Blackness/Mixedness: Contestations over Crossing Signs

In "Blackness/Mixedness: Contestation over Crossing Signs, by Naomi Pabst, discusses the problem of defiing a person as being of mixed ancestry, when they may only have one drop of "another race" in them, in the case of this essay, African blood. The essay gets involved with a lenghty discussio of exactly what can be considered "Black" in the African American Community, and includes a section on the importance of Maureen Peal in The Bluest Eye. This section, as well as the rest of the essay helps me to understand the problem that Pecola, Claudia, and Frieda have with Maureen, and in a strech helps me to understand the very minor characters of the two mixed girls in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The essay goes on to discuss more modern situations of mixed race and how to define it, but this section does not fit he time period I am focusing on.