question: How can people with dark skin say they're, "Half-white" and white people can say they're, "Half-black"?
comment: No, race is a complicated and mostly made up categorization. It includes culture and characteristics beyond phenotypes including historical affiliation. Its not a good categorization, but its more complicated than just skin tone.
passages: Someone with Sidney Poitier's deep chocolate complexion would be considered white if his hair were straight and he made a living in a profession. That might not seem so odd, Brazilians say, when you consider that the fair-complexioned actresses Rashida Jones ('Parks and Recreation' and 'The Office') and Lena Horne are identified as black in the United States.
   From the late 19th century, the South used a colloquial term, the "one-drop rule", to classify as black a person of any known African ancestry. This practice of hypodescent was not put into law until the early 20th century. Legally the definition varied from state to state. Racial definition was more flexible in the 18th and 19th centuries before the American Civil War. For instance, President Thomas Jefferson held persons who were legally white (less than 25% black) according to Virginia law at the time, but, because they were born to slave mothers, they were born into slavery, according to the principle of "partus sequitur ventrem", which Virginia adopted into law in 1662.
   Blacks in the United States are more racially mixed than whites, reflecting historical experience here, including the close living and working conditions among the small populations of the early colonies, when indentured servants, both black and white, and slaves, married or formed unions. Mixed-race children of white mothers were born free, and many families of free people of color were started in those years. 80 percent of the free African-American families in the Upper South in the censuses of 1790 to 1810 can be traced as descendants of unions between white women and African men in colonial Virginia, not of slave women and white men. In the early colony, conditions were loose among the working class, who lived and worked closely together. After the American Revolutionary War, their free mixed-race descendants migrated to the frontiers of nearby states along with other primarily European Virginia pioneers. The admixture also reflects later conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers, frequently raped African women. There were also freely chosen relationships among individuals of different or mixed races.
   In the United States, hypodescent has often defined children of mixed-race couples as black when one parents is classified as "black", or either is thought to have African descent. That practice seems to be diminishing. 
   In Oklahoma, state laws identified Native Americans as legally white during Jim Crow-era segregation.
   In Brazil, a person's race is based primarily on physical appearance. In Brazil it is possible for two siblings of different colors to be classified as people of different races. Children who are born to a black mother and a European father would be classified as black if their features read as African, and classified as white if their features appeared more European.
   B. W. Gorham performed an experiment in which he presented an actual newscast to white individuals who took a pre-study survey about the amount of time they spent watching cable news TV, network news TV, regular television and news websites such as CNN.com. These subjects were then shown an actual news clip where a murder investigation is presented and the suspect had been described as either a black male or a white male.
   In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time by whites that classified individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories (Gossett 1997), but these were always porous. The decennial censuses conducted since 1790, after slavery was well established in the United States, included classification of persons by race: white, black, mulatto, and Indian (Nobles 2000). But, the inclusion of mulatto was an explicit acknowledgement of mixed race. In addition, before the Civil War, Virginia and some other states had legal definition of "whiteness" that provided for people being classified as white if no more than 1/8 black. (For example, if not born into slavery, Thomas Jefferson's children by his slave Sally Hemings would have been classified as legally white, as they were 7/8 white by ancestry. Three of the four surviving children entered white society as adults, and their descendants have identified as white.) In the late 18th and 19th centuries, people of mixed race often migrated to frontiers where societies were more open, and they might be accepted as white if satisfying obligations of citizenship.
   In Jim Crow era Mississippi, however, Chinese American children were allowed to attend white-only schools and universities, rather than attend black-only schools, and some of their parents became members of the infamous Mississippi "White Citizens' Council" who enforced policies of racial segregation.
   According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, "If you are not quite white, then you are black." However, in Brazil, "If you are not quite black, then you are white." Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier's complexion when in Brazil: "We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, 'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,' ... It simply paralyzed me. I couldn't ask another question."
   In South Africa, Coloured is a term used to refer to individuals with some degree of sub-Saharan ancestry but subjectively 'not enough' to be considered black-African under the Apartheid era law of South Africa. Today people self-identify as 'Coloured'. Other Afrikaans terms used include "Bruinmense" (translates to "brown people"), "Kleurlinge" (translates to "Coloured") or "Bruin Afrikaners" (translates to "brown Africans" and is used to distinguish them from the main body of "Afrikaners" (translates to "African") who are white). Under Apartheid law through the latter half of the 20th century, the government established seven categories of Coloured people: Cape Coloured, Cape Malay, Griqua and Other Coloured - the aim of subdivisions was to enhance the meaning of the larger category of Coloured by making it all encompassing. Legally and politically speaking, all people of colour were classified "black" in the non-racial terms of anti-Apartheid rhetoric of the Black Consciousness Movement. 
   Professor J.B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the historical US notion that any visible African ancestry is enough to make one black:
  
  In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be described as a Creole, reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize, he might further be described as a "High Creole", because of his extremely light complexion.These examples show that the perception of race is relative to different societies and individuals.
  
  Section::::Other countries of the Americas.:Brazil.
   Based on late 20th -century DNA analysis and a preponderance of historical evidence, Thomas Jefferson is widely believed to have fathered the six mixed-race children with his slave Sally Hemings, who was herself three-quarters white. Four of these children, who were seven-eighths white, survived to adulthood. Hemings was a half-sister of Martha Wayles Jefferson. Their children were born into slavery because of her status; as they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, they were legally white under Virginia law of the time. Jefferson allowed the two oldest to escape in 1822 (freeing them legally was a public action he elected to avoid because he would have had to gain permission from the state legislature); the two youngest he freed in his 1826 will. Three of the four entered white society as adults, and all their descendants identified as white.
   Outside the U.S., some other countries have adopted the one-drop rule, but the definition of who is black and the extent to which the one-drop "rule" applies varies greatly from country to country.
   The South African pencil test was one example of a characteristic other than skin color being used as a determiner. The pencil test, which distinguished either "black" from "Colored" or "Colored" from "white", relied upon curliness and strength of hair (i.e. whether it was capable of retaining a pencil under its own strength) rather than upon any color factor at all. The pencil test could "trump skin color".
  
  Steve Biko, in his trial in 1976, rejected the appellation "brown people" when it was put to him incorrectly by Judge Boshoff:
   Because of the loose terminology and social attitudes to mixed-race persons, remnant non-reservation American Indians in the Upper South were generally not recorded separately as Indians. They were often gradually reclassified as mulatto or free people of color, especially as generations intermarried with neighbors of African descent. In the early decades of the 20th century, Virginia and some other states passed laws imposing the one-drop rule, requiring all persons to be classified as either white or black: those of any known African ancestry were to be classified as black, regardless of appearance, and how they self-identified or were known in the community.
   Color terminology for race
  
  Identifying human races in terms of skin color, at least as one among several physiological characteristics, has been common since antiquity. Via rabbinical literature, the division is received in early modern scholarship, mostly in four to five categories. It was long recognized that the number of categories is arbitrary and subjective. François Bernier (1684) doubted the validity of using skin color as a racial characteristic, and Charles Darwin emphasized the gradual differences between categories.
   The use of the term "non-white" controversially refers to those who are not considered by the Canadian government to be Caucasian, and does open the door to ambiguity. For example, people who are Lebanese, Berber, Latin American or South Asian may consider themselves to be white, yet the federal government forcibly imposes upon Arabs and Latin Americans the status of being visible minorities.
  
  Section::::Canada.:Examples of use.
  
  Examples of statistexts used by the Canadian government include the forced categorization of non-Europeans as "visible minorities", particularly Caucasians from Western Asia, South Asia, and Latin America.
   The eugenicist Madison Grant of New York wrote in his book, "The Passing of the Great Race" (1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew." As noted above, Native American tribes such as the Omaha, which had patrilineal descent and inheritance, used hypodescent to classify the children of white men and Native American women as white.
   The Melungeons are a group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white". Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the 19th to the 20th centuries.
   In Latin America, generational acculturation and assimilation took place via intermarriage. Medium-brown offspring of even dark parents were no longer "black", but were labeled with any of a half-dozen terms denoting class as much as skin tone. Descendants who were European-looking were accepted as white.
   "Virginia was settled before slavery began, and it was diverse. There were tawny black people with hazel eyes. Black people with auburn hair, skin like butter and eyes of deep blue green. Blond, blue-eyed black people resembling a recent chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. The only way to tell white from colored for purposes of segregation was the one-drop rule: If one of your ancestors was black — ever in the history of the world, all the way back to Noah's son Ham — so were you."
   The option to record a child’s race as double-barrelled (e.g. Chinese-Indian) was introduced in 2010 by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Previously, mixed-race Singaporeans were allowed to choose between either of their parents' races and no allowance was made for mixed-race children, with the exception of Eurasians. For relevant Government policies (e.g. the Ethnic Integration Policy), the first component of a double-barrelled race is used.
   User consultation undertaken by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the purpose of planning the 2011 census in England and Wales found that most of the respondents from all ethnic groups that took part in the testing felt comfortable with the use of the terms "Black" and "White". However, some participants suggested that these colour terms were confusing and unacceptable, did not adequately describe an individual's ethnic group, did not reflect his or her true skin colour, and were stereotypical and outdated terms. The heading "Black or Black British", which was used in 2001, was changed to "Black/African/Caribbean/Black British" for the 2011 census. As with earlier censuses, individuals who did not identify as "Black", "White" or "Asian" could instead write in their own ethnic group under "Other ethnic group". Persons with multiple ancestries could indicate their respective ethnic backgrounds under a "Mixed or multiple ethnic groups" tick box and write-in area.
   BULLET::::- Perhaps, perhaps it is not so much a question of the colour of the skin as the colour of the mind... (Page 48/50)
  
  BULLET::::- Following branches of my family tree, I discovered a series of white men who—because they married Nyoongar woman and claimed their children—were exceptional. But their children grew in a climate of denial and shame that made it difficult for even a strong spirit to express itself. And there were other children those same fathers did not claim.
  
presuppositions: Skin tone determines race.
corrections: Race is not only based on skin tone but also on culture, characteristics, and historical affiliation.
raw_presuppositions: Skin tone determines race. Skin tone determines race.
raw_corrections: Race is not only based on skin tone but also on culture, characteristics, and historical affiliation. Race is not only based on skin tone but also on culture, characteristics, and historical affiliation.