It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Winston Churchill

Why do the family, particularly the children in the picture above, frighten many people in America?

Let’s overlay this picture upon a divisive subculture, snake-bitten by fear, grievance, and the conjured myth of The Great Replacement Theory (an orchestrated replacement and breeding out of white people by people of color); the One-Drop Rule has turned full circle to become that riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Solving the riddle, ask the tough questions: How do systems within American laws, beliefs, caste, and culture cultivate these fears, and how do we talk many in our nation off the proverbial cliff concerning them? From Phantom to Phantasm, Miscegenation (mixing of the socially constructed races) has occupied the American imagination since its beginnings.

Could it be that back in the 15th century, during the Spanish Inquisition, the concept of Limpieza, “purity of blood,” was introduced to European culture? It was first used in 1449 against Jews by establishing the first set of racial exclusion laws in modern history, only to be extended to other socially constructed racial groups in later years. or by the United States’ own “one-drop rule,” also known as hypodescent, established as part of 1662 Virginia law.

“Hypodescent: the classifying or identifying of a biracial or multiracial individual as a member of the lower or lowest socially ranking racial group from which that person has ancestry.”

Dictionary.com

Today’s affordable genetic testing opens windows into the American story, and who we really are; this story is still in progress. The number of people classifying themselves as mixed ethnicity or declaring more than one race in the 2020 census has increased by 276% in the last decade, while the white population fell for the first time ever. This September, Three-Fifths Magazine sets out to solve the riddle.