E notes One Drop is all You Need

Aconversation emerged about Blacks being usurped once again as a select group of entrepreneurial Black women gathered to propose advancing their businesses. The idea that we have been relegated to the current popular terminology, “people of color,” by dumping Blacks into the catch-all group phrase to include those other than white. I refuse to refer to us all as minority, when in fact, Asians, Africans, Aboriginals, Native-Americans, and Brown people which can include those of mixed African and Spanish descent are major. Thrown all together as minorities is disrespectful of the uniqueness of each group and the fact that each represent the dominant race groups on the planet. So how did they all get to be associated with the term minority? The only thing minority about any of these groups is actual balance of their financial standing in the world as individuals which independently is inconsequential, compared to those who are the minority race group by number in the world yet represent the dominant percentage of wealth.

What they do very affectively is to categorize everyone to their liking and name them to establish your relevance or irrelevance, in the world while creating life stations for each group. And so it is, that these descriptive categories attached themselves and follow the people as labeled. Let’s look at the term ‘Blacks,’ to identify one group of people.

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Vol. 1 No 23

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

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To be considered Black in the United States, only one drop of African ancestry is required. That is America’s answer to the question, ‘Who is Black?” This definition reflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation. In the South it became known as the “one-drop rule.’’ It is described in many ways such as the “one Black ancestor rule,” courts have called it the “traceable amount rule,” and anthropologists call it the “hypo-descent rule,” meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation’s definition giving Blacks no choice in the matter. Read carefully and note that this American cultural definition of Blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and Black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.

It should now be apparent that the definition of a Black person as one with any trace of Black African ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs used to justify slavery and the Jim Crow caste system of segregation. Because Blacks are defined according to the onedrop rule, we are a socially constructed category in which there is wide variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense. However, because that category has a definite status position built upon experiences mandated by the society, it has become a self-conscious social group with an ethnic identity.

Editor-in-Chief

Note that not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American Blacks, but it is also unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is Black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition. James Baldwin relates a revealing incident that occurred in 1956 at the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists held in Paris.

The story is told that John Davis the head of the delegation of writers and artists from the United States was introduced by the French chairperson who then asked him why he considered himself Negro, since he certainly did not look like one. Baldwin wrote, “He is a Negro, of course, from the remarkable legal point of view which obtains in the United States, but more importantly, as he tried to make clear to his interlocutor, he was a Negro by choice and by depth of involvement--by experience, in fact.”

The point? Black Americans have evolved from their experience a proud unique people, a mixture of various European whites and Native Americans tribes maintaining some of their African cultures and taking on that of their new world customs incorporating them and creating a hybrid culture.

This group of Blacks in America have emerged to be the thorn in America’s side we are here, and we are not going away. We have contradicted their lies of being less intelligent, childlike, incapable of managing complex and critical thinking, being shiftless and lazy, as we have risen despite all that they have done to stifle and stop us. Black Americans are winners, and we won’t be oppressed and held back any longer by any group. We are here and we are winning no matter how dismal it may seem. One drop is good enough for us as we move mountains to shift our position in this world that’s been constructed to destroy us. At this junction of politics meeting reality, let each of us vote from an informed position.

First, we are all grown here, so it won’t change what the statements say by not looking at them. Next, stop believing that you don’t understand investing and dig in. It is really not as complicated as many might think and for most investors who are using mutual funds, most of the investment work is done for you. In investing, the first thing that you need to live with is the fact that the investment markets generally do 2 things, go up and go down. It has never been the case that the market only does one of these things, and the only real question is how long will it go up or go down. It should also be

By Eric Grant CNW Columnist

noted that whatever you see being reported on television about “the market” doesn’t necessarily reflect how your investments are performing.

In recent times, you may look at your statement and conclude that you have lost money. Before you get upset, take a closer look at your statement and anywhere you see the terms “shares” or “units,” use the word “houses” instead. Note the current “house value” (instead of share or unit value) and the number of houses that you own. If you buy a home for $100,000 and for whatever reason, your neighborhood changes making your home worth $80,000, have you lost money? For most, their knee jerk reaction is yes, but the answer, as long as you continue to own the home, is really no. What you have actually lost is VALUE. Now….If you subsequently sell your home for $80,000, you have then officially lost money.

Real estate, just like the investment markets, goes up and down and in the same way as investments, the only real question is how long it will go up or down. If you buy a share of stock for $100, and its value drops to $80, you have not officially lost $20 until you sell that