directly based on the number of "black" or "white" ancestors, however.
