Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Mon 30 Mar 2009 02:19 Post subject: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
This was an interesting story, about a "black man" who was passing after WWII and got found out. He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black. At the end the "passing guys" white former wife and daughter met his black family.
You can watch the episode was called "Libertyville"
I will post the link to it so you can watch it online when it comes up.
Quote:
Season 6: Episode 19: Libertyville
Rush and the team reopen the case of the 1958 murder of a talented and up-and-coming real estate mogul, Julian Bellowes. Julian was a Wharton graduate who managed, in their first meeting, to impress the owner of one of the most successful construction companies in Philadelphia, Harrison Kemp. Julian convinced Kemp to take acres of desolate corn and potato fields and make them into thousands of affordable homes for blue-collar working families; Julian called it Libertyville. He also fell in love with and married Kemps daughter, Caroline, which secured his place in the prominent family as well as the company; which Caroline's brother Harry was in no way happy with. Julian was a good man that kept a dark secret that he increasingly feared would get out and destroy not only his career but his marriage; he was an African-American man that had been posing as a Caucasian man since he left the armed services. He planned to free himself of the secret and do right by his family and community and integrate Libertyville at a time when integration was a taboo subject. Before he could come clean and spearhead his suburban dream he was murdered. In the weeks before his murder, several people from his past returned to his life and one decided that Julian took the easy way out and had to finally pay for abandoning his identity and his people in order, as the killer saw it, to further his own professional goals without having to endure the trials of most of the African-American community at that time.
Posted: Tue 31 Mar 2009 15:41 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Tue 31 Mar 2009 15:58 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
I too thought it was strange, the light skin guy was obviously trying to use his "skin color privileged" to help dark skin blacks.
I guess I concluded that the dark skinned man's pride was hurt more than anything else. He hated the fact that he had to get help from a man who was passing despite the fact he was very hard working and industrious. This drove him nuts, as he said "no matter how hard I try, I can't make my life look like your poster" or something to that effect.
I think he took his anger out on the wrong person though. This light skin passing male was a victim of sorts as well.
So what did the murderer gain? NOTHING. He only made his life worse (even if it was 40 years later)...
Posted: Tue 31 Mar 2009 16:28 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Dragon Horse wrote:
This drove him nuts, as he said "no matter how hard I try, ...
There are two popular theories as to why A-A males tend to have higher risk of hypertension and heart attacks (and Afro-Caribbeans and Africans in Africa do not). The first is fat-laden ethnic diet. But the other (inspired by the observation that such risks correlate with skin-tone but not with actual DNA admixture) is precisely the above: That if you look very African, the frustrating blood-pressure-raising obstacles can be overwhelming. I agree that in this case the rage (self-destructive at best) was misdirected.
See Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class (New York: Harper Collins, 1993).
Posted: Wed 01 Apr 2009 03:53 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 01 Apr 2009 12:14 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
Posted: Thu 02 Apr 2009 02:08 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
G-Man wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
The reason for the murder sounds so unrealistic to me.
I agree,
If the writers of this episode are white(?) I think they may have a hard time believing that black american are successful outside of sports and a few actors that made it really big.
So many white americans still seem to go by stereotypes and handed down information concerning black descendant people
Even my dad and uncles who were in the Vietnam war said that they were treated no differently than the white soldiers (no of course situations can vary) I had a very fair skinned hazel eyed friend who went into the military with his friend who was dark skinned and they both went in with the same questions about treatment based on features/skin tone. And both came out saying they didn't see any different treatment.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Thu 02 Apr 2009 02:38 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
gemini072 wrote:
G-Man wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
The reason for the murder sounds so unrealistic to me.
I agree,
If the writers of this episode are white(?) I think they may have a hard time believing that black american are successful outside of sports and a few actors that made it really big.
So many white americans still seem to go by stereotypes and handed down information concerning black descendant people
Even my dad and uncles who were in the Vietnam war said that they were treated no differently than the white soldiers (no of course situations can vary) I had a very fair skinned hazel eyed friend who went into the military with his friend who was dark skinned and they both went in with the same questions about treatment based on features/skin tone. And both came out saying they didn't see any different treatment.
Vietnam was different from WWII....this story was based in the mid to early 1950's, these people were WWII vets, I believe, maybe Korean War, but I if so it was before segregation ended.
My grandfather was in WWII and he told me about how when blacks complained about just manual labor and not seeing combat Patten told them "if you n$*# wants to see a war, I will show you a $*&#" and then put them on the front line in some battles in the South Pacific. It was said "black people can stand the heat".
My grandfather earned a purple heart after being blow up in a Japanese morgue on some island in Nansei (Okinawan) Island chain. He was a demolitions guy, sent to defuse bombs. Next thing he knows he woke up in Guam or Hawaii, don't remember, with a metal hip (replaced with plastic in the 60's I think).
In any case, he implied that a Jewish officer over their unit was very racist and he ended up dead and no one knows if it was a frag or a Japanese sniper.
I can't speak for the Vietnam era at all, but I have heard more than a few stories from elders about WWII and how they were treated by white Americans and how much they loved France (both grandfathers ended up there, but one got sent to Japan, the other ended up going home).
In the TV show the guy was passing and was thought to be white by white folks, so he would have been treated like a white man and not made to cook, clean, clear roads, routinely. There were black officers though at the time. Despite how they were treated my grandfather did say the white officers tended to be better than the white enlisted and better than white folks from "down south" where he lived.
He also said he loved France and the UK as the whites there, especially in France treated him like a human being...he was not accustomed to being treated 'equally' by white people and at first thought it was some type of setup. My creole grandfather almost married a French woman and did not come back from France, luckily he did as I would not be here. My creole grandfather could not pass, he was just "light skinned with gray eyes"...but had a fairly black phenotype (skull shape wise).
Posted: Sun 05 Apr 2009 04:03 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sun 05 Apr 2009 05:10 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Your projecting a narrative that is going extent, as I said, you are not of my generation. I didn't see anything about biological inferiority be preached, other than the white people in the story likely felt that way about this man. The fact this man said he was "negro" I took as him expressing his cultural background.
When I saw when I watched it was how pathetically backward a society it was where this man felt he had to hide his family if he wanted to be successful. This was the 1950's. Blacks didn't make laws that banned interracial marriage and the biggest fear in this guys life was having a baby with any noticeable African features, so much it kept him up at night and his white wife did not know why.
Do you think if he told his old school, well off, WASP father-in-law from Boston, that he had "negro" blood he would be accepted in the family if he said "I have negro blood but I'm not really a negro, or just a little negro, my dad is a negro"...in 1950?
This man was not hiding himself from blacks he was hiding himself from whites so he can be accepted by them based on his talent and not on his background.
In reality if the white people didn't care about his ancestry, whatever he choose to define it as it would not be a problem. In fact if white elites did not care at all about someone's ancestry then a person can say they are black all day long and it should not change anything in how you relate or interact with that person. What type of person would change their attitude based on the fact someone called themselves black, mulatto, etc. When i meet people, if I know there ethnicity or not I treat them the same, the only thing I may change is if I know they are Muslim I won't offer them pork, etc. These are things I might do to ease communication and to be more understanding, but I don't say "oh that woman was alright with me until I found out her father was Pakistani..."
It is like my wife coming to me tomorrow (who is Japanese) and saying well she is really an ethnic Korean and might even have some European missionary blood and she was hiding it because she felt it might be a problem. If I say I don't care, regardless of her ancestry, meaning, I don't care what mix of whatever she is, how she identifies, etc. I accept her how she is, then all that other stuff has no meaning. Even if she was half Japanese, I would not care. So what? Another man might divorce her because he felt she was "not pure Japanese"...but the idea of biological inferiority is in the mind of the person making the judgment, not in the my wife, her family, etc. Her "people" did not judge her inferior or make this man think she was inferior. That was his choice to believe such nonsense.
It only matters if the person you are trying to have a relationship with, trying to associate with, cares.
Obviously the white folks cared.
This is what you don't see to get. You think labeling yourself something is the problem. The problem is not what you label yourself.
The root problem is that the person you are interacting with cares in the first place. That person cares enough to discriminate against you based on a label and not see you as an individual or just see you as worthy of respect as they think they should be entitled to.
If a person (for example in this tv show) is married to you and would divorce you because of your genetic inheritance (whatever mix, ratio, etc) when 5 minutes before they were so in love with you and saw no issue...that person is messed up. The fact you feel you need to hide that from the person should tell you that person is messed up.
Labels in and of themselves only have as much meaning outside of your mind as the person looking at your cares to give it.
Black people, the one drop rule, blacks who want to make other people with African Ancestry "black" in a defacto Nazi-like way...etc.
If no one cared about the label at all it would not be an issue in the first place. What you should be concerned with is why would someone care at all? You have to sit and ask yourself what type of primitive barbarian you are dealing with? Why is it YOU need to do anything to please them in this way.
Powell, question:
If a woman was raped and we did not have rape shield laws and the government kept a public record of that woman as a rape victim, something the woman hid because she felt that her husband would divorce her if she found out she was raped before they were married (and so was not a virgin blah blah...) and the husband finds out and now does not want to be with her.
If the woman knew no man in the community she livd in would accept her as a wife unless she lied about it or just didn't talk about it.
Whose fault is that?
The government for defining her "a rape victim"?
The woman's for lying?
The husband for being a neolithic barbarian?
If you apply the same standards you do to the above situation I would imagine you would think the government was wrong and no one else...is that right?
Posted: Sun 05 Apr 2009 06:00 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Your projecting a narrative that is going extent, as I said, you are not of my generation. I didn't see anything about biological inferiority be preached, other than the white people in the story likely felt that way about this man. The fact this man said he was "negro" I took as him expressing his cultural background.
When I saw when I watched it was how pathetically backward a society it was where this man felt he had to hide his family if he wanted to be successful. This was the 1950's. Blacks didn't make laws that banned interracial marriage and the biggest fear in this guys life was having a baby with any noticeable African features, so much it kept him up at night and his white wife did not know why.
Do you think if he told his old school, well off, WASP father-in-law from Boston, that he had "negro" blood he would be accepted in the family if he said "I have negro blood but I'm not really a negro, or just a little negro, my dad is a negro"...in 1950?
:lol:
This man was not hiding himself from blacks he was hiding himself from whites so he can be accepted by them based on his talent and not on his background.
In reality if the white people didn't care about his ancestry, whatever he choose to define it as it would not be a problem. In fact if white elites did not care at all about someone's ancestry then a person can say they are black all day long and it should not change anything in how you relate or interact with that person. What type of person would change their attitude based on the fact someone called themselves black, mulatto, etc. When i meet people, if I know there ethnicity or not I treat them the same, the only thing I may change is if I know they are Muslim I won't offer them pork, etc. These are things I might do to ease communication and to be more understanding, but I don't say "oh that woman was alright with me until I found out her father was Pakistani..."
It is like my wife coming to me tomorrow (who is Japanese) and saying well she is really an ethnic Korean and might even have some European missionary blood and she was hiding it because she felt it might be a problem. If I say I don't care, regardless of her ancestry, meaning, I don't care what mix of whatever she is, how she identifies, etc. I accept her how she is, then all that other stuff has no meaning. Even if she was half Japanese, I would not care. So what? Another man might divorce her because he felt she was "not pure Japanese"...but the idea of biological inferiority is in the mind of the person making the judgment, not in the my wife, her family, etc. Her "people" did not judge her inferior or make this man think she was inferior. That was his choice to believe such nonsense.
It only matters if the person you are trying to have a relationship with, trying to associate with, cares.
Obviously the white folks cared.
This is what you don't see to get. You think labeling yourself something is the problem. The problem is not what you label yourself.
The root problem is that the person you are interacting with cares in the first place. That person cares enough to discriminate against you based on a label and not see you as an individual or just see you as worthy of respect as they think they should be entitled to.
If a person (for example in this tv show) is married to you and would divorce you because of your genetic inheritance (whatever mix, ratio, etc) when 5 minutes before they were so in love with you and saw no issue...that person is messed up. The fact you feel you need to hide that from the person should tell you that person is messed up.
Labels in and of themselves only have as much meaning outside of your mind as the person looking at your cares to give it.
Black people, the one drop rule, blacks who want to make other people with African Ancestry "black" in a defacto Nazi-like way...etc.
If no one cared about the label at all it would not be an issue in the first place. What you should be concerned with is why would someone care at all? You have to sit and ask yourself what type of primitive barbarian you are dealing with? Why is it YOU need to do anything to please them in this way.
Powell, question:
If a woman was raped and we did not have rape shield laws and the government kept a public record of that woman as a rape victim, something the woman hid because she felt that her husband would divorce her if she found out she was raped before they were married (and so was not a virgin blah blah...) and the husband finds out and now does not want to be with her.
If the woman knew no man in the community she livd in would accept her as a wife unless she lied about it or just didn't talk about it.
Whose fault is that?
The government for defining her "a rape victim"?
The woman's for lying?
The husband for being a neolithic barbarian?
If you apply the same standards you do to the above situation I would imagine you would think the government was wrong and no one else...is that right?
Let me repeat myself. The story is fiction AND, more importantly, propaganda. It is based on a racist assumption and is presented under the guise of liberalism. Your harping on the alleged "choice" and "culture" of the fictional individual is nonsense.
Quote:
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Posted: Sun 05 Apr 2009 11:28 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Powell wrote:
I recommend the following: Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is "Sollors," not "Sollars." The reference is: Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1997). I agree with DH that the passing novel as social myth (defy society and you die miserable and hated) has become unfashionable and seems a bit bizarre to modern sensibilities. But I think that A.D. is spot-on as to its social function, back when the genre was fashionable.
My favorite analyses of the genre is M. Giulia Fabi, Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001). This is because Fabi includes two novels in her analysis that modern scholars ignore: William Wells Brown, Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853) and Frank J. Webb, The Garies and Their Friends (London: Arno Press, 1857).
Clotel and The Garies and Their Friends were the first successful novels published by African-Americans, and yet they are almost universally ignored in Black studies departments today. This is because their ideology is repellent to modern African-Americans. None of the characters who engage in passing in these two novels feels any guilt or remorse for the act. Some (usually delicate Victorian females like Clotel herself) sincerely want to be accepted as White. Others (usually defiant self-sacrificing Victorian men) consider it a justified deceit upon an unjust society.
Modern critics see the characters' lack of guilt as a symptom of a "psychology of imitation and implied inferiority," and that it reveals the authors' "unconscious desire to be white" and "unabashed allegiance to Anglo-Saxon lineage." According to M. Giulia Fabi, the characters' lack of guilt "have had crippling repercussions on [the novels'] reception among scholars of African American literature to this day."
In short, the first successful novels by A-A authors are ignored (or villified) by academics today precisely because they are from a time before the ODR myth (and its implication that anyone who defilles the purity of the "Caucasian race" must be destroyed) had been internalized by the A-A community.
P.S. [A question only for buffs of the genre.] Did Clare accidentally fall to her death from the sixth-floor window?, did she jump in suicide?, or was she pushed by Irene?
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sun 05 Apr 2009 17:17 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Your projecting a narrative that is going extent, as I said, you are not of my generation. I didn't see anything about biological inferiority be preached, other than the white people in the story likely felt that way about this man. The fact this man said he was "negro" I took as him expressing his cultural background.
When I saw when I watched it was how pathetically backward a society it was where this man felt he had to hide his family if he wanted to be successful. This was the 1950's. Blacks didn't make laws that banned interracial marriage and the biggest fear in this guys life was having a baby with any noticeable African features, so much it kept him up at night and his white wife did not know why.
Do you think if he told his old school, well off, WASP father-in-law from Boston, that he had "negro" blood he would be accepted in the family if he said "I have negro blood but I'm not really a negro, or just a little negro, my dad is a negro"...in 1950?
This man was not hiding himself from blacks he was hiding himself from whites so he can be accepted by them based on his talent and not on his background.
In reality if the white people didn't care about his ancestry, whatever he choose to define it as it would not be a problem. In fact if white elites did not care at all about someone's ancestry then a person can say they are black all day long and it should not change anything in how you relate or interact with that person. What type of person would change their attitude based on the fact someone called themselves black, mulatto, etc. When i meet people, if I know there ethnicity or not I treat them the same, the only thing I may change is if I know they are Muslim I won't offer them pork, etc. These are things I might do to ease communication and to be more understanding, but I don't say "oh that woman was alright with me until I found out her father was Pakistani..."
It is like my wife coming to me tomorrow (who is Japanese) and saying well she is really an ethnic Korean and might even have some European missionary blood and she was hiding it because she felt it might be a problem. If I say I don't care, regardless of her ancestry, meaning, I don't care what mix of whatever she is, how she identifies, etc. I accept her how she is, then all that other stuff has no meaning. Even if she was half Japanese, I would not care. So what? Another man might divorce her because he felt she was "not pure Japanese"...but the idea of biological inferiority is in the mind of the person making the judgment, not in the my wife, her family, etc. Her "people" did not judge her inferior or make this man think she was inferior. That was his choice to believe such nonsense.
It only matters if the person you are trying to have a relationship with, trying to associate with, cares.
Obviously the white folks cared.
This is what you don't see to get. You think labeling yourself something is the problem. The problem is not what you label yourself.
The root problem is that the person you are interacting with cares in the first place. That person cares enough to discriminate against you based on a label and not see you as an individual or just see you as worthy of respect as they think they should be entitled to.
If a person (for example in this tv show) is married to you and would divorce you because of your genetic inheritance (whatever mix, ratio, etc) when 5 minutes before they were so in love with you and saw no issue...that person is messed up. The fact you feel you need to hide that from the person should tell you that person is messed up.
Labels in and of themselves only have as much meaning outside of your mind as the person looking at your cares to give it.
Black people, the one drop rule, blacks who want to make other people with African Ancestry "black" in a defacto Nazi-like way...etc.
If no one cared about the label at all it would not be an issue in the first place. What you should be concerned with is why would someone care at all? You have to sit and ask yourself what type of primitive barbarian you are dealing with? Why is it YOU need to do anything to please them in this way.
Powell, question:
If a woman was raped and we did not have rape shield laws and the government kept a public record of that woman as a rape victim, something the woman hid because she felt that her husband would divorce her if she found out she was raped before they were married (and so was not a virgin blah blah...) and the husband finds out and now does not want to be with her.
If the woman knew no man in the community she livd in would accept her as a wife unless she lied about it or just didn't talk about it.
Whose fault is that?
The government for defining her "a rape victim"?
The woman's for lying?
The husband for being a neolithic barbarian?
If you apply the same standards you do to the above situation I would imagine you would think the government was wrong and no one else...is that right?
Let me repeat myself. The story is fiction AND, more importantly, propaganda. It is based on a racist assumption and is presented under the guise of liberalism. Your harping on the alleged "choice" and "culture" of the fictional individual is nonsense.
Quote:
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
It is likely nonsense to someone who sees the world through lenses made in 1940, 1950, etc...
The world has changed. I don't know many people "passing" today, because the entire thing is silly.
I do know men of mixed heritage and they usually say they are mixed or black. If they are so "white" in phenotype that people don't know they are white, most white people I know just say something like "your black? you look white to me.." or "your not really black are you?" I'm pretty sure if they said they were white, most white folks aren't going to object...if black people object so what??? Don't associate with those morons. They likely have no direct power over you anyway.
The point is that the entire situation of the fiction, in most areas of the nation in 2009, does not exist, at least with people my age. I seriously doubt people are denying their relatives, etc in order to get a job or live in a nice neighborhood or marry a white woman/man...
That's not the world I live in, not the world of my peers, etc. I live in the Washington D.C. area, interracial marriage is so common around here, it would be silly to feel you need to go to that extreme.
As I said the definition doesn't really matter anymore, as much as how open the person is who is looking at you.
Sorry you grew up in a time when that was not true, that is sad, but to keep dwelling on situations that no longer exist for most people in modern American society is more than ridiculous.
I think passing for you is a problem because you think people should have the right to choose to be white if they so wish and should not have to "pass" they should just "be" and you somehow think that black people make people "pass".
To me "passing" in most situations in 2009 is a defunct methodology, because, from my point of view, it is people denying their families and ancestry to make it in mainstream white society, because they knew that society would not allow them to succeed if their ancestry was known. Black folks in the 1950's or 1960's labeling people as black only have as much power over white American perception as white America allowed them to have.
The real threat was not blacks, but the power blacks had to blackmail. In my rape example above, the power is if I know the woman was raped and threaten to tell her husband.
If the husband did not care if she was raped or not then I have no power at all and me telling him is meaningless to her situation as nothing will change.
As far as being able to "choose" your identity, I think that is a valid concern...as you know I believe anyone should have the right to choose any identity they want, however people don't exist in isolation and it is not a linear process whereby you think something so it is to everyone.
The purpose of choosing the identity is what? I can believe I'm an angel sent by God. If I believe that, fine. The issue is what everyone else believes around you in your environment. Somehow you think that black people saying someone is black is the reason whites hold on to the one drop rule and the one drop rule is racist, therefore blacks perpetuate racism and white supremacy or at least black inferiority.
Sorry, that is like saying me threatening to tell a rape victims husband she was raped keeps rape victims in an inferior status in society and perpetuates the stereotype that they are "unclean". Really? If the husband of the rape victim did not have the stereotype to begin with then what am I perpetuating? Well, nothing but nonsense.
Like I said a long time ago...if your position is that you want people to be able to be in the "white club" because they define themselves as white because they fit into the "range of the white phenotype"...good luck with that. I'm not sure you are winning that. As long as you keep the racial hierarchy in this society in place and the idea of race alive you set yourself up for failure. The issue is that "race" is a idiotic ideology from the 17th and 18th century that developed in Western Europe that should be dead and you are busy trying to find ways to convince people to allow you to change categorization of something that is stupid on it's face.
It is like me trying to convince a man who thinks the world is flat that there is a better way to travel on a flat earth.
The best thing to do is work to convince people that race has no meaning, it is scientifically unfounded, and what we are talking about is ethnicity and culture. What that does is divide blacks and whites into subgroupings...when you do that it removes any talk of "biology" or "'scientific' biological race differences". You have all the power of modern science on your side to do that.
If you accomplish that "race" won't matter so there can't be someone "half white and half black" there is someone who grew up in cultural group and everyone already understands that culture can change. It is obvious then that one can say that Barack Obama grew up primarily in mainstream American WASP culture, with some Hawaiian and Indonesian influence. This is what he is. "black and white" tell you nothing about Obama. His father could easily be from a black guy from Canada and a white woman from Finland"..it has no meaning as to his identity as an individual.
Then again that is my 2009 thinking. I'm over primitive frameworks.
Posted: Mon 06 Apr 2009 13:08 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
fwsweet wrote:
Powell wrote:
I recommend the following: Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is "Sollors," not "Sollars." The reference is: Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1997). I agree with DH that the passing novel as social myth (defy society and you die miserable and hated) has become unfashionable and seems a bit bizarre to modern sensibilities. But I think that A.D. is spot-on as to its social function, back when the genre was fashionable.
My favorite analyses of the genre is M. Giulia Fabi, Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2001). This is because Fabi includes two novels in her analysis that modern scholars ignore: William Wells Brown, Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853) and Frank J. Webb, The Garies and Their Friends (London: Arno Press, 1857).
Clotel and The Garies and Their Friends were the first successful novels published by African-Americans, and yet they are almost universally ignored in Black studies departments today. This is because their ideology is repellent to modern African-Americans. None of the characters who engage in passing in these two novels feels any guilt or remorse for the act. Some (usually delicate Victorian females like Clotel herself) sincerely want to be accepted as White. Others (usually defiant self-sacrificing Victorian men) consider it a justified deceit upon an unjust society.
Modern critics see the characters' lack of guilt as a symptom of a "psychology of imitation and implied inferiority," and that it reveals the authors' "unconscious desire to be white" and "unabashed allegiance to Anglo-Saxon lineage." According to M. Giulia Fabi, the characters' lack of guilt "have had crippling repercussions on [the novels'] reception among scholars of African American literature to this day."
In short, the first successful novels by A-A authors are ignored (or villified) by academics today precisely because they are from a time before the ODR myth (and its implication that anyone who defilles the purity of the "Caucasian race" must be destroyed) had been internalized by the A-A community.
P.S. [A question only for buffs of the genre.] Did Clare accidentally fall to her death from the sixth-floor window?, did she jump in suicide?, or was she pushed by Irene?
The anti-passing narrative is by NO MEANS dead. It was on "Cold Case," "Law and Order," "One Life to Live," and many other TV programs. Anti-passing novels are still published, mainly by black or black-identified authors. The public denigration of the late Anatole Broyard has been promoted in every media outlet by blacks, liberals and his traitorous daughter. The alleged "passer" does not necessarily die but must make a humiliating repudiation of his/her white ancestry and identity and swear eternal loyalty to the the Negro/black/African American "race."
Posted: Mon 06 Apr 2009 13:27 Post subject: Re: The TV Show "Cold Case" Deals with Passing
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Powell wrote:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
He was killed by another black man who was angry he could pass but the man also worked hard but could not get ahead because he was black.
Damn! That is the worst crabs-in-a-bucket case I have ever heard of. What on earth did the murderer gain by killing someone who exploited the social environment to his own benefit? Is that not what everyone tries to do? I understand that it was fiction, but still.
Unfortunately, "crabs-in-a-bucket" is probably the best explanation for black American support of forced hypodescent. Misery loves company - especially "light-skinned" company. I think it's a way for them to safely express hatred of whites - attack someone who has the genes and phenotype but not the status.
Note that it is the label "black" on a predominately Euro person that seems to justify the idea that that his white identity was a provocation deserving of death. I'll bet the murderer in the TV show was treated with sympathy, right? Suppose the black man had, instead, murdered a Jewish, white-identified man because he was jealous of Jews for getting ahead of blacks and felt that they should sacrifice themselves in solidarity with blacks. There would be no sympathy for the murderer and he would be condemned as a loser, bigot, etc.
Do you have a recent poll that supports your contention that black America (as a whole) supports "forced hypodescent"?
In my generation I don't meet many people like this and the average black age in AMerica is about what? 40-45?
Growing up I did not hear a lot of black people berating Mariah Carey (who over a decade ago said her father was a black Hispanic)...Mariah Carey says she is mixed, has for years and black folks tend to like her just fine....I don't see an outcry from people.
IN any case, in regard to the tv show (you didn't watch) you are referring to phenotype and not culture.
This man said clearly in the tv show, "I'm a Negro and my father is a Negro"...
He saw himself as black, the issue was that when he went in the army he found that many whites saw him as white and treated him better than other blacks. SO he choose a white identity publicly to avoid discrimination. There was no evidence in the show that in private he also believed himself to be a white man. The evidence based on the show, and his own comments at the end, was that he regretted his decision and that is likely why he went out of his way to try to help integrate the new community he was planning and help out a black man he had known from the military who was trying to make good but he knew was not being treated fairly due to his appearance. He had guilt.
If he considered himself white most of his life or even then he likely would not have had any guilt at all.
I know a man like this in real life. He could have easily "passed", the former Ambassador I talked about before, but he identities himself as a black man from a black family. This has little to do with phenotype and a lot to do with culture.
In this way I consider it much like an non-religious Catholic in Northern Ireland.
He might be able to move to another town and just say he is Protestant, who would know if he adjusted his accent slightly and denied his background, family, etc. I'm sure some did. Most did not, because being a Irish Catholic is a culture, not just a religious affiliation.
This reminds me of some issues Brazilians of Japanese descent are having in Japan. Most of them are not mixed "race" and do not stand out by appearance in Japan, but they do stand out, it is obvious, because they speak, dress, and move in a way that is obviously non-Japanese.
Some of them refuse to assimilate because they see that they are living in Japan short term, but most don't leave.
It would be easy for a Brazilian Japanese person to adopt Japanese cultural norms and work very hard to lose their accent, or if they are born there to just act like everyone else, but many do not because they see themselves as different culturally and are proud of this face (which annoys many Japanese but this is another story).
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
Your projecting a narrative that is going extent, as I said, you are not of my generation. I didn't see anything about biological inferiority be preached, other than the white people in the story likely felt that way about this man. The fact this man said he was "negro" I took as him expressing his cultural background.
When I saw when I watched it was how pathetically backward a society it was where this man felt he had to hide his family if he wanted to be successful. This was the 1950's. Blacks didn't make laws that banned interracial marriage and the biggest fear in this guys life was having a baby with any noticeable African features, so much it kept him up at night and his white wife did not know why.
Do you think if he told his old school, well off, WASP father-in-law from Boston, that he had "negro" blood he would be accepted in the family if he said "I have negro blood but I'm not really a negro, or just a little negro, my dad is a negro"...in 1950?
:lol:
This man was not hiding himself from blacks he was hiding himself from whites so he can be accepted by them based on his talent and not on his background.
In reality if the white people didn't care about his ancestry, whatever he choose to define it as it would not be a problem. In fact if white elites did not care at all about someone's ancestry then a person can say they are black all day long and it should not change anything in how you relate or interact with that person. What type of person would change their attitude based on the fact someone called themselves black, mulatto, etc. When i meet people, if I know there ethnicity or not I treat them the same, the only thing I may change is if I know they are Muslim I won't offer them pork, etc. These are things I might do to ease communication and to be more understanding, but I don't say "oh that woman was alright with me until I found out her father was Pakistani..."
It is like my wife coming to me tomorrow (who is Japanese) and saying well she is really an ethnic Korean and might even have some European missionary blood and she was hiding it because she felt it might be a problem. If I say I don't care, regardless of her ancestry, meaning, I don't care what mix of whatever she is, how she identifies, etc. I accept her how she is, then all that other stuff has no meaning. Even if she was half Japanese, I would not care. So what? Another man might divorce her because he felt she was "not pure Japanese"...but the idea of biological inferiority is in the mind of the person making the judgment, not in the my wife, her family, etc. Her "people" did not judge her inferior or make this man think she was inferior. That was his choice to believe such nonsense.
It only matters if the person you are trying to have a relationship with, trying to associate with, cares.
Obviously the white folks cared.
This is what you don't see to get. You think labeling yourself something is the problem. The problem is not what you label yourself.
The root problem is that the person you are interacting with cares in the first place. That person cares enough to discriminate against you based on a label and not see you as an individual or just see you as worthy of respect as they think they should be entitled to.
If a person (for example in this tv show) is married to you and would divorce you because of your genetic inheritance (whatever mix, ratio, etc) when 5 minutes before they were so in love with you and saw no issue...that person is messed up. The fact you feel you need to hide that from the person should tell you that person is messed up.
Labels in and of themselves only have as much meaning outside of your mind as the person looking at your cares to give it.
Black people, the one drop rule, blacks who want to make other people with African Ancestry "black" in a defacto Nazi-like way...etc.
If no one cared about the label at all it would not be an issue in the first place. What you should be concerned with is why would someone care at all? You have to sit and ask yourself what type of primitive barbarian you are dealing with? Why is it YOU need to do anything to please them in this way.
Powell, question:
If a woman was raped and we did not have rape shield laws and the government kept a public record of that woman as a rape victim, something the woman hid because she felt that her husband would divorce her if she found out she was raped before they were married (and so was not a virgin blah blah...) and the husband finds out and now does not want to be with her.
If the woman knew no man in the community she livd in would accept her as a wife unless she lied about it or just didn't talk about it.
Whose fault is that?
The government for defining her "a rape victim"?
The woman's for lying?
The husband for being a neolithic barbarian?
If you apply the same standards you do to the above situation I would imagine you would think the government was wrong and no one else...is that right?
Let me repeat myself. The story is fiction AND, more importantly, propaganda. It is based on a racist assumption and is presented under the guise of liberalism. Your harping on the alleged "choice" and "culture" of the fictional individual is nonsense.
Quote:
You see one tree and I see the forest. The story is NOT about the alleged "choice" of one FICTIONAL character. Anti-passing naratives follow a stereotype. They are almost a genre like romance, mystery, or science fiction. Almost all anti-passing narratives follow the same plot: A true white is free from "colored/Negro/black blood." The alleged passer has committed a terrible sin against nature, God, the Negro race, the white race, etc. The alleged passer must be punished by humiliation and/or death. I recommend the following:
Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (1997 by Werner Sollars
It is amazing to me how so many American "blacks" (especially mulatto elites and those with mulatto relatives) love anti-passing stories, especially since such stories are based on the assumption that "black blood" is either biologically inferior (openly racist white authors, who are almost now extinct) or so different and alien from other types of human genes ("black" and "white liberal" authors) that biological inferiority can only be inferred. Misery loves company, again. Jews would never be stupid enough to demand that the "Aryan/non-Aryan" racial definitions of the Nazis be resurrected as something good.
It is likely nonsense to someone who sees the world through lenses made in 1940, 1950, etc...
The world has changed. I don't know many people "passing" today, because the entire thing is silly.
I do know men of mixed heritage and they usually say they are mixed or black. If they are so "white" in phenotype that people don't know they are white, most white people I know just say something like "your black? you look white to me.." or "your not really black are you?" I'm pretty sure if they said they were white, most white folks aren't going to object...if black people object so what??? Don't associate with those morons. They likely have no direct power over you anyway.
The point is that the entire situation of the fiction, in most areas of the nation in 2009, does not exist, at least with people my age. I seriously doubt people are denying their relatives, etc in order to get a job or live in a nice neighborhood or marry a white woman/man...
That's not the world I live in, not the world of my peers, etc. I live in the Washington D.C. area, interracial marriage is so common around here, it would be silly to feel you need to go to that extreme.
As I said the definition doesn't really matter anymore, as much as how open the person is who is looking at you.
Sorry you grew up in a time when that was not true, that is sad, but to keep dwelling on situations that no longer exist for most people in modern American society is more than ridiculous.
I think passing for you is a problem because you think people should have the right to choose to be white if they so wish and should not have to "pass" they should just "be" and you somehow think that black people make people "pass".
To me "passing" in most situations in 2009 is a defunct methodology, because, from my point of view, it is people denying their families and ancestry to make it in mainstream white society, because they knew that society would not allow them to succeed if their ancestry was known. Black folks in the 1950's or 1960's labeling people as black only have as much power over white American perception as white America allowed them to have.
The real threat was not blacks, but the power blacks had to blackmail. In my rape example above, the power is if I know the woman was raped and threaten to tell her husband.
If the husband did not care if she was raped or not then I have no power at all and me telling him is meaningless to her situation as nothing will change.
As far as being able to "choose" your identity, I think that is a valid concern...as you know I believe anyone should have the right to choose any identity they want, however people don't exist in isolation and it is not a linear process whereby you think something so it is to everyone.
The purpose of choosing the identity is what? I can believe I'm an angel sent by God. If I believe that, fine. The issue is what everyone else believes around you in your environment. Somehow you think that black people saying someone is black is the reason whites hold on to the one drop rule and the one drop rule is racist, therefore blacks perpetuate racism and white supremacy or at least black inferiority.
Sorry, that is like saying me threatening to tell a rape victims husband she was raped keeps rape victims in an inferior status in society and perpetuates the stereotype that they are "unclean". Really? If the husband of the rape victim did not have the stereotype to begin with then what am I perpetuating? Well, nothing but nonsense.
Like I said a long time ago...if your position is that you want people to be able to be in the "white club" because they define themselves as white because they fit into the "range of the white phenotype"...good luck with that. I'm not sure you are winning that. As long as you keep the racial hierarchy in this society in place and the idea of race alive you set yourself up for failure. The issue is that "race" is a idiotic ideology from the 17th and 18th century that developed in Western Europe that should be dead and you are busy trying to find ways to convince people to allow you to change categorization of something that is stupid on it's face.
It is like me trying to convince a man who thinks the world is flat that there is a better way to travel on a flat earth. :lol:
The best thing to do is work to convince people that race has no meaning, it is scientifically unfounded, and what we are talking about is ethnicity and culture. What that does is divide blacks and whites into subgroupings...when you do that it removes any talk of "biology" or "'scientific' biological race differences". You have all the power of modern science on your side to do that.
If you accomplish that "race" won't matter so there can't be someone "half white and half black" there is someone who grew up in cultural group and everyone already understands that culture can change. It is obvious then that one can say that Barack Obama grew up primarily in mainstream American WASP culture, with some Hawaiian and Indonesian influence. This is what he is. "black and white" tell you nothing about Obama. His father could easily be from a black guy from Canada and a white woman from Finland"..it has no meaning as to his identity as an individual.
Then again that is my 2009 thinking. I'm over primitive frameworks.
Don't try to speculate about my life, DH. You know nothing about it and I am sick of blacks trying to create false biographies about me. Your mulatto mother with the black identification says a lot about where you are coming from; most of the blacks who hyspterically opposed us at "Interracial Voice" had mulatto and mixed-white relatives. Obviously, those blacks know that many of their nonblack relatives are NOT HAPPY pretending to be "black." Why else would they be so intent on silencing me? I have no power, but I'm telling the truth they want to bury.
The fact is that people with European phenotypes are WHITE unless they go to great pains to deny it, whether blacks like it or not. My position is that they are NOT "passing" but are only being what they truly are. Many are taught to deny it by foolish relatives who tell them the anti-passing narrative. If it were not for the black elites's dedication to denigrating white and other non-black persons who refuse to identify with the "black race," the dreaded "black blood" would soon become as harmless as American Indian "blood." You don't see any enterprising "Bell Curve" guys trying to "prove" the genetic inferiority of American Indians, do you? There's no political profit in it. Blacks elites are too stupid and emotionally retarded to see the obvious. White liberals just go along with any stupid thing blacks say as long as they themselves aren't being personally attacked (as in anti-Semitism).
1. Both of you: stop getting personal. It is unnecessary and distracting.
2. Both of you: stop quoting everything that has gone before. This is not an email listserv, where that is the only way to show what you are replying to. Readers can scroll up to see the prior messages.
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He only made his life worse (even if it was 40 years later)...
