NationStates Jolt Archive

COMMENTARY: "It's a wise man who knows his own father" could easily be extended to, "It's a wise human who knows his own race!" If this doesn't put the lie to all the "race" advocates, nothing will.


Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/opinion/31mon4.html?th&emc=th)


By BRENT STAPLES
Published: October 31, 2005
People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a "white" name like Brent Staples. One letter writer ridiculed it as "an anchorman's name" and accused me of making it up. For the record, it's a British name - and the one my parents gave me. "Staples" probably arrived in my family's ancestral home in Virginia four centuries ago with the British settlers.

The earliest person with that name we've found - Richard Staples - was hacked to death by Powhatan Indians not far from Jamestown in 1622. The name moved into the 18th century with Virginians like John Staples, a white surveyor who worked in Thomas Jefferson's home county, Albemarle, not far from the area where my family was enslaved.

The black John Staples who married my paternal great-great-grandmother just after Emancipation - and became the stepfather of her children - could easily have been a Staples family slave. The transplanted Britons who had owned both sides of my family had given us more than a preference for British names. They had also given us their DNA. In what was an almost everyday occurrence at the time, my great-great-grandmothers on both sides gave birth to children fathered by white slave masters.

I've known all this for a long time, and was not surprised by the results of a genetic screening performed by DNAPrint Genomics, a company that traces ancestral origins to far-flung parts of the globe. A little more than half of my genetic material came from sub-Saharan Africa - common for people who regard themselves as black - with slightly more than a quarter from Europe.

The result that knocked me off my chair showed that one-fifth of my ancestry is Asian. Poring over the charts and statistics, I said out loud, "This has got to be a mistake."

That's a common response among people who are tested. Ostensibly white people who always thought of themselves as 100 percent European find they have substantial African ancestry. People who regard themselves as black sometimes discover that the African ancestry is a minority portion of their DNA.

These results are forcing people to re-examine the arbitrary calculations our culture uses to decide who is "white" and who is "black."

As with many things racial, this story begins in the slave-era South, where sex among slaves, masters and mistresses got started as soon as the first slave ship sailed into Jamestown Harbor in 1619. By the time of the American Revolution, there was a visible class of light-skinned black people who no longer looked or sounded African. Free mulattos, emancipated by guilt-ridden fathers, may have accounted for up to three-quarters of the tiny free-black population before the Revolution.

By the eve of the Civil War, the swarming numbers of mixed-race slaves on Southern plantations had become a source of constant anguish to planters' wives, who knew quite well where those racially ambiguous children were coming from.

Faced with widespread fear that racial distinctions were losing significance, the South decided to define the problem away. People with any ascertainable black ancestry at all were defined as black under the law and stripped of basic rights. The "one drop" laws defined as black even people who were blond and blue-eyed and appeared white.

Black people snickered among themselves and worked to subvert segregation at every turn. Thanks to white ancestry spread throughout the black community, nearly every family knew of someone born black who successfully passed as white to get access to jobs, housing and public accommodations that were reserved for white people only. Black people who were not quite light enough to slip undetected into white society billed themselves as Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, South Asian, Native American - you name it. These defectors often married into ostensibly white families at a time when interracial marriage was either illegal or socially stigmatized.

Those of us who grew up in the 1950's and 60's read black-owned magazines and newspapers that praised the racial defectors as pioneers while mocking white society for failing to detect them. A comic newspaper column by the poet Langston Hughes - titled "Why Not Fool Our White Folks?" - typified the black community's sense of smugness about knowing the real racial score. In keeping with this history, many black people I know find it funny when supposedly white Americans profess shock at the emergence of blackness in the family tree. But genetic testing holds plenty of surprises for black folks, too.

Which brings me back to my Asian ancestry. It comes as a surprise, given that my family's oral histories contain not a single person who is described as Asian. More testing on other family members should clarify the issue, but for now, I can only guess. This ancestry could well have come through a 19th-century ancestor who was incorrectly described as Indian, often a catchall category at the time.

The test results underscore what anthropologists have said for eons: racial distinctions as applied in this country are social categories and not scientific concepts. In addition, those categories draw hard, sharp distinctions among groups of people who are more alike than they are different. The ultimate point is that none of us really know who we are, ancestrally speaking. All we ever really know is what our parents and grandparents have told us.

Remember Plessy v. Ferguson (http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/307/)?

Mr. Plessy was only an Octoroon (http://www.bartleby.com/61/87/O0028700.html), remember?

Who knows what "evil" lurks in your family tree?
Crazed tree monkeys. Twelve of them. And a koala and two gaint three toed sloths with a booze problem.

I had this problem myself.

When I was in the Army, I didn't fit into any of the categories they had.

The census had to finally acknowledge this - allowing people to select or note many different "races".

And who was up in arms about this change in policy? The Democratic Party - they said that this would weaken their "Hispanic" bloc - by allowing them to categorize themselves however they wished. They were even afraid that "African-Americans" would redefine themselves.

If you've ever seen the ridiculous definitions offered for "Hispanic"...

The moment we stop writing down the categories - the moment we stop acknowledging categories that do not exist from a genetic standpoint - the moment we all intermarry and reproduce - that will be the day when all this nonsense stops.

But as long as someone still clings to "black" or "white" - they're taking us down the road of trouble.

So let me get this straight...all those white guys in my school who wear "bling" and act all "gansta" might actually have an excuse!?

The moment we stop writing down the categories - the moment we stop acknowledging categories that do not exist from a genetic standpoint - the moment we all intermarry and reproduce - that will be the day when all this nonsense stops.

But as long as someone still clings to "black" or "white" - they're taking us down the road of trouble.


Quoted for truth! :cool:

Quoted for truth! :cool:
Quoted for the glasses smiley:cool:


and in agreement.

I have to agree Sierra. Racism ends when we stop making up artificial differences. We're all people...

I'm confident, though - look how far we've come in 50 years.

If you have a Google account, you can read the following book online:
http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://print.google.com/print%3Fid%3D9d9FC-gcWaAC%26oi%3Dfnd%26pg%3DPA1%26sig%3D_UJwpGtakpFYEgREm-ZimnrrPD4

I had a girlfirned who could have been mistaken for an aryan prototype woman-blonde/blue, very nordic. But she was 1/16 black. I didn't believe her until I saw the family picture album. She doesn't claim to be black on government forms though. Thinks it's unfair since she has the benefit of appearing to be white.
I have 2 friends from Baton Rouge (unrelated) that are also mixed but appear to be white. They identify themselves as white too.
I also had an interesting conversation with a black man in Maryland (1500 miles away) with my exact name. My surname is unique-if somebody has it then they are more than likely a relative. We had a good laugh and tried to figure out where the tree branched. I told my aunt, the family geneologist, and she's on the case.
There are 40000 genes in the human body. So far they've only found 6 that determine racial features and characteristics. That's .00015% (I call that a rounding error). Kind of puts things in perspective when you think about it.

So let me get this straight...all those white guys in my school who wear "bling" and act all "gansta" might actually have an excuse!?
I believe that the government still acknowledges severe mental retardation as an eexcuse for most things, so they were always in the clear.

Oh, and this man ->:cool: Isn't wearing glasses. If you look, you'll notice that he has no ears, and that instead of a frame, he just has a band that wraps around his head.
Therefore, this punk ( :cool: ) is wearing goggles, and no hat, that makes him distinctly uncool.

"Officially" my wife (and therefore my son) has some Cherokee ancestry, but my wife has confided in me that she thinks that the "Cherokee" may have been at least part black. So what? Some of her indisputably "white" ancestors were not exactly people you'd want to admit to be any relation (theft, adultery, and murder - and that's just one great-great-grandfather!) On the other hand, my wife is also a direct descendant of English royalty (through Ethelred II "the Unready"). Again, so what? My son may be about 40 millionth in line for the throne of the United Kingdom, which will get him exactly nowhere in life.

As for me, my ancestry includes numerous cattle thieves (it was a respectable occupation in medieval Scotland), at least one pirate, and the biggest bootlegger in Atlantic City during the 1920s.

Race is a ridiculous enough concept by itself; it is even more absurd to believe that some races are more "respectable" than others. Everyone has both saints and scoundrels in their ancestry, regardless of race. Who your ancestors were matters not at all; what matters is who you are and what kind of person you make of yourself.

MY family tree has more than one notorious figure, plus a physicist on the manhattan project.
My wife's cousin's son is the current captain of the NY Yankees.

Remember Plessy v. Ferguson (http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/307/)?

Mr. Plessy was only an Octoroon (http://www.bartleby.com/61/87/O0028700.html), remember?
Yup! I remember that, as well as numerous other brands of foolishness. Would to God we could all just accept that we're brothers and sisters, and give up the fiction of "race." Sigh.

I'm your brother! Now isn't THAT a frightening thought! Hehehe! :D

The moment we stop writing down the categories - the moment we stop acknowledging categories that do not exist from a genetic standpoint - the moment we all intermarry and reproduce - that will be the day when all this nonsense stops.
Amen, brother. Amen! :)

So let me get this straight...all those white guys in my school who wear "bling" and act all "gansta" might actually have an excuse!?
Yup! Gotta take the bad with the good, I suppose! Heh! :p

There are 40000 genes in the human body. So far they've only found 6 that determine racial features and characteristics. That's .00015% (I call that a rounding error). Kind of puts things in perspective when you think about it.
Exactly.

What all of us should start doing is either checking the "Other" box on anything which asks what race you are, or just simply refuse to answer the damned thing at all! :D

Everyone has both saints and scoundrels in their ancestry, regardless of race. Who your ancestors were matters not at all; what matters is who you are and what kind of person you make of yourself.
Prezactly! I think I'll start a campaign to get people to refuse to respond when asked what "race" they are! :D

well on my fathers side i have 3 SA members, one of whom died in the putsch in the tree

mothers side i have to my eternal shame french blood

well on my fathers side i have 3 SA members, one of whom died in the putsch in the tree

mothers side i have to my eternal shame french blood
ROFL! Tsk! Now I shall have to disown you! :D

We once read a few studies in school that had bothered to prove that there is a greater difference between different people of a certain race than there is between different races. Genetics concerning racial differences.

I think the numbers were:
0,5% (or 5%) difference between people of a certain race.
0,65% (or 6,5%) difference between people of different races.

This leaves a variation of 0,15% (or 1,5%) in the differences.

I can't quite remember how many noughts there were, but I do think the actual numbers are somewhat correct.

The point is, you're more likely to find a greater difference within a race than between races.

Prezactly! I think I'll start a campaign to get people to refuse to respond when asked what "race" they are! :D

That's a good idea. Put "human" in the appropriate census section.

That's a good idea. Put "human" in the appropriate census section.
Do it! Let that be our little protest of things stupid! :D

I had this problem myself.

When I was in the Army, I didn't fit into any of the categories they had.

The census had to finally acknowledge this - allowing people to select or note many different "races".

And who was up in arms about this change in policy? The Democratic Party - they said that this would weaken their "Hispanic" bloc - by allowing them to categorize themselves however they wished. They were even afraid that "African-Americans" would redefine themselves.

If you've ever seen the ridiculous definitions offered for "Hispanic"...

The moment we stop writing down the categories - the moment we stop acknowledging categories that do not exist from a genetic standpoint - the moment we all intermarry and reproduce - that will be the day when all this nonsense stops.

But as long as someone still clings to "black" or "white" - they're taking us down the road of trouble.
And yet, I very nearly got myself lynched/kicked out of Uni for pointing this kind of thing out. It's not Progressive enough to be simply "colorblind". :headbang:

If race, in the sense of 'human racial groups' means (as I understand it to) that the human race can be divided into discrete categories according to some fixed criteria with regards to morphology, that is consistent with (ie necessarily includes all and only) 'breeding populations', then it doesnt exist. Such a concept simply doesnt fit with the reality.

As an interesting aside, a few years ago a lady came out from a Pacific Island nation to formulise her hairdressing qualifications. She needed volunteers so she would have someone to 'hairdress' on for the formal examination. I volunteered.

We were introduced simply by first names. She started to work on my hair and out of the blue said to me 'you're not all white are you?". I (who at the time had dark blonde hair, have blue eyes and am pale of colouring) thought I must have misheard her. (The comment was not relevent to anything we had said to each other and besides how could she know about my ethnic heritage?) So I said "pardon?" somewhat quizzically. The hairdresser said "I hope you're not offended, but I can tell from the feel of your hair that you have 'island blood'".

I have the distinction of being both the distant descendant of a slave (owned in Northern Virginia) AND the descendant of Jefferson Davis (president of the South during the American Civil War).

Yup! I remember that, as well as numerous other brands of foolishness. Would to God we could all just accept that we're brothers and sisters, and give up the fiction of "race." Sigh.

I'm your brother! Now isn't THAT a frightening thought! Hehehe! :D

Don't be silly. You can't be our brother if you're already our grandfather! ;)

I have the distinction of being both the distant descendant of a slave (owned in Northern Virginia) AND the descendant of Jefferson Davis (president of the South during the American Civil War).
Hell, no wonder you're so conflicted! Heh! :D

Don't be silly. You can't be our brother if you're already our grandfather! ;)
Humpfh! You should BE so frakkin' lucky! :D

Slightly off the point where this thread is going, but I have an "evil" in my family tree. My uncles thrice removed (great-great-great?) were the Dalton Gang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Gang). Married into, of course, so I'm not a blood relative. My grandfather (dad's dad) was named Dalton after them (why?!) and my brother was named Jesse Dalton H. Kinda disturbing, but I think the latter is just coincidence, named after dad's dad rather than the Gang themselves.

Slightly off the point where this thread is going, but I have an "evil" in my family tree. My uncles thrice removed (great-great-great?) were the Dalton Gang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Gang). Married into, of course, so I'm not a blood relative. My grandfather (dad's dad) was named Dalton after them (why?!) and my brother was named Jesse Dalton H. Kinda disturbing, but I think the latter is just coincidence, named after dad's dad rather than the Gang themselves.
A Dalton! :mp5:

Hell, I know what evil lurks in my family tree.

In entirely non-chronological order; several English kings, several Scottish kings, a couple of French kings, a couple of Earls of Tyrone, several Dukes of Normandy, an Archbiship of Dublin, a couple of Earls of Ormonde, an Earl of Essex and Hereford, a Lord of Cavan, an Earl of Kildare, an Earl of Anglesey, and someone who was hanged for rebelling against British rule in Ireland.

And that's only what we know about. If we kept looking we could find loads more.

Fucking royalty.

Hell, no wonder you're so conflicted! Heh! :D
From time to time, I secede from myself. It helps to diffuse the tension.

According to my family tree, I'm distantly related to a President, a horse thief and a pirate.

Would they be proud of me?

From time to time, I secede from myself. It helps to diffuse the tension.
Kewl! Hell, I'd pay to see that! :D

According to my family tree, I'm distantly related to a President, a horse thief and a pirate.

Would they be proud of me?
Would they? Hell, I'm proud of you! :D

You're the only person I know whose picture is on the watch Micky Mouse wears! :D

Would they? Hell, I'm proud of you! :D

You're the only person I know whose picture is on the watch Micky Mouse wears! :D

That's just a rumor. He could have lots of watches. :)

That's just a rumor. He could have lots of watches. :)
( shrug ) You listens to yer rumors and you makes yer choice! :D

I'm sorry, but as a black man I'll keep my title. It gives me a defind sense of self and no half-way liberal can take that from me.

I'm sorry, but as a black man I'll keep my title. It gives me a defind sense of self and no half-way liberal can take that from me.
Kewl. Whatever makes you happy. :)

Kewl. Whatever makes you happy. :)
That and ice cream...

A Dalton! :mp5:

Agh! Dammit! I guess I inherited my great x3 uncles' knack for being shot by civilians. And here I was about to rob your train and your bank. Double damn.

I don't know much at all about my family tree beyond grandparents. I should find out some day; it seems very interesting.

You're the only person I know whose picture is on the watch Micky Mouse wears! :D

Hey... I saw the same line in today's Get Fuzzy... hmm... *suspicious look*

I have Frank Morris (Alcatraz escapee) in my family tree and several moonshiners and other strange people. My Grandmother claims she saw Frank about 2 years after his escape and that all three survive. I also have Cheyenne, Cherokee and I am sure African blood along with my Irish and English. Mutts have nothing on me.

Regards,

JMayo

Agh! Dammit! I guess I inherited my great x3 uncles' knack for being shot by civilians. And here I was about to rob your train and your bank. Double damn.
Tsk! Well, better luck next time! :D

I don't know much at all about my family tree beyond grandparents. I should find out some day; it seems very interesting.

Hey... I saw the same line in today's Get Fuzzy... hmm... *suspicious look*
Don' be lookin' at me lik dat! :p

And none of this discussion even deals with the concept of "momma's baby, daddy's maybe" that no doubt inflicts any number of families. For instance, I know that my grandfather isn't my blood grandfather. Granddad married Grandma in order to save her reputation, and my mom didn't find out until she was grown. How many other families have secrets like that that no one ever found out about?

Indeed, race is a rather pointless idea. I find that those who harp on it most tend to do so because they lack any real sense of identity or selfworth, so they subscribe to some fantasy of racial greatness.

And none of this discussion even deals with the concept of "momma's baby, daddy's maybe" that no doubt inflicts any number of families. For instance, I know that my grandfather isn't my blood grandfather. Granddad married Grandma in order to save her reputation, and my mom didn't find out until she was grown. How many other families have secrets like that that no one ever found out about?
As long as the children are loved and cared for, who gives a damn! :)

Indeed, race is a rather pointless idea. I find that those who harp on it most tend to do so because they lack any real sense of identity or selfworth, so they subscribe to some fantasy of racial greatness.
I've found that to be true as well. Plus, some people have such low self-esteem than they need someone else to look down on, and racial characteristics sometimes make for an easily identifiable "out-group." :(

Maybe I should do one of those thingies and they can finally tell me I'm made of pure awesome.

Maybe I should do one of those thingies and they can finally tell me I'm made of pure awesome.
Hmmm. I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may tend to incriminate myself. :D

I know I can trace mine back to Jolly Old England quite easy. Also, some were here before those newbies came over in the Mayflower. Pikers!

But, my Dad's half is a mystery. Who knows?

I know I can trace mine back to Jolly Old England quite easy. Also, some were here before those newbies came over in the Mayflower. Pikers!

But, my Dad's half is a mystery. Who knows?
I say you're really likw 7/8 Asian.