Re: CHAT: American Racism [was: Star Wars]

Bryan Maloney wrote: "Heh.  I check virtually everything, myself.  When
they complain, I tell 'em that this is what the truth is.  Then they take
one look at me and decide that I'm "really" white, because that's how I
look to them. (Under the old South African racial code, though, I would
have been "mixed" or "coloured".)"

It's the same here. I'm 'really' white because I look white. They suggest I
check off white. As if that's all that counts. Usually you can only check
off one, but I'm not comfortable checking off just white, Native American,
or African American. I'm certainly not a member of any of these categories,
and just because I seem white is a bad reason to choose white.

I think part of the reason I 'seem white' to many Americans is that a great
number of residents of the Americas are racially mixed and don't know it.
Studies have shown that some 25% of Americans who self-identify as white
have black and Native American grandparents who pass as white. The whole
stink about Thomas Jefferson's 'black' ancestors is made only more poignant
by the fact that not a few of these 'black' ancestors had no idea their
families had any black blood in them - they are typical middle-class
whitebread Caucasians!

Appearances can be very deceiving, and I stopped considering the appearance
of 'white' Americans typically Caucasian after I started travelling. So
many people who seem white to Americans are clearly of mixed origins when
compared to their allegedly Euro ancestors. My grandfather avoided the
subject of race for a long time, usually passing wordlessly for white; in
Rhode Island, there so are many descendants of Mediterranean folk [ie. with
darker skin and and curly, black hair] that this was possible for a black
and Native American man! He admitted he wasn't white to me one day as he
contemplated his age and his memory - he didn't, in the end, want the truth
to be taken to his grave.

BB
*********
Tomboy: "a wench that skippeth as a boy."
- Richard Verstegen, 1605

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
- H.G. Wells