Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

one-drop rule

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.66 in modern English

Syllables: one--drop rule
IPA

14

Scrabble Score

11

Letters

3

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The notion that one drop of black blood (i.e., any African ancestry at all) makes a person black.

American usage

Example Sentences

"[T]he notorious historian William Estabrook Chancellor […] helped assemble a controversial biographical portrait accusing President Warren Harding of covering up his family’s “colored” past. […] Under the one-drop rule of American race relations, Chancellor claimed, the country had inadvertently elected its “first Negro president.”"
"It was the wadjelas that created the ‘one drop’ rule, that defined anybody with a single bla(c)k ancestor as black. They did that to separate people, to create a caste system, to protect the notion of whiteness, to protect whiteness from the merest ‘impurity’, from the merest influx of colour."

Usage

American usage

Inflected Forms

the one-drop rule (canonical)

Phrases

reverse one-drop rule

Frequently Paired Words

miscegenation

Questions

What does one-drop rule mean?: The notion that one drop of black blood (i.e., any African ancestry at all) makes a person black.

How to pronounce one-drop rule

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