Super Amanda's Reviews > One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

One of the most fascinating things about academic charlatans who have no relevance to multi racial narratives are their attempts to take ownership of our lived experiences. Yaba Blay whom via her own words has never had to defend her racial background nor ever been questioned and vetted regarding her race shouldn’t be helming projects like this. (1)ne Drop is a mediocre, poorly researched, hateful and deviously skewed attempt to keep the remnants of Jim Crow and Eugenics alive in the 21st century, ceated by an author who doesn’t descend from US slaves (or slave narratives anywhere in The Americas).

Just as hypo-descent was being killed off by Millennials, Blay via her own admitted First Generation resentment towards Multi Racial Americans showed up to provide life support. Yaba Blay’s open disgust directed at people of Louisiana Creole descent is an integral part of her brand identity. Blay’s internalized White supremacy permeates this project. Her overwhelming need to control the future of multi racial identity in academia and media while butchering the collective narratives of those who refuse/refused to defer to the one drop rule (and thus defy White supremacy) is deeply disturbing.

Every single person in the book was meticulously chosen to fit the “one drop of “black blood” makes a person black” narrative. No one with Black ancestry who identified as White or as a Multi racial White person was included or referenced in a non pejorative manner. Each personal essay is more or less the same ones we’ve heard over and over again in the White msm and in White literary tropes. Each “narrative” is specifically designed to be comfortable for readers who’ve never had their racial identity attacked.


The Black multi racial narratives and photographs serve as a source of wonderment primarily for White liberals similar to a souvenir tour book of carefully curated objects from a museum. Forward thinking people of all races and genders should be disgusted at (1)ne Drop’s “two faced Janus” core that strips the right of self identity away under the guise of finding positivity in Black identity. The racist title of the book ensures that the sickness continues on into future generations just as Walter Plecker, Naomi Drake, Adolf Hitler et al. intended it to.

The book opens with a catty recounting of the 1980s court case concerning Susie Guillory Phipps; a White woman with virtually no Black ancestry who unbeknownst to herself was a victim of the White supremacist one drop laws in Louisiana. This meant Phipps despite being White found out she was legally “Black” when at 43 years old she applied for a passport and saw her birth certificate. Phipps sued the state of Louisiana to not only have her rightful identity restored but to remove the laws from the books a strike a blow against white supremacy. Phipps was treated mostly like a freak in the msm newspapers and periodicals of the Reagan 80s. She is not only purposefully misquoted by Blay but her trauma around being misracialized is exploited in a lurid manner. Decades on if scholars pick up this book up they will be troubled by Yaba Blay the same way we now view cishet males who pilloried people in the 1960s that didn’t fit into the gender binary. Or the Conservatives in 2021 who complain that , “there are too many genders now and none of them are real.”

Just as gender fluidity isn’t new, the US colorline was from the beginning malleable, porous and mutable. But Yaba Blay wants you to believe this only happened through “lies and deception” or a “rejection of Blackness” rather than personal choice, lost narratives and other complex factors that she has ZERO understanding of. Even a few episodes of fellow hypo-descent obsessive Henry Louis Gates’ Finding Your Roots and a cursory glance at the intricate legal history of the US Color Line (little of which is included in (1)ne Drop) trumps her tired passing tropes. I’ve stopped counting how many episodes of Finding Your Roots where Gates is able to unearth multi racial narratives in the 19th century where people weren’t passing.

For centuries there have been people who do not fit into the racial binary (or chose not to.) Blay publishes falsehoods when she claims, “the One Drop goes back to slavery.” One drop laws (proper) started with US Eugenics and the rise of Jim Crow in the very early 20th century. What Blay wants hidden from her readership is that Southern states (not just the “Louisiana Exception” as she calls it) legally permitted persons with one-fourth to one-eighth "Negro blood" into the white race, and were even more lenient when the person or family was accepted by the local white community.* During Reconstruction (1865-1877) which Yaba Blay completely skips over, multi racial Whites, Blacks, Free people of color etc continued to live and marry under the specter of white supremacy. (Yaba Blay simplistically lumps all these narratives together as “Black people.”)

In 1896 Plesssy Vs Ferguson (separate but “equal” Apartheid) was upheld by SCOTUS specifically to ensure that Black and Free People of Color could not advance as thousands had prospered against all odds after slavery. Hard won achievements both sociocultural and legislative made during the Reconstruction Era were rolled back. Post Plessy many free people of color, Black and multi racial Whites continued to live their personal lives as they had chosen. Often Multi racial family narratives became completely White or defied the color line unabated. In the 1920s the only “passing” that many incoming immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa and the Guyanas/Suriname did was through Ellis Island. Passing” is a misbegotten term to describe a person’s right to their own racial narrative as well as trying to survive white supremacy.

Of course millions of Hispanics and Middle Eastern Americans have visible Black ancestry they do not claim but Yaba Blay ignores their “rejection of Blackness.” She also conveniently fails to mention how these Hispanic Americans sided with White supremacy during segregation against Black Americans. In 2021, European-Non Hispanic multi racial narratives that reject the One drop are attacked by Black identifying people primarily over 40 and their cowering while liberal “allies” who share the mindset that Blay pushes with this book. They are also the primary enforcers of the One Drop on social media. The Black identifying One drop mob exhibited appalling behavior via their treatment of Johnny Cash‘s first wife Vivian Liberto and her daughters upon the release of the 2020 documentary My Darling Vivian. The vicious attacks on Vivian’s identity and character by the One Drop contingent were so hateful that a PBS affiliate had to actually pull Roseanne Cash’s family ancestry video down from YouTube, re-upload and turn off comments. Blay and others feels it’s their right because of the historical oppression of Black Americans that they get to reclassify, label and “claim” people with complex and/or multi racial narratives. When called out on this they conveniently blame “white supremacy.” An excuse which is wearing thin.

To wit Blay has said in multiple interviews that Susan Guillory Phipps “knew” about her racial identity and was “passing.” This is not only historically inaccurate but libelous. Conveniently of course Susie Guillory Phipps is now deceased as of 2019. During past decade since Yaba Blay created One Drop she never sought to interview her later in life. And in her life Phipps was VERY clear about her racial identity but Yaba Blay rejects Phipps’ truth and robs her of rightful narrative- imagine the outcry if this was reversed! When Yaba Blay mocks Phipps she sends a clear message: “You will be treated like a thing to beat on by people who identify as one race should you not defer to our respective worldviews.” Yet at the same time she’s inadvertently telling White people in today’s USA if they can trace their ancestry back to slavery they too are eligible for slavery reparations- on almost zero ancestry. Claims that would be completely legitimate given the legal history of the color line that Blay desperately wants to preserve. Be careful what you wish for.


In a recent promotional interview for this book with the White Liberal msm psychologist Brene Brown, both women gasp at and mock Phipps’ narrative. For someone who “hates white supremacy” Yaba Blay has no problem encouraging white people to be micro aggressive and suspicious of multi racial identity. The target audience for this squalid book is strictly for those same woke Karens like Brene Brown who get their jollies watching Imitation Of Life (where Black ancestry is a taint and a tragedy). Or those Black identified people attacking Anthony Ekundayo Lennon for being multi racial or the aforementioned Vivian Liberto Cash’s overwhelming Italian/European identity.

Unsurprisingly Yaba Blay’s views and this book (first published digitally over a decade ago) are widely despised in the multi racial community. Yaba Blay is viewed as a backwards thinking pseudo social anthropologist with a chip on her shoulder. She needs to stop being both the go-to talking head and self anointed spokesperson for multi racial identity and historical narratives around “passing.” She’s like a mechanic who’s never owned a car. Calling out “White racial purity” while passionately protecting one of its most effective tools. And I hope the descendants of Suzie Guillory Phipps sue Yaba Blay for libel and the unauthorized usage of her image and life rights which is unforgivable.

Finally the historical research is barely above Newsweek magazine level. One Drop is full of mistakes and omissions that I don’t know where to begin. Skipping the entire period of Reconstruction is dismal scholarship because it’s such a pivotal point of reference for race in United States. Setting up much of what we now face as a nation. But that would be another review. A far better book for scholars and readers is “Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule” by Frank W Sweet.

*Reference White Racial Identity, Racial Mixture, and the "One Drop Rule" by A.D. Powell