The case is partly significant because it is about how the United States defined people in terms of their race. The Virginia law, as well as prohibiting marriages between people of different races, also categorized multiracial people according to a set of arbitrary definitions of their 'race'. A white person was defined as someone who had only "Caucasian blood", excepting only people who had no more than one great-grandparent Native American ancestry and no other non-white ancestry. This exception was to make allowance for a long-established group of descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. A person was defined as black if they had any "negro" ancestry, as the people of that time expressed it. A person with at least one Native American grandparent, or one Native American grandparent and one "Negro" great-grandparent and who was also a member of an Indian tribe, was defined as "American Indian". <ref> http://www.ameasite.org/loving.asp </ref> | The case is partly significant because it is about how the United States defined people in terms of their race. The Virginia law, as well as prohibiting marriages between people of different races, also categorized multiracial people according to a set of arbitrary definitions of their 'race'. A white person was defined as someone who had only "Caucasian blood", excepting only people who had no more than one great-grandparent Native American ancestry and no other non-white ancestry. This exception was to make allowance for a long-established group of descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. A person was defined as black if they had any "negro" ancestry, as the people of that time expressed it. A person with at least one Native American grandparent, or one Native American grandparent and one "Negro" great-grandparent and who was also a member of an Indian tribe, was defined as "American Indian". <ref> http://www.ameasite.org/loving.asp </ref> |