Racialization beyond blood The classification of people based on their personal characteristics is a tool used to classify such people into various groups. However, when these groups are created, a hierarchical system is created where one group seemingly outranks another. This happens when we use race as a classification system. The idea of ​​manufactured and socially constructed race leads to the inevitable superiority of one race over another. Race groupings have historically been due to the amount of blood a person has from a particular racial group. Exploring the use of blood to categorize people in a way of racialization lends itself to a deeper look at why this method is used and who it benefits. Through processes of racialization, power is given and taken away based on classifications developed by man which can be overturned through the use of one's personal identity. Looking specifically at African Americans in the United States, the drop of blood rule appears to dominate the world's classification of a person's race. This was constructed using government census data and instructions given to census takers. In the late 19th century, enumerators were told to “be especially careful to distinguish blacks, mulattos, squares, and octoroons” (Nobles 2000: 188). Each of these distinct categories was divided based on the amount of black blood contained in these people. The very basis for simplifying race in this way creates a hierarchy from white to black documenting each level along the way. By 1930, this rhetoric was completely changed to the use of the term “nigger,” stating that they should be marked in the census as such “no matter how… middle of paper… his negro soul.” in a wave of white Americanism, because he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world” (1903: 9). Both aspects of himself create his racial identity. In both of the above-mentioned examples of using blood to create distinct racial groups, it completely erases part of a person's identity. Du Bois comments on how every part of oneself has something to offer the world. Every aspect of culture, genealogy, and experience contributes to the makeup of a person and the way they experience the world. Assigning and defining people creates a cycle of control in which all those who belong to the minority culture are left disempowered, even the power to define who they are. Looking beyond blood within the construction of race, the formation of one's identity cripples racial hierarchies by allowing an individual to identify with multiple racial groups based on myriad factors.