“For instance, consider the case of an American black couple who adopt a dark-skinned child from India. Imagine this child was adopted young enough not to develop an Indian accent. His parents raise him exactly the same way they raise his black siblings: as a full-fledged member of the black community. As he grows up, he becomes subject to the same discrimination and mistreatment that characterize the plight of his fellow blacks. He also attends a black church, participates in black cultural events, and self-identifies as black. In short, when it comes to his race, this child is virtually indistinguishable from any other member of the black community.
According to the ancestral account of race, however, this child is of a different race. His ancestry is Indian, not black. Or, to take a different example, consider someone like Dolezal who did turn out to have a black ancestor. According to a popular version of the ancestral account of race, this person would be black, given the ongoing and highly problematic use of the historically racist “one-drop rule” of black racial membership. Are we really prepared to allow the acceptance of someone like Dolezal to hinge on such a fact?”
Read more:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hypa.12327/full
