Last post I made the argument that racial mixing has been going on in America for nearly four hundred years, that whitish negroes have been passing for white and disappearing into the “white” population for almost that long, and that by now we are all one race.

We didn’t get that way by sitting in a circle, holding hands, and having pretty thoughts. We got that way by rape. Or at least by white men doing whatever they damn well pleased with black women, when it wasn’t illegal.

Slaves heading for America were chained naked and helpless below decks. The sailors were as horny as – sailors. You do the math. Logic suggests that miscegenation began before the slaves ever arrived in America.

Everyone secretly knows that, and pale black folks prove it. It will be harder to accept that the gene flow moved both ways, by means of even paler black folks.

There are two groups who will hate and resist this idea.

Whites.

And blacks.

I think the average “white” is likely to respond, “No way! I’m white and that’s all there is to it. So shut your mouth and crawl back under whatever rock you crawled out from!”

And the average “black” will probably respond, “So what? It makes no difference. I’m black, and you’re damned well not going to take that away from me.”

We have been living so long with the myth of two races that, biology notwithstanding, we have made it a cultural reality. And we have invested four hundred years of denial in making this non-existent difference the most important fact in our national life.

If I could disseminate the one race doctrine throughout America, all would be well.

Yeah, right!

Black-haters would disbelieve in their souls while paying lip service. They would say, “If we’re all one race, then there can be no such thing as a racially motivated crime.”

Don’t blame me when that happens.

The fact is that “blacks” and “whites” are different – culturally different, in the same way Mormons are different from Catholics, and Hindus are different from Jews. The fact that we all share the same gene pool doesn’t change that.

It is, however, the truth. And the truth is the only starting point for facing the future.

Your Redneck Granny is a Black Woman,
and she doesn’t even know it

That provocative phrase is a title I have planned for a future book.

Last post, I said, “ . . . white purity is not just endangered; it hasn’t existed for hundreds of years.” To turn that title and that notion into a book will take some research, but let’s look at the bare bones of the argument.

The first African slaves arrived in America in 1619. That’s 397 years ago. If we count twenty-five years as a generation, that’s 16 generations.

Now, lets look at you and your ancestors, assuming that you consider yourself white.

You had two parents (we’re speaking biologically here) and they had four parents and they had eight parents . . .; up the line 16 generations, that’s just under 33,000 ancestors. Counting all the ones it took to get back there, that about 65,000 folks who sent your DNA down the line.

What are the chances that not one of them was out of Africa?

Suppose one black woman was made pregnant by her master in the first generation. How many of her descendants would carry at least a trace of that DNA event?

Historically, women bore many children, and many of them died while young. Let’s say that the average woman had four children who lived long enough to have children of their own. That original black woman would have one billion, seventy three million, seven hundred forty one thousand, eight hundred twenty four partly white children, even if that was the only rape in the history of race relations.

And what are the chances that was the only rape? None. So much for black purity, but that isn’t any big secret. What about white purity?

How white do you have to be to pass for white? Three quarters? Seven eighths? How many generations does that take, particularly since the whiter a girl is, the more likely she is to be the object of a white man’s interest. Three generations at the most; and what are the chances that a whitish black girl would choose to pass if she could? Why wouldn’t she, if she could get away with it?

More math. Lets say that by 1700 (eighty years into the era of slavery), one hundred partially negro girls had passed for white. That’s not a big number to surmise. In fact, it’s ridiculously small. Let’s just look at that hypothetical hundred, and not consider for the moment all the blacks who passed subsequently.

Let’s give doubters no excuse for their doubts. Let’s say that these passing girls only averaged three children who went on to have children. That’s certainly an underestimation. Their descendants are boys and girls who are going to disappear into the white gene pool; who may not know, and whose descendants will never know, that they carry a partially  black genetic heritage. How many of that original one hundred could there be today?

6,710,886,400. Six billion, seven hundred ten million, eight hundred eighty six thousand, four hundred. Nearly as many as there are humans on the Earth.

That doesn’t count all the other blacks, male and female, who passed in the last four hundred years.

If big numbers don’t impress you, let’s make it personal.

Rhett Butler was partly black. Scarlet O’hara was partly black. Simon Legree was partly black.

You’re partly black. I’m partly black. And my relatives just disowned me.

That’s mighty white of them!

The N Word and the M Words

I was on the phone with a cousin back in Oklahoma recently. I mentioned that gay marriage, in my opinion, was like interracial marriage – something we would all look back on in a few years and ask ourselves what the fuss was all about.

She said that interracial marriage was still a big fuss in Oklahoma. Bear in mind she is my age, so she may not speak for the present generation.

It’s no fuss in California where I live now. Everywhere you look you see black-white couples, and that pleases me.

The continuing abhorrence of interracial marriage has two parts. It is a fear that a (perceived) bad thing has been made legal, and it is a refusal to admit that the (perceived) bad thing has been going on for a very long time.

Consider, when asked about how his book Huckleberry Finn was doing, Mark Twain said, “I feel like the lady felt when the child came out white.” (Bernard DeVoto. Mark Twain’s America) Really? A world of understanding is hidden in that seemingly simple statement.

How about the nigger in the woodpile? You’ve never heard that phrase? Then you don’t live anywhere near the South. You can Google it, but it won’t tell you much. You will find it used in an anti-Lincoln cartoon during his election bid, and you will find various definitions to the effect that it refers to something not being what it seems.

Fine, but why this particular phrase? Why is that legendary black man hiding in that woodpile near the back door of the big house? What are his intentions? (As if the snarky way I phrased that didn’t tell you.)

The internet won’t say, but I will. The answer lies in when the phrase is used. It is occasionally used to cover general sneakiness, but it is always used when a child doesn’t look like his father.

Hmmm. So that’s why that black guy was sneaking around the back door.

The great fear is that black men will do to white women what white men have been doing to black women for four hundered years. It has nothing to do with the M word (marriage) and everything to do with the other M word (miscegination).

That black feller in the woodpile helps whites laugh at the hidden realization that white purity is not just endangered; it hasn’t existed for hundreds of years.

I’m a white guy. You might ask, “What does a white guy know about Black history?” More to the point, “What right does he have to talk about it?” That’s a fair question.

You might also ask, why is a science fiction author writing a series of posts about race? Another fair question, and it has more than one answer.

I am a citizen, an observer, a teacher, a student of history and culture, and a writer on a number of subjects, and the current Serial demonstrates. It is largely coincidental that my novels so far published have been science fiction.

I grew up in a white town (see post 81.). For a lot of reasons, none of them having anything to do with race, I didn’t leave to go to college. I escaped to go to college. Once there I switched from biology to anthropology, which is, among other things, a study of the variety of lousy ways humans have treated each other. It is also a study of how groups form to manage that treatment, and how various ethnic groups interact, not according to reality, but according to how they are taught to see each other.

It sounded a lot like home.

Like any other human system of thought, anthropology has its core beliefs. Cultural relativism states that other cultures provide the for the needs of people in those cultures, and those cultures don’t need to be changed by the hand of imperialistic countries like Britain and America.

Fair enough. However, the norms of those cultures are often a set of rules designed to maintain the perks of the powerful. The groups who are contending for power are often defined by ethnic identities, and those definitions often have little to do with historical reality.

Again, a lot like home.

One non-mainstream anthropologist explained it this way. In exchanges in an South Asian village, the farming castes gives food to their landlords, and in return get the benefit of not being hit on the head by a club.

Okay, not like America this year, but a lot like the South in 1840.

I spent four years at two institutions studying South Asia and South Asians in overseas colonies. My first MA was on caste based economic interactions. Years later, while writing, I returned to college for a second BA and MA in history, concentrating on Britain and America in the last three hundred years.

But I’m not black! I am more than aware of that “deficiency” and I would never think that I understand black perspectives from the inside. However, there will be innumerable black people writing this season; they will tell their story, as they should.

My outsider’s perspective will also be valid.