*Black History and Blood Quantum were affirmed on this date in 1661. Blood quantum, a concept that evolved during the period of chattel slavery to distinguish Blacks from whites, refers to the blood amount of a person's particular ancestry.
The U.S. government also used it to categorize Indigenous Native Americans, and ironically, the racial concept was later adopted by Native Americans. This date was chosen because it aligns with America's enactment of the Three Fifth Compromise. The Virginia Colony was the first to adopt "race" (blood quantum) laws that limited the civil and land rights of American Indians and Africans based on blood degree: 1/2 Native ancestry = mulatto/not Native; 1/8 African ancestry = Black (Forbes, 2010). "Any amount of African ancestry, no matter how remote, and regardless of phenotypical appearance, makes a person Black. For Indigenous Indians, in stark contrast, any non-Indian ancestry compromises indigeneity, producing 'half breeds,' a rule that persists in the form of contemporary blood quantum regulations today. As opposed to enslaved people, whose reproduction increased their owners' wealth, Indigenous people obstructed settlers' access to land, so their increase was counterproductive.
In this way, the restrictive racial classification of Indians directly boosted the reason for elimination." For context, according to blood quantum, a person whose father is full-blood and whose mother is not Native American would be considered one-fourth Native American. Historically and in contemporary society, tribes have used blood quantum as one of the criteria to determine enrollment in a tribe. For example, the Apache uses a minimum blood quantum of one-eighth, while the Navajo requires one-fourth. This entry will consider the historical significance of blood quantum, its social significance, and current debates about it.
Historical Significance
Once an American spoken phrase, the one-drop rule morphed into a legal term used to separate white citizens from all others. Among Native people, blood quantum is an ingrained fact of everyday existence. As a construct, blood quantum is a construct that attempts to calculate the degree of racial inheritance for individuals. The concept embodies the assumption of racial purity and degree of racial mixture, with implications for social, economic, and political rights and statuses. Since its origin and institutional interjection into numerous federal policies concerning peoples of indigenous descent, it remains one of the most controversial and divisive issues afflicting contemporary Native North America. The origins of blood quantum are linked to the development of American slavery.
By 1661, after Virginia formally recognized the institution of slavery, other colonies formalized slavery as a legal economic and social institution. Paralleling the development of slavery was the evolving construction and separation of races based on phenotype (In genetics, the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism). Using color along with other phenotypic characteristics to define racial and social inferiority was supported by a growing body of philosophical and scientific literature in that era that held that Africans, Native Americans, and mulattoes possessed inferior intellectual, moral, and social qualities that stood in direct opposition to "whiteness" and its inherent qualities. Race and racism became part of the North American political and economic landscape. Blood quantum was used to track racial ancestry and define legal rights.
In 1705, the state of Virginia enacted a series of laws to deny civil liberties to any Negro, mulatto, or Indian. The law also applied to generations, defining children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as inferior members of society based on ancestry. Following Virginia's example, other colonies adopted similar laws, using blood quantum to determine the status, privilege, and rights of a free person or slave. The growing body of laws, although initially rooted in the institution of chattel slavery, evolved into a legal and social system that measured the extent of participation and privileges associated with full citizenship under the banner of "whiteness." Once blood quantum became established as a mechanism for assessing inferiority, its use continued until the 19th century.
Increasingly, the development and progress of U.S. society were guided by the belief in the nation's racial destiny. Dr. Samuel Morton's 1839 publication, Crania Americana, asserted that Native Americans had a "deficiency of higher mental powers" and an "inaptitude for civilization," making it impossible for Natives and Europeans to interact. Thus, the building of a white-American civilization, including its future social and moral development, would be determined by its racial composition. In the decades of the Jim Crow era, Tennessee adopted a one-drop statute first in Tennessee in 1910 and in Virginia under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (engaging the passage of similar laws in several other states). Eugenics and the general superiority of white privilege have fed the blood quantum since its idea became an American plan of the country's founders.
