Posted: Sat 30 Jul 2005 18:14 Post subject: Famous Biracial Historical Figures
Afternoon members,
After G-Man informed me of the racial misinformation regarding Steve Lacy, I was at the African American Registry today again. Out of curiosity, I was checking to see if there were any other misidentifed whites or biracials.
Of course I found a number of biracials there as was to be expected. Some are quite white in appearance and are in no way "African" anything. They were AMERICANS of mixed African/European or African/European/Native descent who withstood the horrendous racism of their day and flourished inspite of it. I just think it's amazing that here it is 2005, the number of children from biracial marriages/couplings (who also need role models that look like them) is sky rocketing, the ODR is no longer legally in effect, and you STILL have one-droppist boldly claiming obvious mixed race (in a social sense as we know "race" is not a biolgical fact otherwise plenty of "hispanics", Arabs, and South-East Asians out there would be considered black but curiously aren't) and sometimes even totally white appearanced biracial historical figuers as soley black/African-American.
What's wrong with there being a seperate category at this same registry for multiple heritaged white/black and white/black/indian historical figuers? Where is the threat? What is the harm?
Why pretend everyone was the same genetically? (If that is what's being claimed) I'm sure many did indeed share the same social experiences as unmixed blacks but I don't believe all of them did. And their complete stories need to be told too.
These bi/multiracial black identified people did a lot for all people of color in this country and this is comendable. BUT, just because they were raised in a very racist and hateful time period, and were probably conditioned since birth to call themselves black/negro/colored (at least publicly) when it's obvious they were mixed, should historians in 2005 STILL label them full black when on a genetic level they obviously were not?
Should "blackness" be considered a "race" OR just a culture? Which is it? Does the culture excuse explain why these obviously mixed people, some half and more white are being labled "African-Americans"? I also wonder sometimes how many of these "black" (biracial) individuals have "black" descendents. Some might I'm sure, but just as many probably have "white" ones I bet.
Some would say it's very important for this practice (ODR) to continue. I personally don't see why as it's not being honest or logical.
Just thinking out loud...
Felicia
I've posted many examples of famous mixed heritage Americans below. Their biographies are quite inspiring.
I don't think the problem lies in 'accounting for every drop of blood they had in them', its whether they identified as the equivalent of "African-American" as listed on the site!
For example 1/3 of White Americans are suppose to possess African ancestry. However would anybody include "African" anything in Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone, Denis Quade, Steven Speilberg's or any other White Americans' biography UNLESS they specifically acknowledged that hertiage!?
The answer is no of course.
And the piont has nothing to do with APPERANCE. Angelina Jolie (and I'm sure many other White Americans) probably have to periodically explain that they have "Indians in the family" to silence questions about non-European apperances all the time. However, most people know better to question such people any further (even if they've read DNA studies on the matter PERSONALLY)..........
These same Americans listed above, if they so choose, should be given the same RESPECT (the so call "gentleman's agreement") concerning their ancestry that is so blatantly given to White indentified Americans and any other group that does not go publicy by the term African-American.
Posted: Sun 31 Jul 2005 02:00 Post subject: Defining Ethnicity
Actually, most of the people described above are Mulatto Elite and not "black" or "African American." The Brazilian certainly isn't "African American.
We may ask whether Jews during the Third Reich "voluntarily" identified as "non-Aryan" or members of the "Jewish Race." If a German Jew acknowledged and accepted his oppression and stopped calling himself "German" (since the Third Reich said one cannot be both German and Jewish), did he indeed and for a fact stop being German - despite his German ancestry and culture? Or perhaps he was never German and only APPEARED to be German. A true ethnicity is sometimes at odds with an oppressive caste "ethnicity" or "race" forced upon a people by those who wish to degrade them.
Also, if a white-identified person ACKNOWLEDGES some "black" ancestry, that does NOT make him "black." This emphasis on "Don't ask, don't tell" reinforces the "passing' myth.
IN the blockbuster film Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio's role could have easily been played by a Black man--and it would have been historically accurate. In fact, the life story of Haitian native Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche is far more intriguing than the movie's lead character, but no one knew of his existence until recently. The silence about the stranger-than-fiction life story of the Titanic's only Black passenger astonishes noted Titanic historian Judith Geller, author of Titanic: Women and Children First, who said, "It is strange that nowhere in the copious 1912 press descriptions of the ship and the interviews with the survivors was the presence of a Black family among the passengers ever mentioned."
Until now, that is. Eighty-eight years after the biggest ship disaster in history, and three years after release of the Titanic movie, the story of the only Black man to perish in the 1912 disaster is being revealed, thanks to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, host to the largest Titanic exhibit ever, and the Titanic Historical Society.
Laroche, who was born in Cap Haiten, Haiti, on May 26, 1889, came from a powerful family--Laroche's uncle, Dessalines M. Cincinnatus Leconte, was president of Haiti. The Laroches had been prosperous since the 17th century when a French captain named Laroche (in Haiti on military duty) married a young Haitian girl.
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The notion that Laroche was black would have been seen as preposterous to both Larouche and many Haitians, including Haitians today.
He was a member of Haiti's mulatto elite, yet the story in the magazine- and the book it refers to- see Laroche, his children, and wife, as black; a designation that he would never use to describe himself.
Further, the end of the article states that his three children (two girls and one boy born after his death) spent the rest of their lives in France. His son married a French woman and they had children. Were Laroche's children seen as black during the time they grew up in France? Do his grandchildren see themselves as black? I doubt it.
He was a member of Haiti's mulatto elite, yet the story in the magazine- and the book it refers to- see Laroche, his children, and wife, as black; a designation that he would never use to describe himself.
The account that I read of this man was that the Haitian girl who was his mother was a mulattress and this man's father was a white Frenchman. That would mean that this "black" man would have been a quadroon. The account that I read also indicated that Laroche married a white French woman, not a mulatress, black, nor multiracial. That would mean that the children were octoroons. These folks certainly didn't see themselves as black during their life times.
You must be kidding. If those people are African I am a Martian. LOL!
Those persons are simply white. Nothing else. Some of them are curly, but if you take out curlies from the "white race" then the history of the west will lost most of their figures, including several pure british and, of course, all those ancient Greeks, whites are so proud of.
I hope one day Americans remember their lesson of genetics in school. Flowers', Animals' and People's appearence depends only on the genes that carry, not in far away ancestors. The one drop rule is a tale only ignorant people should believe. So, it is nothing extraordinary that the grandchild of a pure Nigerian could look like a Sweedish. It's just chance. That's genetics: a biological lottery.
In Latin countries we are more practical. We label people according to what they look like today, and just as a way to describe person, not to pit them in boxes. For us those labels as "white", "moorish", "black", "Asiatic" and other only describe the aspect of people. Nothing else.
And race is not the same than culture. I don't know why Americans confuse both terms. Perhaps you people need to reinforce humanities in high school. LOL.
When Jesse Jackson coined the term "African-American" I don't think he thought it all the way through. I think all he knew was that he wanted to piss White folks off first and foremost and claim some kind of history/allusion of Afro-Americans being descendants of African kings and queens before slavery.............
The term actually causes MORE problems/confusion than it ever solved. Not only does the media simply substitute "Black" for "African American" ethnicially rendering the term completelyuseless, but it also causes people (even people who don't look strongly European) to constantly have to account for non-African features. He should have known that when you take on a name like "African-American" or "European American" or "Native American" (even if its suppose to be an ETHNIC term) that everyone will have to LOOK "African" and "European" and "Indian" unless they want their identity challenged.
I will give you this: "Hispanic" is a smart term. I notice it doesn't compare itself to any geographical region so Latino people rarely have to explain race questions!
I at first liked the term African American, because it dismayed me that the whole rest of the world was connected to a COUNTRY or ETHNICITY, but for this one group of Americans, "all you were was 'black.' It was kind of meaningless. Not really directly connected to a food, tradition, set of cultural mores. It was, but the term 'black' to me seemed to obscure it. It was my hope that this term woudl put African race markers on the equal par with other ethnicities, so that for once in the history of our country, a person could be Scottish-African, or African-Greek, or African-Irish if his/her parents were of those two extractions, just as he can be Anglo-Irish, or Scottish-French, or Greek-Norwegian now. It doesn't seem to have worked out that way, though.
but like you say - the term brought with it a lot of criticism.
I at first liked the term African American, because it dismayed me that the whole rest of the world was connected to a COUNTRY or ETHNICITY, but for this one group of Americans, "all you were was 'black.' It was kind of meaningless. Not really directly connected to a food, tradition, set of cultural mores. It was, but the term 'black' to me seemed to obscure it. It was my hope that this term woudl put African race markers on the equal par with other ethnicities, so that for once in the history of our country, a person could be Scottish-African, or African-Greek, or African-Irish if his/her parents were of those two extractions, just as he can be Anglo-Irish, or Scottish-French, or Greek-Norwegian now. It doesn't seem to have worked out that way, though.
but like you say - the term brought with it a lot of criticism.
I don't think you can win with any term.
I will admit it has had SOME positive impact because I think it was the first time ANYBODY in the Western world has ever defined themselves as African, even after slavery devalued African blood! But again when you use the term African-American (even in an ethnic sense) it would HELP if it has some kind of CULTURAL/TRADITIONAL meaning to it. The term Black was suppose to cover our "racial" hertiage and our piont of orgin being Negriod people from Africa. The problem was culture/ethnic! Its rather difficult getting any kind of sense of being an "African American" with absolutely nothing "African" to cling onto but knowing you slave ancestors that came from Africa a long time ago!!!!
Right now, everybody that checks anything that includes Black is supposely counted as "Black" by the Census and every Black person in America is counted as "African American" by the media while at the exact time African immigrants (with African nationalities, families and culture) are being rountinely told that they are NOT "African-American" by everybody.
It IS confusing..........
I actually started using the term Afro-American because to ME it means an American of African descent, which of course has been our history & the cause of most of our problems!! African American to ME sounds like you're an African that just happen to come to America! I don't get any kind of sense of an American history out of the term.(and I do believe we have a very long and complex history in this country as a "people" and "ethnicity").........
Last edited by girlfromthenc on Mon 08 Aug 2005 21:28; edited 1 time in total
I think it was the first time ANYBODY in the Western world has ever defined themselves as African...
Actually, the whole idea of African identity, Black pride, mother Africa, etc., has a long and illustrious history in the African-American community. It goes back to Revolutionary War times.
Here is a quote from pages 248 and 249 of my book Legal History of the Color Line:
From the Revolution to about 1826, Black Yankee ethnic self-image leaned towards separatism. They spoke longingly of returning to Africa. Yet, few emigrated although many had the opportunity. Instead, Africa became a fantasized Eden, spoken of in hushed tones the way European Jews would say “next year in Jerusalem.” They made up rituals and customs, which they attributed to the Dark Continent. They founded the traditional African-American churches. The African Society, founded in 1796, was the first known use of the term African to denote upper-class Black Yankees.
Using his own money, Black Yankee ship’s captain Paul Cuffee of Boston personally conveyed 38 emigrants who wanted to return to Africa to Sierra Leone in 1815. Bostonian Prince Hall, who was born on September 12, 1748 in Barbados, organized the first chapter of African-American Masonry on March 6, 1775 and led the 1787 petition drive to open segregated schools in Boston, so that Black children could be taught by members of their own culture.
After the Revolution, Peter J. Williams, Jr. and Samuel Cornish founded segregated schools for Black children in New York city. And shortly before the great Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones both founded Black churches, the former the AME Church, the latter an African branch of the Episcopal Church. Allen and Jones both vowed that their churches, “would admit none to be enrolled members but descendants of the African race.”
The Black Yankee ideological pendulum swung the other way around 1826. Black Yankees demanded full citizenship. Many Black Yankee families tried to enroll their children in mainstream schools. And Africa was no longer seen as a desirable homeland. According to one editor:
Quote:
Our claims are on America, it is the land that gave us birth; it is the land of our nativity, we know no other country, it is a land in which our fathers have suffered and toiled; they have watered it with their tears, and fanned it with their sighs. Our relation with Africa is the same as the white man’s is with Europe. ... We have passed through several generations in this country, and consequently we have become naturalized, our habits, our manners, our passions, our dispositions have become the same.... I might as well tell the white man about England... and call him a European, as for him to call us Africans.
Ship’s captain Paul Cuffee died in 1817, but his dream was carried forward by the American Colonization Society. In part, AME founder Richard Allen and the other delegates were unhappy that the White-run ACS had taken over governing what would eventually become the Liberia colony, rather than let Blacks control it. But, also in part, migrating back to an imagined African homeland was no longer fashionable. Black emigrants were starting to emigrate to Canada or to Haiti instead.
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 17 Aug 2005 12:57; edited 2 times in total
I just read the Slave Trade voyages (getting slaves from Africa for slavery) were stopped around 1807! Of course this did not stop already exsisting slavery.
So wouldnt' it be correct to assume that after 1826 these Black Yankee's stopped their dreams of returning to Africa because they were starting to get 1 and 2 generations removed from the Continent? Most people you were referring to might have in fact been African or been born to 2 parents that had been born in Africa.....
wouldnt' it be correct to assume that after 1826 these Black Yankee's stopped their dreams of returning to Africa because they were starting to get 1 and 2 generations removed from the Continent?
That is a good point, and you may well be right. I simply do not know.
In the 50 years or so before 1826, they called themselves "African-Americans" and demanded separate schools where their children could be taught their own heritage by Black teachers, and separate churches where they could worship in their own style. After this period, they saw themselves as Americans first and Africans second, they wanted to send their children to integrated schools taught by White (and a few Black) teachers, and they demanded full political participation. The earlier generation may have felt closer to Africa because they had grandparents who had known Africa.
One point is worth noting, however. Although the legal transatlantic slave trade into the U.S. ended when you said, the peak of importation to Virginia was around 1740 and slavery was abolished in Massachusetts shortly thereafter. This means that many free Blacks in 1826 could have had U.S.-born grandparents, especially in New England. Also, some of their ancestors might never have been slaves, but could have been indentured servants instead. Slavery (in the sense of hereditary lifelong forced labor) was not adopted in British North America until around 1660.
Still, around the time of the Revolution, the Black Yankees definitely began to identify with the slaves in the South as brothers or cousins or something. (This was unlike the biracial Latin American colonists and biracial French Creoles whose attitude towards slaves was that they wanted to own some.) And so, whether the Black Yankees' grandparents really came from Africa or not, they acted as if they believed this.
Nevertheless, to recap, I do not know why attitudes changed. You may well be right. When you get down to it, I do not think that anyone can say why fashions change when they do.
Last edited by fwsweet on Sun 06 Nov 2005 00:40; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1763 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Mon 08 Aug 2005 22:50 Post subject:
This is interesting. I can give you the account of my family in the Hudson Valley. 2 of the ggg grandfathers were instrumental in setting up a Black college in Poughkeepsie, NY while at the sametime, one of my ggg grandmothers were key in the lead to integrate Poughkeepsie schools. This was in the early 1870s. There are published articles of this in the Dutchess County Historical Society. One article, not in the DCHS, refers to my ggg grandmother as a "Native American". We do know her father was a member of the Schaticoke (sp I think) tribe in CT. He was a stage coach driver on the Albany Post Road (US Rt 9 today). Her mother was listed as a mulatto in the 1850 Census when such designation was not used much in the reports that I have looked at.
One of my ggg grandfathers was probably of part French Huguenot descent since he had the last name of 2 of the original patentees of New Paltz, NY.
I do know they saw themselves as American. They were even among the original members of the Republican Party!!! They were all very respected in the entire Poughkeepsie community according to the writen obits, which back in those days, most people had death notices.
This is why I consider the Hudson Valley to be my home, not Africa, not Europe.
I think it was the first time ANYBODY in the Western world has ever defined themselves as African...
Actually, the whole idea of African identity, Black pride, mother Africa, etc., has a long and illustrious history in the African American community. It goes back to Revolutionary War times.
There were the Noiristes in Haiti as well. Though they didn't call themselves African, their movement's objective was to foster pride in the Kreyol language, African ancestry, and the study and preservation of folk customs that originated in Africa. This was in the first half of the 20th Century.
He was a member of Haiti's mulatto elite, yet the story in the magazine- and the book it refers to- see Laroche, his children, and wife, as black; a designation that he would never use to describe himself.
The account that I read of this man was that the Haitian girl who was his mother was a mulattress and this man's father was a white Frenchman. That would mean that this "black" man would have been a quadroon. The account that I read also indicated that Laroche married a white French woman, not a mulatress, black, nor multiracial. That would mean that the children were octoroons. These folks certainly didn't see themselves as black during their life times.
Possibly, but was he given the same opportunities as white's in France?
A long way from his privileged lifestyle of Haiti, Laroche found France to be bleak and oppressive. Although Laroche was a cultured gentleman who spoke English and French fluently, and had an engineering degree, he couldn't find a job because of his color. "It was a great disappointment to him that having earned his engineering degree in France he could not find employment there," Geller says. "No matter how qualified he was, the blackness of his skin kept him from securing a position that paid his worth."
He was a member of Haiti's mulatto elite, yet the story in the magazine- and the book it refers to- see Laroche, his children, and wife, as black; a designation that he would never use to describe himself.
The account that I read of this man was that the Haitian girl who was his mother was a mulattress and this man's father was a white Frenchman. That would mean that this "black" man would have been a quadroon. The account that I read also indicated that Laroche married a white French woman, not a mulatress, black, nor multiracial. That would mean that the children were octoroons. These folks certainly didn't see themselves as black during their life times.
Possibly, but was he given the same opportunities as white's in France?
A long way from his privileged lifestyle of Haiti, Laroche found France to be bleak and oppressive. Although Laroche was a cultured gentleman who spoke English and French fluently, and had an engineering degree, he couldn't find a job because of his color. "It was a great disappointment to him that having earned his engineering degree in France he could not find employment there," Geller says. "No matter how qualified he was, the blackness of his skin kept him from securing a position that paid his worth."
But did his blackness make him black in France or simply non-white or foreign? And how does his African ancestry make his white wife and children all black passengers on the Titanic? That was my original point in refrencing the article. It was assumed by the authors that Laroche, his children and his French wife were all black because Larache had some African ancestry.
His mistreatment in France because of his appearance is another issue.
...how does his African ancestry make his white wife and children all black...
I have no opinion on the issue at hand, since I know nothing of the man nor how he saw himself, nor how he was seen by his society.
I just want to mention that the difference between how hereditary Blackness is seen in the U.S. and in other places is probably one of hardest points for Americans to grasp. I have seen it repeatedly misunderstood, for example, in reviews of Degler.
In the United States, if a person is Black (seen as Black, self-identifies as Black, etc.), then his children are also Black, like it or not. But everywhere else on earth, a person can be White (seen as White, self-identifies as White) based on his/her own looks or ethnic affiliation, no matter what his/her parents were. As Degler pointed out, White Brazilians look down on Black ones, even though virtually every one of those same White Brazilians speaks proudly of his/her African ancestry. In Brazil, as everywhere else but the U.S., you are what you are, not what some grandparent was. And so, it would be quite normal for his children and grandchildren to have been seen as White and accepted as White, despite his own self-identity or social acceptance.
Last edited by fwsweet on Sun 06 Nov 2005 00:42; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Fri 04 Nov 2005 19:54 Post subject: Re: Famous Biracial Historical Figures
zsana wrote:
I just think it's amazing that here it is 2005, the number of children from biracial marriages/couplings (who also need role models that look like them) is sky rocketing, the ODR is no longer legally in effect, and you STILL have one-droppist boldly claiming obvious mixed race (in a social sense as we know "race" is not a biolgical fact otherwise plenty of "hispanics", Arabs, and South-East Asians out there would be considered black but curiously aren't) and sometimes even totally white appearanced biracial historical figuers as soley black/African-American.
Nobody is claiming anybody that did not claim themselves.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 04 Nov 2005 22:24 Post subject: Comment
fwsweet wrote:
G-Man wrote:
...how does his African ancestry make his white wife and children all black...
I have no opinion on the issue at hand, since I know nothing of the man nor how he saw himself, nor how he was seen by his society.
I just want to mention that the difference between how hereditary Blackness is seen in the U.S. and in other places is probably one of hardest points for Americans to grasp. I have seen it repeatedly misunderstood, for example, in reviews of Degler.
In the United States, if a person is Black (seen as Black, self-identifies as Black, etc.), then his children are also Black, like it or not. But everywhere else on earth, a person can be White (seen as White, self-identifies as White) based on his/her own looks or ethnic affiliation, no matter what his/her parents were. As Degler pointed out, White Brazilians look down on Black ones, even though virtually every one of these same White Braziliana speaks proudly of his/her African ancestry. In Brazil, as everywhere else but the U.S., you are what you are, not what some grandparent was. And so, it would be quite normal for his children and grandchildren to have been seen as White and accepted as White, despite his own self-identity or social acceptance.
Hi Frank!
I like your comment. I believe you hit the target.
The "race", complexion or apparience of kids does not have much to do with the complexion of parents, at least in mixed societies.
I know the case of a very famous Brazilian "white"singer, called Roberto Carlos, that once presented his brother on stage. His brother was very dark that look like they were from different "races". However, looking carefully, they had the same facial features, height and body size, so they were, without doubt, related.
Those labels, white, black, brown, does not make any sense in mixed societies.
'
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