> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://theparnassian.com/en/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Charles Chesnutt, the octoroon and the American rule of one drop of blood
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-svoe-vremia-amerikanskogo-pisatelia-charlza-chestnota-nazyvali-oktoronom-na-eto-ukazyval-osobyi-zakon-odnoi-kapli-krovi/
- Published: 2019-06-12T10:38:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:03:49.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Society, People

In his day the American writer Charles Chesnutt was called an octoroon, a designation resting on the notorious "one-drop rule". "Octoroon" or "octaroon" is a racial term adopted in the United States for people with one eighth of African blood, that is, 12%, just like Pushkin.

The racist rules extended to people with the merest sliver of African ancestry: the sedecimon, one sixteenth black, the trigintaduon, one thirty-second black, and in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma even a man with a single black ancestor as far back as the seventh generation was subjected to all the restrictions and prohibitions imposed on black people.

Chesnutt, although he was descended from fairly well-to-do slaveholders, considered himself African American and was not in the least embarrassed by it. In his works he raised sharp questions of class, treated the theme of flagrant racism and popularised the heritage of African peoples and their culture, and so he entered the ranks of the classics among black American writers.

Incidentally, Alexandre Dumas was proud to be a quadroon, one quarter black.