Heritage

[supergee]

Just the other day on Facebook, John Clute, who definitely knows more words than anybody else now that Bill Buckley is gone, mentioned hypodescent: a system of racial classification where even "one drop" of blood defines a person born of mixed parentage as belonging to the subordinate (in socioeconomic terms) group. Today, we have an example: a Republican saying on television that Tammy Duckworth doesn’t look white enough to have ancestors who fought in the American Revolution.

ETA: And someone with a Spanish name is accused of Extreme Cultural Appropriation for attempting to make off with the obviously Caucasian word hence.