Brown the New Black

The term “new black”  is the new slang you see on t-shirts and signs  for everything from “pink is the new black”, “Gay is the new black”, “Obama is the new black” and many more.  And of course, we have the reverse  of the new black and say “Black is the new white.” Well, I believe the new black is brown.

American History  tells us how slavery played a part in defining who is considered Black. In an article on The Biracial Black/White Experience by Dr. Kelly Jackson, explains it well:

The question and concern about the identity of mixed-race people was initially forged in the US during slavery when White, European slave owners began intermingling with their African slaves.  The presence of Black/White biracial individuals who were difficult to discern from Whites threatened the proslavery arguments that Blacks were biologically inferior to Whites.  In order to preserve the sanctity of the institution of slavery as well as protect White masters from having to provide patronage to their half-Black offspring, legislation was developed during the 1600s to classify any Black/White biracial individual as Black.  This became known as the principal of Hypo-descent or the premise that Black blood is considered a contaminate to pure white blood (“one drop rule”) (Brown, 2001; Graves, Jr., 2004).  As Degler (1986) mentions the US is the only country with the exception of Canada that defined people racially by a measurable amount of black blood (Degler, 1986, as cited in Brown, 2001). 

Now, there is so much mixing of racial and ethenic people its hard to tell who is who. For example, Evelyn Lozada on Basket Ball Wives, I thought she was Black but no she is Puerto Rican. Thank God!! She was becoming RACHET in her behavior. And, some of the millenium whites are not aware of the one drop rule. This has allowed the acceptance of statements from celebrities like Tiger Woods who stated he is not Black. Oh, his mother is Asian, was a response from a white man in his 30’s. Well if your father is Black, like Tigers, then you are Black. The Asian gene is a very strong gene. When someone is mixed with Asian it is usually noticeable.

Slowly, there has been a historic decline in the number of whites in America and the fast growth of Latinos are blurring traditional black-white color lines, testing the limits of civil rights laws and reshaping political alliances as “whiteness” begins to lose its numerical dominance. Look at the last presidential election. President Obama didn’t recieve over-whelming white votes but it was the latino vote that won him the election in key states like Florida. Florida has a large cuban population but it was the latino population in Florida that brought the victory to the democratic party. So, when you see a brown person, try and guess their racial or ethenic make up.