“COLORED.”
The case of the child with one-sixteenth Negro blood whom the District of Columbia courts call a “Negro” has brought some comment. The Detroit News says:
“Eventually the courts must draw the line. The dark races when intimately associated with the white in overpowering numbers gradually bleach out. At the fourth remove the descendants are often blond in type. As the court seems to take no account of the actual color of the individual in applying the classification ‘colored,’ it must be assumed that definition must depend upon simple mathematics.”
The Taunton Gazette adds:
“By the same reasoning a man with one-sixteenth Chinese blood is a Chinaman and one-sixteenth of the blood of any race relegates him to that race. As a matter of fact, that question of one-sixteenth is not likely to arise in any case save where it is desired to make out a person a Negro, and that is where the nub of the whole matter rests.
“It is probable that there are thousands of persons in this country with one-sixteenth Negro blood in them who do not know it themselves nor does any one else, for family records are not always carefully kept along these lines.”