Whiteness, or proximity to whiteness, is the basis of racialized privilege. Being the mother of a child who is one-fourth Black, racial dynamics are often at the forefront of many of our conversations. My child identifies loosely as mixed race, but her phenotype is more aligned with whiteness, and she presents as a white person. Throughout my practice, which is heavily centered on exploration of identity, I analyze themes of Blackness, my own existence as a Black bi-racial woman , and with this piece, the optics of Blackness when you’re lighter skinned. With this performance, I explored the ideology behind the one-drop rule, which was, at one point, the basis of race classification in America. This rule was more or less an assertion that if you had any degree of African American ancestry, you were classified as Black. It was implemented during a time when whites were looking to more precisely define degrees of racial intermixing, and can be traced back to slavery as a way to maintain racial purity, and withhold rights from any person of African American lineage. Using my blood as material, I create a pathway to analyze the following: How do optics compare to lineage? How many drops of blood does it take before we see whiteness begin to dilute? Can we apply the one drop rule in a contemporary context?