re: #194 Sergey Romanov

Sure, if it’s relative, then he wasn’t a black but whatever the antiquated term was, and he’s not black by our standards. It’s not a black/white issue, metaphorically speaking ;)

Weeelllll…

This is where the whole “social construction of race” thing makes it tricky: being a whatever-blood-quantum meant you were black enough to be discriminated against. If you behaved properly, people would accept that your white inheritance balanced out all of your savage African passions (old school race=character stuff)…but you could always be socially checked and re-designated black.

So…you were black, but if you behaved yourself you could “rise” to being more white (but never totally white, yadda-yadda African passions). We don’t really having a matching racial construct: we’ve got are/are not/are more than one.