Guys, I want to expound on that earlier post about Michelle Obama and white ancestry. One very consistent theme in comments is that this is news mainly because white people--in large measure--don't know that black people--in large measure--are a mulatto people. That's short-hand, but I hope you guys get my drift. I understand why one might not know the specifics of housing segregation, slavery, Jim Crow, or the grandfather clause, but the case for black/white admixing seems, uhm, very, very evident. Harold Ford has two "black" parents. But I'm not sure he looks any "blacker" than Barack Obama. There's a reason for that, no?
There's also the fact that, historically, so many prominent black
people, (Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X, Shemar Moore, W.E.B Du Bois,
Halle Berry, Muhammad Ali) actually do have white ancestry. This isn't
because of some kind of color caste elitism, it's because it's so
common. I don't raise it to highlight anyone's ignorance, or to browbeat people, or argue for Black History Month starting in January. I raise it because this is as much about my ignorance as yours. Put bluntly--I thought you knew.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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"Put bluntly--I thought you knew"
I had a friend in college, a white girl from Kansas, who honestly didn't know anything about slavery - she had no idea that was how most African-Americans got here. I was astonished. Her first education about slave history, of any sort, was through the television mini-series "Roots." She ended up marrying an African-American, so her ignorance ended up being very short lived! thank goodness...
Were you astonished that she had no idea about slavery or, as I am, astonished she made it into college.
That is quite a large piece of American history to not know anything about
i was astonished on all those levels - and then some!
Knowledge of interracial ancestry is tied up with knowledge of people having sex. I don't mean just interracial sex, but all sex. For a long time history books didn't cover anything related to sex--certainly when I was a kid, and quite likely now for a typical high school text book. So I wouldn't be too surprised that you could get into college with a vague notion along the lines of "and the black slaves married other black slaves, but sometimes their kids were sold, which was sad."
Agreed. And I don't remember covering the Civil War era in any detail, or the history of slavery, in high school.
I only learned it when I started dating an African girl. She and most of the other Africans (that college had a disproportionate number) were a lot darker than most black Americans. I speculated and confirmed my guess via google.
It's not too surprising that people are unaware -- why would anyone need to know this? I also didn't know about people of Nordic ancestry in the midwest or German ancestry in Texas for most of my life. It's a moderately interesting fact, but not that important.
The way that history classes were set up when I went to school is that they were divided into two section: the first semester covered from Columbus to the Civil War, and the second semester covered from Reconstruction to the present.
I don't know if this was deliberate or not, but in junior high and high school both, we never even made it as far as the Civil War, and even though the "present" was only the 1960s, we never made it that far either. The first semester made it up to the time Texas became a state (big surprise there) and/or the Mexican War, and the second semester tended to make it through WWII. I do remember being told that the Civil War was an important battle over states' rights. Of course.
I think a large part of the problem is that history, as a whole, tends to be given short shrift in our schools. Even though I've been a history nerd most of my life, it was never easy, especially when I was in my teens, to find good quality history, other than hagiographical bios, or feel-good "we're the best ever" kind of thing.
@Dave in Texas and Persia:
I'm quite sure my history classes never made it into the 1900s. And while I'm fuzzy on where exactly we ground to a halt in May, my adult knowledge of the Civil War is almost all drawn from historical fiction set in that period or popular history--I don't recall anything at all from school. I did notice that the Spanish-American War was hard to put in pro-US terms and thus got about half a paragraph. So presumably we touched on the Civil War which happened earlier, but in such general and bloodless terms that it didn't resonate.
One of the things I liked most in Assassination Vacation was the reminder that in the 1800s there were plenty of sex scandals and shocking financial doings and horrifying atrocities, but those get boiled out of what's in the history books appropriate for high schoolers.
It's not just in the U.S. In college I was talking with a student from England, and apparently there was some kind of large gap in his history classes where they jumped straight from Henry VIII to the 20th Century, skipping over the part where Great Britain conquered the world.
If we want to talk about people's level of education about race we have to look at who's doing the educating, who's setting the school curriculum, and who's writing the text books.
And take a look at all the recent crap in Texas over science and social studies for an example of just how craptacular that can be. I have hopes that the move toward e-readers and the resultant reduction in publication costs will reduce the stranglehold Texas has on K-12 textbook publication, but it's not going to come soon enough to suit me.
@Incertus(Brian)
I testified at the social studies textbook hearings last time around, six or eight years ago, and I was horrified at some of the things that were said. Honest to God, I heard more than one person say words to the effect of "Oh, come on now, slavery wasn't really all that bad," or "There's no reason why we should be tolerant of other people's beliefs." I ended up spending a lot of my allotted time rebutting this idiocy, instead of presenting the prepared remarks I had given to the board members.
Un-be-fucking-lievable.
I am constantly astounded at the level of education we receive in this country. To think that someone could get to a university without having this basic information about the society we live in is, well, depressing. This particular lack of information implies a vastly underdeveloped worldview that underlies the fact that racism is still institutionalized in this country.
The fact that citizens don't generally shout racist obscenities on the street, that we don't have open displays of "white only" establishments like restaurants and stores is often used to illustrate the idea that racism isn't a large issue anymore. As if the event that we elected a black president was the last stop towards a truly equal society. I feel that it has instead done much to highlight the fact that racists are simply more aware of the stigma of expressing those views directly and that the concepts of skin priveledge and institutionalized racism are still not well taught.
the saddest part of this story for me, is that i had this conversation with her in the late '90s...not that long ago...
I think the sort of naivety of which this is a very extreme example is a way more common than most people think, particularly for people like your friend from Kansas, or myself when I was fresh out of High School, who have simply had no significant--and sometimes literally--contact with black folks growing up.
When the point is raised that most black people have white ancestry, I think "Of course. That's pretty obvious, I wonder why I didn't realize that before?" but until it was pointed out, it wasn't part of my cognitive conception of black folks, and certainly wasn't something I knew that everyone else also was aware of. It's not that I would have argued otherwise, it's just nothing that ever came up.
This is obviously ignorant, but I think it's a pretty common sort of ignorance for a substantial group of people. An interesting question is, to what degree is ignorance like this racist?
Put bluntly--I thought you knew.
Most of us do, I think, and really, there's no excuse for anyone who doesn't know. Ignorance and willful blindness do not constitute excuses in my book.
I am often shocked by people's apparent disinterest and ignorance-- like not knowing who the Secretary of State is, or that Denmark has a Queen, or that the Nazis had concentration camps in Poland, or that Liberia was founded by the US to send freed slaves back to Africa.
This information is not hard to find -- its out there if you are paying the slightest attention. It's just that some people are just uninterested.
Funny story-- My dad and stepmother go to England on vacation. They come back, and she starts telling me about this really really interesting place that they had gone to see-- "Stonehedge". She explains the whole thing to me like I've never heard of the thing before (I have a graduate degree in history and lived in Europe for 5 years), and the whole time my dad is sitting there saying, "Stonehenge, sweetie, Stonehenge."
Now, she is not a dumb woman-- she is an award-winning branch manager for one of the major regional banks, and is adored by customers and employees alike. But I have to say that one floored me.
Denmark has a queen? Who knew?
Yes, Margrethe II, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and her middle name is Thorhilder. That is my favorite part about her. (that last bit I looked up on Wikipedia-- awesome names, no?)
@ Lebecka
The third of Queen Margrethe's 4 names is Thorhildur (Icelandic, as Iceland was Danish when she was born). She has a nice web site (http://www.kongehuset.dk/publish.php?dogtag=k_dk_familien_dronningen).
On TNC's topic, I really understood the mixed-race nature of American black people when I first saw numbers of Africans (first trip to Europe), even though I knew about what Florence King, in "Southern ladies and gentlemen", called "the unrestricted access of Southern gentlemen to people's ancestresses". I grew up amidst loud Southern anxiety about "miscegenation", but it took this European experience to make me realize that what they were objecting to was interracial sex that was voluntary on both sides.
Well, I think it's safe to say that most people that read your blog aren't going to be shocked by any of this. I just remember how many Americans acted shocked that Obama thought of himself as a black man. I mean, his mother was white, and he was raised by his grandparents, so he should at least call himself half-white, right? Were those people truly ignorant, or just feigning surprise? I don't know.
I seem to recall Obama saying something along the lines of being reminded he's a black man when he tries to catch a cab. And I'm going with ignorant, or at least incurious when it comes to your question.
I think the president's situation is a little skewed for some people. I mean, I think most people more or less understand--at least in the abstract--that there's no such thing as a pure race. Maybe I shouldn't say most people, because that's probably not true.
But I think a lot of people get the fact that a large portion of the African American population, particularly those who are direct decendants of slaves likely have at least one white person somewhere in their (usually somewhat distant) lineage.
With the president, of course, the man literally is half white, and he had almost no contact as a boy or young man with his father or the family of his father. So I understand why some people would honestly find it difficult to reconcile why he would self-identify as an African American when his upbringing was uniquely not that of an African American. Even if it makes perfect sense to you and me and most of the people here.
"and he had almost no contact as a boy or young man with his father or the family of his father. So I understand why some people would honestly find it difficult to reconcile why he would self-identify as an African American"
This is why I didn't jump down folks throats when I would hear this sentiment expressed (mostly on the internet.) On a *certain* level, it makes sense. If your heritage is not from American slaves, you were raised exclusively by your non-black family, adn you grew up in places not known fro a strong black presence, you're at least different than the avearge black American. I haven't read any of his books, but I'm willing to bet he absorbed a ton of cultural nuggets from black friends he made as an adult, and especially from Michelle. He's definitely Black *now*.
Plus, that discussion is all about what "Black" even really means. There's the school that adheres to the one drop rule like it's the 11th commandment. There's the school that feels the opposite way. And then there's folks who see African-American style blackness as mostly cultural, not as something that's literally part of our DNA.
The key thing people miss is that he actually had quite a bit of contact with black people as a child. Moreover, this scenario--the exact one you describe--is not unheard to black folks. I ran into this alot at Howard. Not disagreeing with your point, but it needs to be said that even this isn't totally new.
Agreed. And to be clear, my point is not about dispelling with the idea that it doesn't fundamentally go back to ignorance. I think it has to do with ignorance of a number of different things. And that some of them are a bit more easy for me to understand. And maybe I am just projecting a read that makes more sense to me. In the end, I'm just guessing.
Interesting question is how much Obama's self-identification as African-American would be different if he _had_ had more contact with Barack Obama Senior.
From my perspective, having one parent who's white and one who wasn't, it's no more possible for any American to be "half white" than to be "half pregnant." Whiteness in America is defined by the absence of anything else.
the problem with acknowledging mulatto heritage for white people might be the fact that it reminds us, in living color, of the fact of slavery. and not just the harsh facts of physical indenture, but the horrific realities of sexual ownership. Chris Rock's assertion 'we ain't gonna rape him. that would be barbaric' fits perfectly.
for as many 'complex' relationships as there might have been, the ugly truth remains: more times than not, our forefathers- these self-described deities, moral and righteous in their positions- stooped to barbaric lows and raped women and children.
shame from both parties might have conspired in the past to keep this on the low, but it's in the White House now... that family is our family, all of us. I don't think ignorance can be an answer much longer.
Agreed with the other commenters.. I learned this really early on--in grade school maybe. But I grew up in Evanston, IL.. just north of Chicago with a population that was probably 40% black.
Such things were pretty common knowledge there..
For me this was really brought home by reading Richard Dawkin's (scientific) take on race in The Ancestor's Tale. He has a whole section on how we seem to pick up on a whole constellation of racial identifiers--of which skin color is only one--and speculates why that may be so. Recommended.
I dunno, I grew up in Virginia in the late 70's and early 80's (I'm 44) and I knew. Not sure when I learned, but certainly by high school.
I wonder if I learned in school, or from my parents? Probably my parents.
This is all particularly interesting in light of Chris Rock's "Good Hair" coming out tomorrow. If you thought Blacks having white ancestors was a shock, white folks, wait till you get a load of this.
There was a pretty good "Black Hair" doc just a couple of years ago.
My understanding is that Kathy Griffin has a tell-all documentary on white folks' hair coming out called "Roots."
The director of that previous doc is apparently suing Rock.
...and the ghost of Alex Haley watches, laughing.
I suppose it has been a while since the mini-series and book were foremost in the public eye. But regardless, this sort of thing stopped surprising me after our previous church's preschool director wondered aloud what the Jews used for scripture.
Incidentally, I hope he's got some funny stuff with Korean-American hair products entrepeneurs. My wife has some very cute stories about the guy at a place she shops. He has totally mastered "black female vernacular" English, which cracks her up.
Brucds,
Is your wife talking about Glamor(no u) Beauty on 40th and Telegraph in Oakland?
You got it !
Hey, Jamilah - since this thread is pretty old I'm going to go completely off-topic, aside from mining the Korean-Oakland nexus on Telegraph, and suggest that if you haven't checked out that Korean BBQ restaurant down a bit from "Glamor Beauty" - I think it's 43rd and Telegraph - Sahn Maru, and try their "seafood pancake" (it's really more a seafood omelette.) My favorite dish on that strip of eateries.
LOL. So NOT looking forward to "Good Hair." If Rock's interviews are any indication, this doc is gonna be FAILTASTIC.
I'm actually having serious anxiety about that movie. I've been working through it in conversations with people but I'm still REALLY bothered by the whole idea of it.
Anyway, don't mean to thread jack but it's been at the top of my mind for a while now. Maybe I'll bring it up in the open thread!
I'm new to commenting here but this quote in the article is a little perplexing."for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery". The work of a genealogist in finding an ancestor fully connects Michelle Obama to the history of slavery? I would think the minute she was born to Mr and Mrs. Robinson she was fully connected to the history of slavery.
Yeah, that was insane. Thank you New York Times. Before you came along we had no idea Michelle Obama had a connection to the history of slavery.
I thought the same thing. I don't think someone has to have a slave ancestor to be connected to the history of slavery.
Well, the tone of a lot of New York Times news pieces is pretty damned patronizing, so this piece is nothing if not consistent with that.
As to this being a 'revelation', didn't Ida Wells cause a hellacious stir a century ago by making the point that the variety of skin color among the African-American community didn't just happen but was result of race-mixing?
I raise it because this is as much about my ignorance as yours. Put bluntly--I thought you knew.
Well, I think we mostly did know...but it's generally safe to assume that a substantial segment of the population will be ignorant -- no matter the topic.
I tend not to assume that non-Blacks know very much about us at all. I think there's plenty that know little to nothing, whatsoever.
This is a fact that I have really struggled with in the past few years. I don't know a lot, and yet it feels rude to start asking the questions.
I know that no one wants to be The Representative of their (fill in the blank: race, religion, sexual orientation, gender) and often the questions asked by the ill-informed are just as you would think they would be: ill-informed. And thus annoying, if not possibly offensive. And when it comes down to the very specific case of white folks asking African Americans about Black culture, the room for error and offense is just enormous.
So yes, I can read books. And lurk at The Root. And watch movies like Good Hair. And that is very informative, and that is something I try to do. But occasionally, you just want to ask a question of a real person. And it feels very fraught, and heavily weighted.
Maybe I've been surrounded by white folks who are afraid to ask questions for the reasons you cite, because I've never felt as though I was being asked to be the Negro Representative. But if people ask reasonable questions in a cool way, I'm happy to answer. I do the same when I'm talking to someone who knows about a culture or experience I'm not knowledgeable about. Usually.
(I've written something like the following before, both here and once in RL for the Christian Science Monitor, so I'm repeating myself a bit -- but that has never stopped me before!) For me, there is not wanting to offend + not wanting to look like an idiot. You're a white liberal and you're supposed to be totally cool -- color blind, in fact! So, you wonder (say) if your friend wears one of those fancy beautiful hats to church, but good lord, that would be an ignorant question! So you pull back -- even though, as you suggest, I wouldn't hesitate to ask questions if I were meeting someone from some other culture that is foreign to me. The way I put it in the Monitor, a little more than 2 years ago, was: "So sure that my very whiteness puts me on a wrong foot, I won't admit our differences. So afraid of looking the fool, I learn nothing." Today it is less this way for me, but that is almost entirely because of exchanges like this one that I have had on the internet in the wake of writing that piece/realizing that I needed to start getting over myself and ask the damn questions already. Oh, it's a journey, this growing up business!
I don't mind answering questions when people generally want to know, or start off with "in your experience, do you think that...?" or something along those lines. It gets promblematic though, when people start addressing me like I'm some kind of anthropological experiment, which I fear may be the case after people see "Good Hair."
Case in point - my best friend is doing her residency in Houston and one of the white male doctors asked her if a. she let men touch her hair, or b. if she had bought her hair from India. Apparently he had just seen Chris Rock on Oprah and he thought he was being funny.
And this is exactly what I was afraid of.
Man I grew up on just Fresh Prince and Family Matters. We had so few black folk in town, I was ignorant of the cultural differences. Knew plenty of slavery, our texts didn't gloss over that at all. Trail of Tears only got a paragraph though.
Then I hit college and I just went nuts with friendship I guess, because I was rocking the rainbow coalition. Black, all kinds of Latin and South American and Mexican, Laotian, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, Gay, Straight, you name it.
There's no need for these questions when you're friends with people of different backgrounds. You just learn. And if you ever do need to ask a question, well they're friends so it doesn't matter anyway.
I'm a white person studying black history and believe me white ignorance goes deep, starting with my own. These days I sigh a big sigh of relief to talk to black academics about my work, because I have to start soooo far back with white friends and family. (me in conversation--Yes Affirmative Action does seem to have a complicated history, but that's not actually what I'm writing about, nor is that the only thing to discuss when I raise black history....)
TNC I love you, I really do but this:
There's also the fact that, historically, so many prominent black people, (Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X, Shemar Moore, W.E.B Du Bois, Halle Berry, Muhammad Ali) actually do have white ancestry. This isn't because of some kind of color caste elitism, it's because it's so common.
No, really?
Does "if you are light you are alright, if you are black get back" not ring a bell?
It totally does. That isn't what I was addressing though. I actually had in mind the notion that them being half-white somehow made them smarter or more talented. Sorry. I should have been clearer.
Hi, I read the story and read the comments on the other post about this. I took the story as newsworthy because of where her family tree started to where she ended up. It is a particularly American thing to be proud of the number of different "parts" you are made up of, and also to be proud of how bad your family had it. For example, my grandfather often talked about how his father hauled manure for a living back in the old country. In any case, I thought it was just another one of those "look where they ended up" stories.
As for the whole "white people don't know that black people often have white ancestors" thing in that comment thread, I'm not sure where that comes from. Was there a study or poll that I missed? I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and we had at most 5 black students in a high school class. And I don't think anyone really thought that there wasn't some white ancestor in their background. Please forgive me for using this, but we can find evidence that white people are aware of this in the various racial insults about very black people being straight from Africa. I find it hard to believe that rural whites have a better understanding of this sort of thing than the average NYT reader. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the commenters.
So everybody just thought Tyra Banks was wearing contacts before this?
As far as Tyra goes, I don't care what she says, those aren't her b00bs. She was 3 cup sizes smaller as Deja in Poetic Justice in 1993.
Oh, no. It was Higher Learning, not Poetic Justice. But ITA about the mysterious boobie growth.
Dammit, I hate when I mix up 90's black movie titles.
Reminds me of an old Conan joke:
"Tyra Banks says if you could see her boobs you'd know they were real. ... No, if I could see her boobs I'd know there was a God."
Speaking of Higher Learning, I wouldn't call it a black movie. It was more of an ensemble. Yes, it was directed by John Singleton, but everybody had their own stereotype to play. I remember really liking Ice Cube in it.
I would say that there are three things (at least) at play here, re: the ignorance among white folks about the amount of Caucasian blood in African-American veins:
1) The Subject in any society never knows all that much about the Other, beyond the myths they have constructed with which to explain why they are Subject and the Other is, well, Other.
2) One way this has played out in race relations in American society is that the myth of white superiority has always played a crucial role in the white narrative -- and acknowledging all the mixing of the blood does irrevocable damage to that piece of the myth. And so, in large measure, white society has traditionally not told itself/refused to see/was not taught that part of the story.
3) The "mixing of the blood" of course means that people had sex. Americans are still uncomfortable talking about people having sex at all, and if the sex was between the superior Subject and the supposed inferior Other? Holy crow, that's not supposed to happen!
and finally, bonus #4) I feel safe in saying that in most cases, the "sex" was actually rape, or, at the very least, a result of a coercive power relationship. People don't like to think about their forefathers wandering around raping young girls just because they were available. And so, again, we haven't.
Willed ignorance, on a society-wide level, that then becomes conventional wisdom -- because if no one tells you, it might just never occur to you.
Not that I have an opinion on it, or anything.
RE: " would say that there are three things (at least) at play here, re: the ignorance among white folks about the amount of Caucasian blood in African-American veins"
I wouldn't be so sure about this. I think it's more common knowledge than you might suspect.
I agree entirely with 3, and 4, partially with 1, and not much at all with 2. On point #1 I would just say that it goes both ways. DuBois's veil, if you're familiar with that piece, is really something that I think we need to think about as concealing each from the other. Default whiteness and the power that that entails is one thing - I'm not denying that. But the assumption of an active preservation of that power on the part of whites is inaccurate, and I think indicative of the problem of blacks not truly understanding whites just as much as whites don't truly understand blacks.
On 2 I completely disagree. First, you're giving agency to a collective which is wrong on it's face. "White society" can't "tell itself" anything. White people can internalize or accept certain things as individuals, but you can't homogenize or aggregate that behavior. I don't know if you're black or white or something else, but your very reliance on the "myth of white superiority" as an explanation for anything is a demonstration that you also don't really understand what drives white people, just as a lot of white people can't truly understand black people simply because of mutual exclusion from each other's communities. An absurdly small proportion of whites think that there is any superiority associated with whiteness. Now, they may wrongfully and even prejudicially assume that a black person they come across is less intelligent or less articulate or whatever else than they are. But I think the portion of whites that are prejudiced in this way who actually think it has anything to do with differences in bloodline is very small. It's a statistical discrimination. Some whites see black kids lagging in tests and wages and whatever else and so when they see a black kid they assume it's an average black kid and make a prejudicial comparison accordingly. That's very wrong. That preserves "the veil". That keeps us from moving past race in America. But it's not an expression of white superiority or an obsession with genetics or anything like that.
I think by overblowing these expressions of racism and playing up the "myth of white superiority" elements, you (1.) mischaracterize the prejudice that do exist out there, burning our bridges in the process, and (2.) turn a blind eye to the institutionalized racism that isn't motivated by the myth of white superiority but is nevertheless our biggest problem with respect to race in this country.
I strenuously disagree with you disavowal of point #2 (and equally strenuously support ellaesther's analysis). The "collective agency" of the larger society vis their black population is a fact that is hard to even conceptualize from our current time. When confronted with an individual black "not knowing their place" it was EXPECTED for white men (who may not have even known each other ) to ACT together as collective agents of the society. That collective understanding is what allowed white men to rape black women with something approaching impunity for the greater part of the 20th century. The myth of white superiority as an operating given was frequently and openly voiced in discussions of race up until the 1970's. Moreover it still operates as a concept in putatively race free circumstances throughout our society.
http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/Kellogg/article/transparent_barriers#
Yes, individual acts are done by individuals, but the rationale which drives those acts are always part of a worldview that the individual uses to make the world cohere. It may be that "An absurdly small proportion of whites think that there is any superiority associated with whiteness", but in large measure MANY people operate as if they do. What else is this but the business end of the myth?
Don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying there isn't pressure to circle the wagons or act on certain social norms.
What I'm saying is that when we're addressing these pressures we need to realize that it's individuals that reproduce and responding to the pressures. I'll pose the same question to ellaesther that has been posed to Glenn Beck recently by Katie Couric recently: "exactly what did you mean by 'white society'." Couric and I both ask that question precisely because that sort of group or tribal mentality (1.) homogenizes people, which in groups as broad as "blacks" or "whites" is nonsensical, and (2.) because it really keeps individuals from being held accountable for their own decisions.
I'm not saying there aren't collective dynamics that make people feel personally absolved when they do horrendous things like this. What I don't like is using that very real dynamic as a proxy for addressing white people. We can say that there are pressures and norms and that those exert massive influence, but we can't identify those pressures with the people that respond very differently to those pressures. It's no more accurate to generalize a behavioral response of white people than it is to generalize a behavioral response of black people.
Take your link for example. I'm sure there were rumors. Like I said, I know these collective dynamics and instincts to circle the wagons exist. But let me ask you something - what percentage of that midwestern university traded in these rumors, do you think? There's a difference between saying "norms are strong, hard to kill, persistent, pervasive, and influential" and suggesting that those norms define or characterize the reaction of a group. I admit this is out there. What's analytically problematic for me is the suggestion that the existence of these sorts of norms constitutes (in ellaesther's words) "the white narrative".
"People don't like to think about their forefathers wandering around raping young girls just because they were available."
And the flipside of that, to me, is alot of black folks don't want to admit being the product of that. So then you get these stories from almost any black person you ask saying that their great-grandmother was a Cherokee Algonquin Apache Navaho Powhatan princess. People mention the white blood way, way less often, even though alot of the studies show the white blood is way, way more common and present. To refercne the Skip Gates special, again, I think out of all the celebrities her profiled (maybe about 20, between the two specials) something like 3 of them had any Indian blood at all (Sara Lightfoot, Quincy Jones, and somebody else, I think.) All the rest were shocked to discover they had no Native American blood, but a bunch of those same individuals did have white blood.
The South is also full of white people claiming a bit of Cherokee, probably warranting a bit of the same sense that the non-European bit might be something else.
Daniel does a pretty good job of discussing your points, I think, but I take issue with the basic idea that white people don't know that many black people have white ancestors. Besides the fact that it is obvious just looking around, it also pops up in all sorts of other forms, particularly in racist slurs/jokes/propaganda. Now, if you want to say that white people do know about the bloodlines, but do not talk about it, that is something else. But I think it is useless to have a discussion about why white people are ignorant about the white ancestors of black people when it seems untrue that they are ignorant of this fact.
People don't like to think about their forefathers wandering around raping young girls just because they were available.
You also have large numbers of White people who believe (correctly or not) that none of their ancestors owned slaves, or that they all immigrated to the US well after the end of slavery.
Well for a lot of white people that's true. My wife's family came over in the late eighteen hundreds. That's only a couple generations back - and when half of that time is is spent in an ethnic enclave it's not too hard to keep track of. A LOT of Americans came here that way. Of course much less are of complete immigrant stock, you're right. But people aren't dodging tough questions when they cite their Ellis Island ancestry.
And then, of course, a lot of us were here earlier. My family was here since the 1620s, others came in the 1700s, others in the early 1800s, and then I had some immigrants from the 1890s too. I only know of one branch of the family tree that had slave owners. Perhaps more did, but aside from this one branch (Alabama) they lived in Massachusetts, Canada, and New York, and a merchant family in Maryland - so I'm pretty confident saying none of them were slaveholders (even the Marylanders, given their line of work). It's not a matter of not wanting to think about my slaveholding ancestors raping young girls - I go off the assumption that they didn't. I'm sure most slave owners didn't. It's not something that I'm ashamed of - it's just that I'm not going to waste time assuming the worst about ancestors that I couldn't say one way or another about. Do I wish I didn't have slaveholders for ancestors? I guess, I don't know. It just seems weird to think about it that way. It's history. It doesn't make me who I am. It wasn't good but I don't feel like I or my family now is tarnished by that history or that we owe anything that we have to the profits some ancestors earned off of slavery.
I think saying this is like saying "well don't black people realize that before they were enslaved here they bought and sold each other into slavery in Africa". Historically, sure they can acknowledge that. And that history and our connection to that history is important so that we realize this isn't something distant or something that other people did - this is something that catches all of us in it's net. But how many black people are really chastened by the realization that Africans held and sold slaves before they were taken across the Atlantic? I doubt it makes much of an impression on very many people.
I have slaveholders in my family - but I also have family members that I actually met that worked tirelessly to integrate Virginia's public schools (and actually lost their school board position over that issue). I'm not dodging my slaveholding ancestors, but the fact is I feel more of a connection to the ones that fought for better things.
RE: "It wasn't good but I don't feel like I or my family now is tarnished by that history or that we owe anything that we have to the profits some ancestors earned off of slavery."
And I should clarify - I and all whites CERTAINLY profit off of being white, and the advantages that that entails. There's no doubt about that. But then again, my Canadian ancestors are just as guilty of that form of exploitation as my Alabama ancestors.
What I meant was that after the war my Alabama family was ruined. They migrated up to North Carolina, didn't do well there. Then they migrated up to Maryland and had the good fortune to marry into another branch of my family tree that had been in Maryland for a while and was doing much better financially. So I don't really owe much of anything I have to the institution of slavery - that was the weakest and poorest branch of my family tree. I do, of course, owe a lot of what I have to race prejudice and the advantages of whiteness - as all whites do.
"People don't like to think about their forefathers wandering around raping young girls just because they were available."
Even less do they like to think that this act of rape also helped their 'investment' in slaveholdings to mature and grow. This is, I think part of the particular horror of the institution: sexual predation and rape had an economic payoff.
I have a slight problem with being thrown into a "white narrative" (#2), in a similar vein to Daniel's discussion below.
It sort of assumes that based on our history (evident in Ulysses' comment) that this narrative, the one of circling wagons and white superiority, didn't twist and redefine itself during the years between slavery, the battle for civil rights, and where we find ourselves today. Just as blacks view themselves as a product of slavery and the ensuing revolution for freedom, I view myself as a product of those changes as well. In other words, the "white narrative" didn't end with systemic racism worming itself into our psyches and creating unconscious racism. The "white narrative" continued along with the "black narrative" We're continuing to work together to adjust our society away from the prejudices, ignorance, and misunderstandings that come from being human.
I should clarify, that I don't view myself as a product of slavery, but of a society that once condoned and upheld slavery. A parallel narrative with the same setting, but obviously different stories.
I thought this was pretty common knowledge too. I think this is "news" as much as any family tree searching of famous people is news. John Kerry and George Bush are both related to British royalty, etc. etc. It's a neat stupid tidbit that takes up a couple inches of print.
I think your "black people are mulatto people" sounds strange because that's just not how we think about color in this country. Neither black nor white are about bloodlines. Race is a color thing in this country. If you look black at all you are "black". If you look white you are "white". In that sense I never understood this idea that Obama is "half black/half white". I suppose because he actually grew up in a white family he could probably say that more than most, but the fact is if society identifies him as a black man he is a genuine black man.
That fact should (1.) open our eyes to how superficial and meaningless these labels ultimately are, but also (2.) get us to be realistic about exactly what race is in this country. If race were just about your lineage, I think it would be a lot easier for people to become "post-racial". But it's not. Race is plain and simple an issue of how you are categorized based on how you look. That should be a really sobering insight. If it was all about bloodlines, post-racialism would be a breeze. Since it's not it's a much harder proposition.
This. Exactly what Daniel Kuehn said.
Race as a construct in America has never really been about anything so nuanced as bloodlines or pedigrees. It has ALWAYS been about the most bluntly superficial characteristics of skin color and facial features.
Obama is a black man in America. He is our first black president. And there is simply no way to minimize what this means to a society that has spent over 400 years taking for granted the simplistic idea that skin color was the ultimate essentialist division of humanity.
Interesting question is whether black ancestors turn up on the Dunham side of the Obama family.
I also don't know why anyone would be shocked that The FLOTUS would have a connection to slavery, but I get where people would be surprised that she has white ancestry (I'm not, but I get that people would be.) It's easy to make the jump from Shemar Moore, Halle Berry and Mariah Carey to having a white relative, because to a lot of non-blacks, they might not look like any black person they've ever seen. The light skin and straight-ish hair are easy signifiers. But for someone like Mrs. Obama, who "looks black," especially in the context of the way she has been shaped as being angry, militant, too pro black, anti "whitey" or whatever, it now becomes a story to the NYT.
If you're black, you probably have a family with people ranging in 12 different shades till Sunday, and it's always been assumed (and told to me by my parents, in my case), that we've all got "something" in us so no, not news to anyone over here.
I almost fell out of my seat laughing at Shemar Moore being included in that list. It just seems so random... Ali, W.EB., Malcom, SHAMAR MOORE... LOL! (Sorry for the random post but I HAD to comment on that!)
I was thinking the same thing! How did Shemar Moore make that list?!
I think Deborah's comment above, that this is a byproduct of the fact that most high school textbooks don't talk about sex, period, is dead on. This leads to all KINDS of weird, widely held ideas about history that generally don't get dispelled unless and until people take a college level history or literature class. "Average" people often have a general notion that extramarital sex, kinky sex, gay sex, most cuss words, and anything else not suitable for prime time network TV was invented around 1985. 1960 if they're into classic rock. My best friend is a Ph.D. currently working on an article that involves early 18th century dildoes and sex dolls- THAT blows people's minds.
(To answer the question I know you're dying to ask: wood, sometimes ivory, totally gross.)
Or ancient Roman condoms. Sheepskin, reusable.
If they want to motivate kids to study they should put all the awful scandals back in the official history. For example, if you have just quit the Senate in a fit of pique and need the state legislature to vote you back in, don't take a hooker back to your room in a hotel full of enemies. Especially don't do this if the doors all have handy transom windows for the peep show. Details like this make the battle over reforming revenue collection 100 years ago come alive.
I'm always stunned by what people don't know. A friend with a Ph.D. had somehow managed to miss the information that road maps usually have north on top. And a lot of people don't know there's a rule for which way to turn a lightbulb.
As for race mixing and African Americans, I'm pretty sure it wasn't covered in school. But it wasn't hard to figure out. It's discussed in a lot of books, and it's hard to miss if you were the kind of kid who read a lot outside the assigned reading in school.
In my case, I also met a number interracial families when I was growing up, and I could just LOOK at the kids and see how they resembled their black parents and how they resembled their white ones. (Same with other interracial combinations, of course.) When I later met people who looked like those kids, I figured that they had multiracial ancestry as well. Finally, there are a lot of people who will tell you about their ancestry. I've heard black people mention the Scottish side of their family or their German grandfather.
So no, it isn't a big secret.
Now let's throw Native Americans into the mix. I've met plenty of people with significant Native American ancestry, and even actual tribal membership, who look either black or white. That's a whole third layer.
"And a lot of people don't know there's a rule for which way to turn a lightbulb" - you mean there are people who never heard "righty tighty, lefty loosy"?
White woman in my 40s here, grew up in an all-white neighborhood in the midwest, and I found out about the mixed race thing when a (white) high school friend of mine revealed his Family Secret: that one of the relatives on his mom's side had been black. I guess this had been a big family scandal 50+ years ago. My friend had a wide nose and kinky hair, evidence, I suppose, of the race-mixing. It was eye-opening at the time.
And then there's the Seinfeld episode where Elaine thinks her boyfriend is black, and he thinks she's Hispanic. They both seem a little disappointed when they figure out they aren't an interracial couple after all.
(The actor who played the boyfriend is apparently all white, but I wouldn't have been shocked to find out he was an albino black person. Now that's something I REALLY didn't know about, until I met one.)
I think most people know (white or black or whatever..) but most people aren't used to seeing an upfront discussion in the media, there is the surprise, and I think the comments about sexual transgressions were on the money in that regard.
Classic case of white Americans who were in power tying to hide from the fact that they did very evil things in founding this country. Lets see in my history books in high school I don't remember the part of the slave owners raped their slaves and obviously not only getting away with it but having it be a common practice. If you look at black people in this country and compare them to Africans where blacks are obvious descendants, they look very much lighter in skin complexion. That gives the educated person reason to believe that in the founding times of this nation their was a lot of mixing between races. I highly doubt this came from black men mixing with white women, for at that time that was looked at as a crime comparable if not worse to than murder.
Real history is real history, whether we like it or not. There will come a time where we need to tell the truth. History without truth becomes fiction based on fact.
-E
"I thought you knew"
We did. If memory serves, the average white admixture for African Americans is something like 15%-20%. When you look at African Americans compared too white Americans it doesn't always jump out at you, but when you look at African Americans compared to Africans, it does. Look at those photos of President Obama's father, for example: that was an African gentleman who was almost certainly 100% black. Most African Americans don't look like that.
Then again, there's a huge variation in tones within the East African community that I've ended up living near, and that's within one tribal group (Hutu, in this case), from kids who "look African" to some of their lighter-skinned older siblings who get mistaken for being Puerto Rican until they start talking.
I don't know as much of the history of this area, but I wonder if there was a similar dynamic there as well, since the coast of that area was a hub of the slave trade with North Africa and the middle east and was also colonized by Portugal...
The roots just keep going deeper.
You do get some admixture where Arab North Africa mingles with black sub-Saharan Africa. You get some of that in the Arab world as well, particularly in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, given the Arabian peninsula's proximity to the Horn of Africa. Someone like Bin Laden, for example, looks like he has some African blood in him. Arabs don't have a "one drop" rule, and with Islam's concept of manumission, it has always been possible for the child of a slave and an Arab slave owner to be considered an Arab.
One-third of white Americans, according to some tests, will possess between two and 20 per cent African genes
Just sayin'. As they say, read the whole thing.
And this is the other thing that so many people ought to know, but somehow, don't. It's amazing to me how the mixing of the races in America is so empirically evident all around us and yet the fiction of racial purity pretty much goes unquestioned. And it's not just black and white, people. Depending on the region there's plenty of Asian and Latino admixture too. That's one of the things that was so entertaining about Skip Gate's DNA testing program. When black folks found out that their light skin and high cheekbones didn't come from the mythic bit of Cherokee that absolutely everyone (black or white) claims, but from Chinese ancestors. Two sets of railroad workers crossing paths and ending up in a biblical meeting. Ralph Ellison wrote a lot about this, the odd perversity of America at once claiming to be a melting pot, but not being able to see and/or deliberately disavowing the actual, you know, melting.
A Richard Pryor sketch just came to mind. He said he went to Africa and asked the people there what tribe he resembled. They answered "Italian." And the minute he said it, that's what I saw.
There are definitely times when I look at Derek Jeter and see an Italian guy who has been out in the sun. I mean, I know he's not, but... Makes you think about how the people who live around the Mediterranean ended up looking the way they do.
Personally, TNC, it seems like its not at all evident to the average white American that most black people have mixed ancestry. From my own personal experience, two things jump out:
1) As a child of an immigrant, my family can trace its roots back generations, all through the same ancestry (southern indian, through and through, in a country that had saw a lot of traffic from arab countries). So personally I don't find it hard to believe that ethnic groups can retain their racial make-up in mixed societies. I can't say for sure, but I imagine this can also be true for a lot of white people -- if your family was in iowa for the last 150 years, why would they have ever married who wasn't of the same class and race? I'm not saying this excuses ignorance, but in a lot of people's personal experience, a lack of racial mixing rings true.
2) While this is not true of my own (younger) generation, a lot of older people are not used to seeing mixed race couples. Most white people have children with white people (its just a numbers game) so large scale race mixing probably seems unlikely. So this can also add to the confusion.
I don't know, clearly I understand from an intellectual level that Americans aren't as educated as they should be. But things like this -- asking americans to understand the racial heritage of black people -- can be chalked up to the differences in cultural experiences. Minorities have to interact with white people way more than they have to interact with us, and that has real effects.
Hi, I'm sorry, but I really don't understand where the white people are ignorant of black people's white ancestors meme is coming from. Is it just based on this article being published as news? Was there some other thing, like a study or a poll, that just came out and coincided with this? Because all of my experience in many different places in the U.S. and the world makes me believe that white people DO know that there was mixing. Now, whether people want to talk about this is something else entirely. But white people not wanting to talk about it does not equal them not knowing about it. In fact, it would indicate that they do know about it, since they are consciously avoiding it.
I thought we knew too.
One historical question I find interesting: to what extent (and how) did antebellum abolitionists and anti-slavery activists use fears of miscegnation to fuel the anti-slavery movement.
Thinking into the mind of a fire-and-brimstone antebellum abolitionist preacher from (e.g.) upstate New York, Western Mass, or Vermont, I can easily imagine the temptation to attack the institution of slavery as an institution that promoted sexual license, corruption, and depravity. The question is whether, or rather how many, of these preachers would take the next step to denounce racial intermixing as well.
Regardless, I'd suspect that one of the most inflammatory political attacks on the slave system would also be one of the most quickly buried in the course of reconstruction -- with resultant distortions in American historical memory.
I don't know of any abolitionists doing this, but lots of defenders of slavery, North and South, accused abolitionists of desiring it, though the word they used was "amalgamation". E.g. Douglas accused Lincoln of it during their senatorial debates. Ironic to think of Southerners condemning interracial sex while practising it for fun and profit.
Look, there is a difference between knowing and KNOWING. Many of us know that the vast majority of black people in the U.S. have white ancestry. But putting a name--and a specific line, and a specific relationship--on the white ancestry brings it to another level of knowing.
It is sort of like how people with Eastern European ancestors know that there are probably Jewish ancestors in the recent mix--from certain cities or regions, it is quite common. But when you are able to put a name, place, and date to that specific person, it brings the knowing to another level and makes it much more real.
For the Michelle "revelation," knowing at least one specific ancestor makes you wonder about the actual people involved, the relationships, etc. What was once a theoretical certainty becomes a reality, though it isn't surprising. Just as with putting names on Jewish ancestors makes you wonder about specific pogroms that you know happened at the exact time and place of your ancestry, etc.
That's the thing, though. We've always had names. Booker T. Washington was the most respected black man of his time. He did not hide the fact that he had a white father--he wrote about it. How many years has it been since Lena Horne was out and about?
I think we know, most of us, but I've always thought it's not something we're supposed to talk about or even speculate about. Regarding the "evidence," I feel uncomfortable speculating about how much white blood someone like Harold Ford might have in his family based on the particular shade he is as opposed to a darker skinned black man. Growing up around a few biracial kids, I got sensitized early on to not classifying "race" by "shade." So, in my case, it's not that I've been totally ignorant of the history, but that the subject has always seemed off limits to me.
I think others have already said it, but truth is white Americans are a racial cocktail blend themselves. And that includes African blood.
There is no racial purity in the world anyway and never has been. Everyone's a hybrid of their geography, when it comes down to it. Race is a construct.
There's a lot of overgeneralization going on here. In my 65+ years of living I've encountered virtually no one who does not understand that there is white bloodline in a large number of African Americans. (Not that the subject comes up in every conversation.) The ignorance of a few idiots does not change that fact.
The differences in skin color are of course not all due to white and black interbreeding. In Africa, there is a wide variation in skin color.
I'm also afraid that we whites don't avoid the subject of white and black mixing because we want to avoid the shame of the outright physical rape and other coercion imposed on black women by whites during slavery. No doubt that was a shameful thing to do. But to extrapolate that into contemporary personal shame is a stretch. In my case, for example, my paternal ancestors did not come to the United States until well after slavery was abolished. My maternal ancestors were abolitionists from New England. I am afraid that I do not feel personal responsibility for the sins of the past--a pretty typical response, I think. There are enough contemporary sins to feel badly about.
People, white people generally, also are sometime unaware of the large amount Native American blood in the portion of the African-American population descended from slaves. This isn't a secret, but plenty of people don't know about it. You don't need to have details, just an awareness that this sort of thing is out there.
I had a colleague who sometimes taught Intro to Human Anthropology, and tried to get across to her students the notion that what we call "race" isn't a biological distinction, it's a cultural one. She would ask her students -- this was California, so there's LOTS of ethnic and national diversity in the classroom -- to line up, side-by-side, against the wall and order themselves by skin color from lightest to darkest. She would then point out that there's likely no confusion or disagreement about the "race" of the people on each end. But then she'd say, "where do you make the cut? Where does white end and black begin?"
They couldn't make that call, of course; no one can, rationally. It was an eye-opener for those students.
The slavery/rape/shame dynamic doesn't seem to be much of an issue for most white people who have never had any historical connection to the south. Which a lot don't. If your whole family history on this continent is New York or Boston or Chicago, and especially if it is all post-1865, then the race narrative is white migrants from Europe and black migrants from the Jim Crow south. Which is complicated enough, of course, but it doesn't include slaveowner guilt.
One area of US racial history that I'd really like to learn more about is the history of the labor movement as related to black-white relations. That's a northern black-white story, and I think it gets even less coverage than the southern one.
It isn't so pleasant. One brief example.
No nationality in modern European history has had it worse than the Irish. Nearly 2 million died in the "Great Hunger", 1 million more were forced to immigrate, the country was almost destroyed. (This is mainly from 1847 to 1851 or so.)
When the Irish came to America, they did not hate black people. As I've read it written in books, "Paddy didn't hate the Negro when he got to America, Paddy had never even see a Negro".
I have this amazing editorial cartoon, from a magazine called "Harpers Weekly". It is entitled "Equal". It features a racist cartoon of an ape-like black man.....with a racist cartoon of an ape-like Irish man. They are sitting opposite sides of a giant set of scales. They perfectly balance each other. I can't make out the date but it looks like something that would have been drawn around 1900 or so.
But the immigrant Irish and the children of slaves often competed for the same industrial jobs in the North. So there was no shortage of racism in poor Irish communities against their black co-workers. You just had the rich setting one set of oppressed, poverty-stricken people against another set of oppressed, poverty stricken people. Of course, the Irish ended up having a much easier time of it. As alien as they might have been when they first came off the boats, they could.....over time if they tried hard enough.....fully assimilate until they were as white as everyone else.
The history of the suffragette movement also has it's darker side. Women had been a leading force in the abolitionist movement, black and white. Years later, when some of these same white women realized that getting the vote for themselves and their daughters would be easier if they dropped any efforts regarding black equality, many of them were all to quick to do so.
I don't know, this sounds very convenient with regard to Paddy. Plenty of Europeans had never seen Africans, it didn't stop them from enjoying the carnival exhibitions of the Khoikhoi women.
I don't know, I haven't studied it in detail, but I'm pretty sure the Irish would have been a rung above any black American, whatever the Harper's cartoon shows.
And there certainly was some racial ugliness on the part of some of the suffragists, but if they decided to refocus their efforts on their own cause when it appeared that black men would just join in the general oppression of men not allowing women the vote (before Jim Crow derailed things) -- I can't say I blame them.
It is starting to be covered more. The short and sweet answer is that most labor unions denied access to African Americans, and in response, many black workers became "scabs" or crossed the picket lines. Check out A. Philip Randolph--he was the founding leader of the Brotherhood of Pullman Car Porters, one of the most successful black unions, and was instrumental in getting the CIO to accept black members and then to refuse admittance to unions that did not accept blacks. The AFL was less ready to make such a rule, but had to accept it when they came together in the late 30s. Another interesting thing to look into is the Ford Strike of the late 30s. Ford offered decent wages to black workers, but also required that they live outside of Dearborn and gave them the less skilled labor. Lots of interesting tug of war in the strike.
Are we putting forth the view that all African-Americans who are lighter than native-born Africans today definitely have some "white" ancestry in their heritage? (Putting aside the very real fact that historically "whiteness" as been a movable goal.)
As someone with a degree in history, I've studied African-American history before. So of course I was familiar with this particular issue. But perhaps I was ignorant as to the degree of sexual intermixing?
I once taught a few classes in a HS where I had several students from the Sudan. They were very dark-skinned and the female students in particular, looked as if they were African born. But this never caused me took look at my lighter skinned African-American students and say, "yeah, they have some white distant ancestors somewhere in history".
Could a certain trait, like lighter skin, remain in a family's genes even if it hadn't been reinforced, (through an interracial marriage), for many generations? Or did so many slaves have children with their owners that unless an African-American, (in modern times), has children with a native-born African, they end up automatically reinforcing the trait by having children with another descendent of slaves?
Of course, race is largely an artificial construct. My Irish paternal grandparents were considered white when they came to America, had they immigrated 100 years earlier, they would not have been considered white at all. And let's forget about my mother's family, Portuguese who immigrated from the island of Madeira less than 100 years ago. Considering where Madeira is geographically, it's probably for the best that they immigrated to New England.
On a related subject, is the word "mulatto" offensive to use or not? I never thought it was but I once had a black classmate of mine object to my using it. She didn't know the origins of the word but cautioned that I should look it up before I use it. I looked it up and found two possible origins. One was offensive and one was not. The offensive version, I believe was Spanish and had mulatto meaning "mule". The inoffensive version, I believe was Arabic and had mulatto meaning......I think....."mixed" or some word to that effect. I guess the mystery comes from the fact that by the time racial sensitivity regarding words became an issue, the word mulatto had become an antiquated term. In any event, I avoid using the word now.
Race is not an artificial construct. That's a myth based on poor understanding of statistics which is promulgated by people who want to be politically correct.
Essentially, the fallacy is that because the variability of any individual trait is much larger within a group than between groups, you can't distinguish between the groups. The flaw is that you might be able to distinguish between the groups using multiple traits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy
NZ -
Please read my words more carefully.
I said that "race is largely an artificial construct". Now what was the operative word that you chose to leave out so that you could correct me?
At one time, Irish-Catholics were not considered "white", not like white Protestant English. In 1850 in America, I would not be considered "fully white".
At one time, the term "Hispanic" or "Latino" did not exist. When they were first devised in the 20th century, Portuguese was considered to be "Hispanic" or "Latino". I suppose this was because mainland Portugal was once an Iberian principality like the other principalities that ended up forming the nation of Spain and people from Spain are considered Latino or Hispanic. Today, people of Portuguese decent, like me, are not considered Latino or Hispanic.
Also, the study you linked to is categorized as a "scientific controversy" on the site itself, so it's not the best trump card out there.
Also, maybe you should be more polite? You don't know what my motivations were in saying what I said.
The phrase race is socially constructed is not about distinguishing the variance of physical traits across peoples it's about the variable labels and values we assign to those traits across time and in different place.
My bigger question though is: why, pray tell, might you or anyone find solace in the ability to supposedly empirically distinguish between groups using multivariate statistical probabilities?
We might assign all sorts of different labels and values to different things at different times, but that doesn't make the underlying thing socially or artificially constructed.
It's like saying temperature is socially constructed. Yeah, I say "comfy" while my tropical girlfriend says "cold". Does that make temperature a social construct? Daniel Gabriel Farenheit thinks not.
As for taking solace in statistical distributions, I rather doubt anyone does this. Am I missing some subtext? Why did you ask this question?
I thought white Americans DID know that many black Americans have some white ancestry. I'm surprised to learn that some did/do not know. I'm white and spent a lot of my youth in the south. I went to middle school and high school in a small town in south Georgia during the 80s. I knew that some blacks had white ancestry, that some male slaveowners had sex with female slaves (and that it was often rape), and that there was a history of "passing" in America. I remember being aware of this from a fairly young age, although I don't remember exactly how I learned about it. Such info was certainly out in popular media by then -- this was after Roots had been on TV. I remember spending a fair amount of time on the Civil War in high school history class. Regarding male slaveowners having sex with female slaves -- it seems to me that this was not an off-limits topic in school. I don't remember it being called "rape" but it was clear it was coercive.
Although sex between whites and blacks under slavery was acknowledged, consensual interracial sex was definitely frowned upon in the general society. The sight of a mixed couple would cause a lot of gossip and was potentially dangerous. My brother dated a black girl for a short time in high school, and my mother feared for his safety.
The interesting thing was that while modern African Americans were viewed as the result of racial mixing, modern American whites were not. While I somehow knew about "passing" it wasn't talked about much. It was generally assumed that it took two white parents to make a white baby. If there was a black parent, the baby might be light but could be identified as black. There may have been some underlying and unacknowledged fear about "passing" that made people so upset about interracial couples. Anyway, I think the idea that a parent that looks black will always have children that look black necessarily relies on the erasure (or white-washing) or the genetic history of those children that do come out looking white.
In today's society, where more people are openly in interracial relationships and having children together and some of these people (both the parents and their offspring) have a high public profile, I think it will be interesting to see a change in the general understanding of what mixed race people can look like and see how this affects our notions of race.
Mulatto was a race classification on the United States census for quite a while. I am not sure what the circumstances were in its removal.
Homer Plessy--the plaintiff in the infamous case of Plessy v. Ferguson--was a mulatto (in the parlance of the time he was an Octaroon, meaning that he was seven-eights white and one eighth black.) His arrest was part of a deliberate challenge by citizens to the separation of the races in railroad cars that had been enacted by Louisiana Jim Crow laws. In fact, Homer Plessy had to take a train that left New Orleans to create his case, as the law was not enforced in New Orleans at the time.
The mulattoes in New Orleans were especially outraged by the Jim Crow laws, as they were a separate caste from darker skinned people. No doubt many mulattos could and did "pass" as white--a path that must have seemed more of an option as the Jim Crow laws took effect.
Nowadays my guess is that a lot of people would be completely unaware of the term mulatto.
I live in the South now after spending my working life in the North. In college and after I was fascinated by the history and literature of the south because the experience was so different from the rest of the country. So I probably know the history better than many.
The white southerners I know don't have any more guilt over the sexual exploitation of black women than northerners or the children of more recent immigrants. Only a small percentage of white southerners were slave owners--well less than half, and even less today (even the "native" southerners) are descended from slave owners. I don't find any nostalgia for the good old days of segregation, even among whites who were here during the time it was the norm. Most whites know full well how wrong it was, and how badly it inhibited economic and social progress. The south has changed a lot. Only movie producers and the morally superior strain of liberals are not aware of this fact.
This white Southerner held her breath while she read the NY Times, watching for the paths of her own sorry ancestors. Mercifully, Bartow County was the only name I recognized, and that links only to the less wealthy, less guilty side of my family.
Strom Thurmond filibustered civil rights while he funneled money to his secret black daughter. Human beings really are astonishing creatures.
As my personal example of white folks' ignorance, I recall an interview with some Va professor/historian around the time of the Did-TJ-have-sex-with-Sally-Hemmings? dustup. This guy said that until he saw the DNA evidence, he completely rejected the Hemmings' family claim. Why? Because TJ was a Virginia gentleman and a Virginia gentleman would not have sex with a slave. I was speechless.
I think to say, "some" African Americans have white ancestry is to underestimate the scope and lasting effects slavery has had. There is a reason why my grandfather's nickname was Red and my grandmother on the other side of my family had naturally straight hair. Without putting a percentage or number on it, it's safe to say many,most, a lot, a majority, of African Americans have white ancestry. You can say the same thing for African people from Brazil, Cuba, Panama, etc.
we have always been a multi-cultural community.
The multi-racialism of the Black community is why, when two Black folks get together, it's pretty much a genetic lottery, because you don't know what will be at play. Maybe the kid will look like you or the other parent, or maybe, you'll get a ' throwback' baby.
My maternal grandfather would have been comfortable walking the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, like the family name he carried. You know how we ' look' at folks and 'just know' - that wasn't him. Born on a slave plantation to his White looking mother. He married my maternal grandmother - 20 years his junior and ' Black as the Ace of Spades'. Between them, they had 15 children, ranging from dark chocolate to my aunt, who could have passed for a red-headed White woman. I don't believe the story of my family is all that unique for Blacks in America.
And neither is the story of the First Lady's family. To me, it's only a surprise to the ' willfully ignorant'.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me when the ' one drop' rule was abolished.
I always assumed the "Obama's not really black" media-driven-fake-controversy hookom was because none of his ancestors were African-American, not because he has one white parent.
Link posted without comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M5G2nWP3xY
I always thought it strange that Americans, who practically wrote the book on racism, never caught on to the South African idea of a 'Colored' middle category especially for those pesky little offspring of grandfather who turned into a serial rapist whenever he had too much moonshine.
Not that the extra category solved many problems: I was born into a lower white working class family (but after a holiday in the sun, calling me tanned would be an understatement), and most of my school years the rich kids gave me that knowing look, that one that means the doors of privilege have just slammed shut on you. So no matter the categories, in practice people always had to steal surreptitious looks to someone's hair, or cuticles, or shape of nose to help determine their class position within the overriding racial categories.
The reaction of my Dutch friends (white or back) whenever the subject of growing up in apartheid SA comes up is quite funny - they often go into some embarrassed stupor, where you can see they desperately want to ask 'Well, are you white or black?' but cannot get themselves past their awareness of how wrong such a question would be. Quite funny.
But of course, race is not like temperature. If you say someone is "black" and your tropical girlfriend says "white," that difference of opinion has social and legal consequences. Not to mention that there has yet to be, thankfully some might say, a Fahrenheit-like scale of racial categorization. Such a thing would be immensely creepy and very like the scientific racism of anthropologist, sociologist, and biologist who insisted in the first half of the 20th century that there were static categories labeled Mongoloid, Negro, Aryan, what have you.
The idea that phenotypical and biological characteristics cluster is not revolutionary and if that's what you mean by race is not socially constructed, so be it. But I think you deliberately misunderstand the meaning of the phrase socially constructed. It doesn't mean humans don't have diverse biological markers that can be loosely grouped, it means there is no such thing as a "white" person or a "black" person or a "colored" person outside the context of however we've defined those things socially and legally. Take the "one drop rule," for example. Now, reverse it. See, same people with the same biology all of a sudden are in different "racial" groups. The decision rule is a construct. That's the point.
This meant to respond to Ninja Zombie above.
Race is like temperature. You can come up with an absolute, algorithmic procedure for assigning people to races based on genetype or phenotype. The procedure itself will have a low probability of miscategorization, and can be algorithmically (with no social input). Basically, give enough genotypes or phenotypes to a computer, and the computer will spit out the clusters.
The only thing that is arbitrary is the labeling of the clusters. The computer might say "1, 2, 3" (ORDER BY SIZEOF(cluster)), while humans would say "chinese, indian, white." The Farenheit-like "scale" of racial categorization does exist and is used for forensics.
I fully agree that many past decision rules were both crappy (high probability of misclassification) and constructed for social reasons. But that does not mean race itself is a social construct. Similarly, before the thermometer was invented, there might have been some crappy socially constructed temperature scales (e.g., "coat weather", "shirt weather", "shorts weather").
Incidentally, the clustering algorithm does a very good job of categorizing American blacks as mixed-race -- they lie within the convex hull generated by several African clusters and European clusters, but well outside any African cluster. A smaller (but significant) number of white-looking Americans fall outside the white cluster but inside this convex hull as well.
'Could a certain trait, like lighter skin, remain in a family's genes even if it hadn't been reinforced, (through an interracial marriage), for many generations? Or did so many slaves have children with their owners that unless an African-American, (in modern times), has children with a native-born African, they end up automatically reinforcing the trait by having children with another descendent of slaves?'
Well, yes, there are that many. And not just with owners, but with lovers and spouses, too. I'd also like to point out that not every black person in the U.S. during that time was a slave. There were, and had always been, free blacks.
But I also want to add that to imply that the only way whites & blacks intermingled was through force is leaving out another chapter of the story. Not for one moment do I downplay the reality of rape and exploitation, but for example, in my family we also have a white ancestor who lived with his black common-law wife, (It was illegal for them to marry) acknowledged and raised their children, and they remained together-in the South in the 1800s. And there is a 'black' side' and a 'white side' in the family-in the same town. Typical? No, but absolutely not an isolated incident.
The real mind-altering concept would be when whites are told in some major ways who their ancestors are.
The San people, sometimes called "Bushmen" are the original human stick. They have the greatest genetic diversity of any human group.
No matter how blond or light you are -- here is your EVE.
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/san-people-of-southwest-africa1.jpg