Tamera Mowry and the One Drop Rule

I was just keeping myself relevant on Miss Jia's blog, when I came across this article.  Apparently, Tamera [from the 90s show Sister Sister] married a white man.  Why is this relevant you may ask? Because Tamera is black, and to a lot of people, even now in the year 2011, people are still giving that sort of thing a second thought.  The real shocker here is [get ready for it] Tamara is half white!  Her mother is black and her father is white. According to Mowry in an Essence.com interview:

"I’m a product of an interracial marriage — and I never really grew up seeing color. I honestly realized that my dad was White when someone told me in middle school."

I can totally relate to her on this one.  I, too, grew up in a multi racial household.  My mom is Filipino and my step dad was black.  I went to school with a very wide variety of ethnicities and never gave a second thought to whether the person sitting next to me as Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Black, or White. To a majority of the country [mainly people in the midwest and south] this is completely unbelievable, but I digress.

The real focus here is that Tamera is, in fact, half white.  So why is it such a travesty to some in the blogsphere and twitter community that she has decided to get married to a white man.  There wouldn't have been a story here had she decided to marry a black man, but she's only half black, just as much as she is half white.

Enter The One Drop Rule - The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of black blood" was considered as black. 
                                                                                                                      Wikipedia

Yes, it's the ugly One Drop Rule rearing it's closed-minded little head again here in this day and age.  It's the same rule that governed the minds of those people who were proclaiming that Barack Obama was the first "black" president.  It's the same sad mindset that is responsible for so much of the unfounded judgement that so many people on this planet are passing, and before they even get to know a person.  It's even worse when someone does know a person, as we pretty much all know that the Mowry sisters are mixed, and STILL decides to "feel a certain way" when it comes to that individual's life choice.

So long as you have one drop of black blood in you, you are automatically black.  And apparently, to a great number of people, that is a bad thing, hence the rule.  Now... I could look at this from another perspective.  Perhaps black people are saying "Oh she should have married a black man because she's black!" much like Italians want their children to marry an Italian because of the pride of their ethnicity.  It's just... I haven't heard too many people proclaiming that they're black and proud lately... not since James Brown's days.