Hypodescent

Hypodescent is a social rule of racial classification by which the children of unions between members of different groups are assigned to the subordinate or lower-status group, regardless of their ancestry or appearance. The best known example is the one-drop rule in the United States, under which any known Black ancestry made a person Black, a principle codified in many state laws and upheld by courts, as in Plessy v. Ferguson. The term was popularized by the anthropologist Marvin Harris, who contrasted it with more fluid Latin American systems. F. James Davis's Who Is Black? traced the history and politics of the one-drop rule, and Pierre van den Berghe analyzed it within systems of racial caste and the protection of dominant group boundaries. Michael Omi and Howard Winant's racial formation theory explains how categories are socially and politically constructed, while Eduardo Bonilla-Silva described racialized social systems. Paul Spickard and Maria Root have studied mixed-race identity, and the introduction of multiracial census options in 2000 marked a shift. Critics note that hypodescent persists informally. Hypodescent remains central to research on race, classification, identity, inequality, and law.