In America, the one drop rule refers to the idea that if a person has even just a way back ancestor who was black, they in turn are considered black. This rule only really became a norm once Africans were brought to America to be slaves. Before this the children of a couple always followed the man's heritage, race, and class. Once Africans were bought to America and had children with their white slave owners or any other white males, the mixed children were a problem. People didn't want to see these new mixed children as white so the one drop rule came into effect and now they followed the race that was lower on the social hierarchy.
In the book, Fires of Hatred by Norman Naimark, there is a chapter about a conflict in Yugoslavia with Serbian Christians and Muslims in Bosnian near the end of the twentieth century. Many Serbian Christian men sought to get rid of and punish Muslim families by raping their women. Rape was used here as an ethnic cleansing tool to push out the Muslim Families intending for many of these families to leave for their lives and sake of their women's honor. Many of these attacks were occurred between an attacker and victim from the same village, even often former neighbors and former acquaintances. This tool was also used to create pregnancies so the victims could bear "little Chetniks". Some women were even kept incarcerated in order to make the women keep their pregnancies.
Naimark's book states that the European Union estimates about 20,000 rapes occurred while the Bosnian government claims it is closer to 50,000. These rapes took place for two reasons. The first was because the Muslim families would see it as a blight on their families' honor- even the threat of rape was enough to push some families out and this would speed up the process of cleansing their land from this unwanted ethic group. The second reason was to create pregnancies that would humiliate the Muslim women and grow the Serbian population.
I would argue that the American one drop rule of having any of the "lower" race blood in someone makes them that race is a tool of keeping the races separate. But this separation is not a function of pushing them out. The social hierarchy of the time, when the one drop rule first came about in America, needed these African workers, but they needed these workers to stay below white land owners. So, race and the one drop rule was used as a tool to keep the race there but also in a lower status.
On the other side of the coin, the one drop rule in Bosnian and of the Serbian Christians was used as a tool to create more of their "own kind". The Serbian men saw their children from raped Muslim women as their own and equal to children born from other Serbian Christian women. This kept their race going and started to push out the unwanted ethnic group. In this case, the one drop rule is used though rape as an ethnic cleansing tool. By creating and accepting these pregnancies as "little Chetniks" the unwanted ethnic group can be replaced and pushed out.
Many people in America can still see the one drop rule in action, but it is even more apparent that this it still around when we consider these Bosnian rapes to create "little Chetniks" occurred as recently as the 1990s. Below I will list two other links to places to read about the one drop rule and it's argued current state.
No comments:
Post a Comment