Under the “One Drop Rule,” Kamala Harris is "Black"

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on August 3, 2024

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her parents.

An Editorial Opinion

Since the 1600s, the rule of law in America regarding mixed race people is simple -- any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood") is considered "Black" (“Negro” or “Colored” in historical terms).  This legal principle is called the "One Drop Rule." 

As discussed below, by law, one drop of Black blood makes an American a Black, Negro, or Colored citizen. The American legal system recognizes and protects "Aryan racial purity" to this day.

Ancestry Determines Racial Classifications in America.

Kamala Harris' father, Donald J. Harris, is a Jamaican American of African descent.  (Note: Jamaica has White, Black, and other races of citizens). Kamala Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, is an American of Indian descent.

In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans of Indian descent like former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley (who claims to be “White” on her voter registration application) and Kamala Harris’ mother (who is listed as "White" on Harris' birth certificate) are “Colored.”  This case has never been overruled.

Before she changed her name and tried to pass for "White," Nikki Haley’s real name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Kamala Harris has never changed her birth name or tried to pass for "White."

Harris' 1964 California-issued birth certificate does not assign a racial classification to her. Contrary to the applicable legal mandate in the Bhagat Singh Thind case, the birth certificate listed Harris' mother as "Caucasian." As a matter of law, however, her mother was "Colored."

Kamala Harris' California birth certificate.

In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the use of the One Drop Rule to prevent interracial marriages by overturning the Virginia Racial Integrity Act.  The Rule has been allowed to continue for racial classification purposes.

The One Drop Rule is Alive and Well Today

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the One Drop Rule to stand by refusing to hear a case against Louisiana’s "racial" classification criteria, as applied to Susie Guillory Phipps

in Doe v. Department of Health and Human Resources, 479 U.S. 1002 (1986)

In 1977, Susie Guillory Phipps, who was then forty-three years old, found herself in need of her birth certificate to process a passport application.  Believing all her life that she was White, Mrs. Phipps was stunned when a clerk at the New Orleans Division of Vital Records showed her that she was designated as "Colored."  

As Mrs. Phipps told reporters, "It shocked me.  I was sick for three days."  The only person apparently aware of Mrs. Phipps' racial designation on her birth certificate was the mid-wife who wrote it down. "I was brought up white, I married white twice."

Mrs. Phipps' racial classification was assigned under an old Louisiana state law which allowed anyone with "any traceable amount" of black ancestry to be legally defined as "Black."  According to the state's genealogical investigation, Mrs. Phipps’ great-great-great-great grandmother was a Black slave named Margarita.  Given this information, the state stood by the designation of "Colored" on Mrs. Phipps' birth certificate.

Ms. Phipps sued the state of Louisiana to change her racial designation from "Colored" to "White."  She lost.  In 1986, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied her appeal.  Later that same year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case and thus left standing the lower court's decision declaring Mrs. Phipps to be a Black person.

Epilogue

In America, a person’s race impacts everything.  It is deeply rooted in law.  Slavery era racial classifications are still protected in modern-day laws. The One Drop Rule is a never-ending, present-day vestige of slavery.

Blacks have known about the One Drop Rule since we arrived in America as "chattel property" in the hellholes of slave ships in 1619. Whites are oblivious to the Rule unless they become entangled in the Susie Guillory Phipps-type situation.

Kamala Harris has far more than one drop of Black blood.  Her father is a Jamaican American of African descent.  Legally, Kamala Harris is Black.  End of story.

With this lesson in history and law, the public debate should now shift to which presidential nominee is most committed to ending the dominance of race in American law, politics, and life.