Bid to Change Race Classification Fails

NEW ORLEANS — The state Supreme Court will determine the necessity for racial classifications on birth certificates in Louisiana, where a fair-skinned woman Friday lost her latest legal battle to become “white.”

Susie Guillory Phipps, 51, and her attorneys sought to change the racial classification on her birth certificate from black to white because “she is culturally and socially white,” according to her attorney, Brian Begue.

The state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal on Friday rejected Phipps arguments, saying that she had failed to supply evidence to prove such a significant change would be justified. The court, however, did lessen the requirements for asking a court for such a change.

Phipps contended that the French midwife who delivered her knew the family had a black ancestor, a slave named Margarita, and designated baby Susie as “colored.”

Phipps and her siblings went through church and school listed as black, but later generations were recorded as white, and Phipps’ parents were designated white on their death certificates in 1967.

The court said that a family’s current self-image had no bearing on the official status of that family’s ancestors.