Citizenship and nationality have objective legal and identity meanings. Nationality is based on where one is born. Citizenship is based on a country giving you citizenship by birth or through a legal process to become a citizen of that country.
Let us now look at the culture and citizenship of individuals that can claim that they are African American.
Kamala Harris has claimed her African Americanness based on her African heritage and American citizenship, therefore she is an African American. Her father is a Black man from the Caribbean. Her mother is from South Asia. In the Jim Crow South, she would have been identified as a mulatto.
The new Catholic pope, Leo XIV, is also African American. He is a descendent of an African American Creole woman and a European white father. He has African heritage and American citizenship, therefore he is an African American pope. He also spent 20 years in Peru, so he could also be identified as a South American pope.
Dr. Malik Simba, professor emeritus of history at Fresno State, would say that in the Jim Crow South, especially New Orleans, the new pope would have been classified as an octoroon, indicating that he was one-eighth Black. Hence, after 1868, he would have been classified as also being an African American.
He is also a South American pope based on the 20 years he spent in Peru. In a number of ways, our new pope is a Black pope of the Americas: North and South America and a Black pope and leader of the Holy See.
What many people do not know is that his grandparents passed as white. Dr. Henry Louis Gates has indicated that Leo’s grandfather and grandmother, on a 1900 federal census, identified themselves as Black in Louisiana.
On the 1910 federal census,they identified themselves as white, while still living in Louisiana. They then moved to Chicago and passed as white on the 1930 and 1940 federal census. The phenotype of octoroons enabled them to pass as white Americans. Their daughter, Leo’s mother, was also classified as white.
President Dwight Eisenhower was an octoroon also. He was really America’s first Black president. He had a German grandmother who was a Black mulatto. His grandfather was a white German, hence, he had African heritage and American citizenship, therefore he was an African American.
Of course, our second Black president, Barack Obama, had an African father from Kenya and a white European American mother. He also had African heritage and American citizenship, therefore he is African American. In the Jim Crow South, Obama would have been identified as a mulatto.
Obama and Harris have never denied being African American, and both identified with African American culture and theology.
Analyze the character Mary in the current Black movie Sinners. Mary is an octoroon. She passed as a white woman, married a white man for social and legal mobility, but she loved a Black man named Stack. Mary also identified with Black culture and personally identified as a Black woman.
The reader might not know that the actress who portrayed Mary in this film, Hailee Seinfeld, is an octoroon. Her maternal grandfather was half Filipino and half African American. Because of her genetic African heritage, Steinfeld could identify herself as an African American, if she wanted to.
One might ask the question: What then is the purpose behind the use of African American as a separate identity on applications and such? Is it to identify where people might have been born before they became American citizens? Or to identify a class of people who have certain experiences arising from their racial makeup? Is a white person born in Kenya deserving of special access to elite colleges or preference on a job application? If so, why?
It is important to know the ethnic/racial heritage, citizenship and lineage of people immigrating to the United States and applying for American citizenship.
A phenotypically presenting white person, who was born in Africa and then obtains American citizenship, could apply for college and employment as an African American.
He/she is an African American.
America is a multicultural and multiethnic democracy, and it is important to document the different ethnic, racial and related cultures that make up the diversity of North America and the United States.
In conclusion, the one drop rule or hypodescent was used in America to give Black people a status of second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow South and implemented social and legal restrictions upon their upward mobility.
African Americans have Africanized this construct and use the one drop rule as a cultural identifier to promote cultural inclusion. In other words, if you have one drop of African/Black blood, we will accept you as one of us. For the majority of African Americans, if you are mulatto, half Black, quadroon, quarter Black or an octoroon, one-eighth Black, African Americans will identify you as an African/Black person and will accept you as one of them socially and culturally.
The one drop rule was used by white racist and white supremest to exclude Black people from the social and legal benefits of being an American citizen.
Black people use the one drop rule to culturally include genetically mixed African descent peoples into our culture, history and communities.
Yes, Pope Leo XIV is also African American, as well as the other phenotypically melanated and non-melanated persons listed above.
In the words of Busta Rhymes in his 2009 song, “If You Don’t Know Now You Know.”
For further information on the construct of passing, reference the 2021 movie Passing and the book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America by Allyson Hobbs.
