✊🏿ap african american studies review

One-drop rule

Written by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated August 2025
Verified for the 2027 exam
Verified for the 2027 examWritten by the Fiveable Content Team • Last updated August 2025

Definition

A practice in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that classified a person with any degree of African descent as Black and assigned them an inferior status, regardless of other ancestry.

AP course connection

Topic 2.8: 2.8 The Social Construction of Race and the Reproduction of Status

Unit 2