Tag Archives: race

741. In the Canebreak part 2

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Part 1 of this story was posted last week. An explanation of where it came from was posted on the fourteenth of October.

In the Canebrake part 2

Bullfrog and Salali hadn’t been the best pair of substitute parents, but Titus missed them. To be fair, he had been no prize either when they got him. Headstrong; too young to be independent, but determined to be independent anyway.

Titus had spent most of his time with Cotton. He learned Cherokee ways from the slave, the same way Cotton had learned them from Bullfrog when he was a boy.

“Was Francesca in your group?” Titus asked.

“Your wife? Why would she be with us? She wasn’t Cherokee.”

“The soldiers took her anyway.”

“That’s why you’re following?” Titus nodded. Cotton said, “I never saw her, but there were several groups that moved out at different times. She might have been in a different group.”

“Okay,” Titus said, swallowing his disappointment. “Don’t matter, I’ll still find her.”

Cotton bustled about the fire, pulling something out of the ashes. It was meat, long, slender, cylindrical. Snake. Titus didn’t mind snakes, as long as they were dead. And if they were dead, you might as well eat them. When Cotton started to tear it with his fingers, Titus said, “Don’t you have a knife?”

“Got nothing. I should have kept the shovel, but it seemed too much trouble.”

Titus went to his horse and took a knife out of his saddlebag. “Keep it,” he said as he handed it over. “I’ve got another one.” Cotton grunted his thanks and split the snake. It tasted like squirrel, and it was as welcome as a feast.

Except for munching, they ate in silence. Titus hadn’t seen Cotton in a couple of years, and the time showed in extra wrinkles. It was good to see him again.

Titus had been born to a German father who had died too soon, adopted by a Cherokee father who had not been able to handle him, and had learned most of what he knew from this black slave. Only he wasn’t really that black.

“Cotton,” he said, “how come you’re so pale?”

The older man said, “Shit!”, and grinned. He wouldn’t have answered that question for anybody else, but he had known Titus all the boy’s life, and had known and respected his real parents before that.

“It’s a long story, passed down,” he said. “My mother’s mother’s mother was a pale, good lookin’ woman. I suppose she had some white in her, I don’t know how much. Her master caught her one day in the fields and that’s how my granny came about. She was half white plus whatever her mother already was.

“My granny got sold to her master’s cousin, and he caught her out when she was washin’ clothes in the creek. That’s how my mother got to be three-quarters white, and then some.

“She got sold too, when she was still young. She grew up to be a rare, beautiful woman, mama did, so they made her a house slave and she had six of us. She never got married, but the boss’s son spent a lot of time in her room, so we all came out pale as cotton. That’s how I got my name.

“He kept my sisters and sold me to Bullfrog.”

Titus said, “I always wondered.”

Cotton shook his head, not so much angry as bemused. He said, “Hell, I’m whiter than half the so-called white people in Tennessee, for all the good it does me.”

Titus was quiet for a while, then stated the obvious, “So you’re going north to freedom. How far you going to go?”

“How far would you go?”

Titus chuckled. “Cotton, if you want my advice, keep walking north ’til your feet freeze to the ground. Then thaw them out and go further.”

“Sounds right.”

“You going to stay black, or pass for white?”

“What do you think? If I say I’m a free negro, what’ll that get me? If I say I’m white, they’ll treat me like a man.

“I’m going to find me a poor, good-lookin’ white woman, and we’re going to have a batch of pale colored kids. And I’m never going to tell her. And I’m never going to let my kids know that their daddy started out life as a nigger.”

— << >> —

The night wore on. There were worse things than bogles in the night around the two of them.

For Titus, there were soldiers; men, true enough, but full of evil intent. They were of his own people, his own white race, his own nation, but they had come for the Cherokees that his parents had devoted their lives to — that he had lived his life among. They had come for them and had carried them away, out of a country which had been theirs since before the white men ever came, and toward a land none of them had ever seen.

And for Cotton, there were men who looked like Titus — looked like Cotton, near enough, though they would never acknowledge it — men who would take him into captivity and sell his body as if it had no soul. As if he were not almost entirely white. As if some of those soldiers were not at least as black as he was — but don’t say it! They would kill you if you said it.

And what if Cotton had been all black, not mostly white. And what if Titus were a Cherokee, instead of Scots and German. And what if those soldiers were as white as they claimed to be. What then? Would it matter? Really matter?

— << >> —

So the wind made its noises in the canebrake, and the trees moaned. So Titus’s eyes were wide in a white face and Cotton’s eyes were wide in an almost-white face. So the waterhorses frolicked in the swamp, and the moccasins slithered through the stagnant water, and the frogs croaked like the toads of Armageddon.

So the darkness was filled with all the fearful creatures out of Scotland — and out of Africa as well, for that matter. Cotton, too, would have his own demons, brought with his people from their old home across the ocean, and now hiding in the canebrake with the bogles, and the soldiers, and the rattlesnakes.

Even if it weren’t All Hallow’s Eve — even if the barriers between Earth and Hell had not thinned and broken — they might as well have.

Cotton raised his cup and drank the tea made of herbs he had found in the swamp. He handed it across the fire, and Titus’s lips touched the same cup as he drank the same liquid. Cotton said, “In the morning I go north.”

Titus replied, “In the morning I go west.”

They would not meet again. They both knew it, but neither said so.

Fire and death and the hangman. The slave catchers and the block. They are all real, but a man goes on.

Still, it had been good to see Cotton one more time.

— << >> —

Not a Halloween story, you say? No ghosts? I disagree.

These wraiths of fiction never lived, and the men of that era who did live are long gone to wherever souls go. But they still haunt us today, and they will probably haunt our children as well.

Check back in January or February of 2027. There’s a book you’ll want to read, that talks about race and slavery and half-breeds. You see . . .

Your Redneck Granny has a Secret

. . . and you can read what that secret is. But I’ll bet you have already guessed.

finis

740. In the Canebreak part 1

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The background for this story was told last week.

740. In the Canebrake part 1

It was a long, cold afternoon, with spits of snow that were slow melting. There wasn’t any green left in the grass; it was all the crackly brown of late fall. The year was 1838; the month was somewhere in that no-man’s land where October slides into November on a path slippery with sleet.

Titus’s mare was holding out, but he was treating her with extra care since she had lamed up a week earlier. Somewhere ahead of him the main body of the displaced Cherokees was moving westward, but he didn’t know how far behind them he was. He had been riding after rumors, picked up at wood cutters’ camps and isolated cabins since he left eastern Tennessee. Now he was tangled up in a canebrake, following a narrow, muddy trail that paralleled one of the many tributaries of the Tennessee River. It wouldn’t be long now until he reached the Ohio — he thought. He hadn’t been really sure of his location for days, and the low overcast sky didn’t help any.

He pulled up at a familiar churring sound, followed by a slithering in the leaves. Canebrake rattler, probably. Titus had lived around snakes all his life, but he had never gotten to like them. Even worse were cottonmouths. They didn’t even have the decency to warn a man before they struck.

It was getting on dark, and the fog was rising from the stagnant waters beyond the trail. He was two days hungry and there wasn’t a scrap of food in his saddlebags. Pretty soon his horse would not be able to find her way ahead, but there was no place big enough or dry enough to spread a blanket. The tall canes around him seemed to close in as the light failed.

He could smell the swamp. He thought of waterhorses and the sluagh, and all the other fairy creatures his Scottish mother had told him about. Those weren’t comfortable thoughts for a night this dark and cold, on a trail this uncertain, at the approach of All Hallow’s Eve.

Something erupted from the brush at his side and hurled itself scrawking into the air. An egret probably, or maybe a heron, but when he saw it for a moment silhouetted against the moon, it became a boobrie, come all the way from the lochs of the highlands to haunt the Scottish half of his soul.

Then he saw the light, faint, almost luminescent in the distance. Perhaps the light of . . .

Titus took hold of his imagination and put it firmly away. What he needed to worry about tonight were not creatures designed to frighten children, but men with guns and knives, and the intent to do a traveller harm.

He eased forward; the sound of his horse’s hooves was swallowed up by the soft ground. There was a spot wide enough for a simple camp, and somebody had managed to find enough dry wood for a fire.

Then the mare stepped into a puddle. It was a small sound, but the figure by the fire vanished. First he was there and then he wasn’t, and he didn’t leave even a hint of movement in the canes.

Titus froze in place. His rifle was in a scabbard at his knee, but pulling it out now might cause the trouble he was trying to avoid. He hallooed the fire in a low voice, but got no answer.

Titus kicked his mare in the ribs and started forward, pausing at the edge of the firelight. He called out, “How about welcoming some company. I’ve been riding all day and this is the first wide spot in the trail I’ve seen in hours.”

Still no answer.

“I’m not going on in the dark. You might as well come out, unless you plan to stay squatting in the mud ’til morning.”

Still nothing, and a shiver ran up his spine. He wished he hadn’t been thinking of bogles. Then a voice out of the darkness called, “Titus?” It shook him; he had expected almost anything except someone who knew his name. “Is that you, Titus Young?” the soft voice repeated.

In answer, he kneed his horse and rode further into the light of the fire. The hidden voice said, “You scared hell out of me.”

“You didn’t do my heart any good either, Cotton.”

A man of middle age came out of the canebrake and Titus swung down to walk up to the fire. Even though they had known each other most of Titus’s life, they didn’t shake hands, because Cotton was a slave.

Or had been. The fact that he was alone in the dark, not far from the Ohio border suggested he had run away. That left a lot of questions. Titus had been told that the Cherokees were allowed to take their slaves with them, and Cotton had been with Bullfrog since he was a boy.

Cotton was the one who had taught Titus most of what he knew about hunting, fishing, and tracking, and just keeping alive in the hills and the swamps. That counted for a lot, but Bullfrog and Salali were the Cherokee couple who had adopted Titus when his parents died. Even if Chief Ross had told them to do it, and even if Bullfrog hadn’t paid much attention to him afterward, Titus still owed them both a debt of loyalty.

Titus asked, “Why are you here? What happened to Bullfrog and Salali?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Titus,” the older man said. “I stayed with them as long as they were alive.”

“Go on.”

“Salali was sick all summer. By the time we left, she had no business traveling, but the soldiers didn’t give us any choice. She died two days along the trail.”

“And Bullfrog?”

“He was hurt bad inside when Salali died. He rode all day, he ate, he laid under his blanket at night, but I don’t think he ever slept. After about two weeks, he died too.

“The soldiers didn’t want to give us time to bury him, so I carried him out of camp in the middle of the night. Those soldiers weren’t much. It wasn’t hard to avoid them. I found a nice place under a pecan tree and buried him, same as I had buried Salali. When I finished, I stuck the shovel in the ground like a gravestone and started walking north. I was already out of the camp and there was no reason to go back.”

this story concludes next week

739. Half-breeds, again

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Half-breeds, again

I’m not into things that go bump in the night, but if there were ever a holiday that calls for the telling of stories, it would be All Hallows Eve. This was first posted during the Halloween season of 2019. It is a scene that was planned for a historical novel, but that novel was never written. Today I’ll tell you why the novel never came about, and show you a scene that did.

This was originally posted a decade ago, over four days. This year I will squeeze it into today, next week, and the week after. That will finish just before Halloween.

Of all the novels I’ve written in my head, but never on paper, Titus Young is the most complete. I know who my protagonist is, I know his antecedents, and I know his offspring. Titus Young is the middle book in three well plotted but mostly unwritten generational historical novels which carry members of his family from Pennsylvania to the Cherokee lands of Tennessee, and finally to Oklahoma.

I would write them all if it weren’t for money. Money? Yes; I could write five SF novels in the time it would take me to research and write one lengthy historical, so I can’t afford Titus Young or the other two. Simple but sad.

Titus Young himself was a half breed — half Scottish and half German, that is. I assume that the term half breed is offensive now; I certainly haven’t heard it in years. During my childhood it was in common use especially in Oklahoma, formerly known as Indian Territory.

Nevertheless, now that I’ve gotten your attention, I will switch to mixed race to avoid offending modern sensibilities.

Titus’s Scottish mother met his German-speaking Moravian father and they married in the unwritten novel Nativity. They moved from Pennsylvania to south-eastern Tennessee to be missionaries to the Cherokees. Moravians often did that. Titus was born there and the Youngs became respected for their compassionate work. When Titus’s parents died during an epidemic, John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees, himself mixed race Scottish and Cherokee, arranged for Titus to be adopted by one of his relatives. Thus Scottish-German Titus became legally Cherokee, without a drop of Indian blood.

As a young man, Titus took a flatboat down the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers with a load of cargo for New Orleans. His boatmates were two white brothers. They sold their wares in New Orleans, but on their return up the Nachez Trace a disagreement led to a lifelong feud.

While in New Orleans, Titus met and courted a beautiful young Italian girl. Actually, she had an Italian father and a Natchez Indian mother, but she so hated her Indian heritage that she chose to pass as Italian. On a later trip to New Orleans, Titus met her again and they married. They returned to Tennessee where they opened a store.

Some years later, the events leading up to the Cherokee removal occurred. When the soldiers come to round up the Cherokees, Titus was away. His old enemies informed the soldiers that Titus and his wife were Cherokee.

Titus’s wife was half Indian, but no one knew that. She was believed to be Italian, and Titus was Scots-German, but Titus was an adopted Cherokee and she was married to him. That was enough for the soldiers. She was taken away with the rest of the tribe.

This irony of this left her with much soul-searching to do as she experienced the horrors of the Trail of Tears, and saw those horrors inflicted on her husband’s adopted people.

Titus returned, found himself a fugitive, found his enemies in possession of his business, wrought a bit of revenge, then fled. He headed west, following the path on which the soldiers had taken the Cherokees. While he was on this journey, he came across a runaway slave named Cotton, whom he knew from when he was a boy, and that scene formed 2019’s Halloween posts.

—<<>>—

In the 1830’s, America was full of half-breeds (to use the then contemporary term). Even more appear in this story than I’ve presented so far. A lot of them were passing for white, and making life hard for the half-breeds who weren’t passing. Gay people didn’t invent the idea of being in the closet. We’ve always had closets.

Over the course of  years, I have written about race in all it’s permutations. Those posts will be gathered together in a book called . . .

Your Redneck Granny has a Secret

. . . which is presently scheduled to be published early next year, some time between MLK Day and the end of Black History Month.

735. In the Middle

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I grew up in a firmly Republican household. Democrats were fools and maybe pinkos. (It was the fifties.) Black marchers in the deep South were just outside agitators from the North.

Watching people being firehosed for asking to be treated as humans convinced me that the last part was wrong. Just observing the world convinced me that the first part was wrong.

But it didn’t make me a Democrat. Just because X is wrong, that doesn’t mean Y is right.

My background does make me want to scream when some talking head says that were are “so polarized, more than we ever have been.” Really? Perhaps they should read a history book. America has always been polarized. We even fought a war over our polarization back in the 1860s.

When my parents hated Democrats, and Democrats probably hated my parents, they were just being the same kind of abrasive American we have always been.

So I have chosen to be neither an Elephant nor a Donkey, just a stubborn schmuck who listens to both sides.

Let me put that in the fewest possible words:

Every opinion has another set against it.
Learn only one opinion, and you think you know everything.
Learn the other and you find yourself right back to knowing nothing.

As Spock said to Kirk, “The answer probably lies somwhere in the middle.” But where in the middle? That’s the hard part, and it is up to you to figure it out.

That is, unless you want to stamp a Donkey or and Elephant on your forehead and stop thinking altogether.

723. Humanity

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Humanity

When it becomes too lonely to be “I”,
All the “I”s become “we”.
That is the beginning of culture.

Being “we” creates “them”.
That is the beginning of war

There were no blacks until white men created them.
They were just people of a darker complexion
on another continent, going about their lives.

Then they were captured,
bound, transported, and reborn in another land.
Abused, held down, tormented, and therefore feared.

Made into a new people.

It didn’t matter that they came from the Bushveld or Karoo,
The Swahili Coast or the Congo, Kalahari or Natal . . .
White people mashed all the Africans into one lump
and called them n—–.

We don’t use that word any more,
but we use the same thinking.

There were no Indians until the whites arrived.
No Native Americans, either.

(Native Americans!
Named after an arrogant map maker,
instead of a mistake made by an Italian
working for the Spanish
who never did know where he was.)

Before European explorers came
There were Apache and Blackfeet, Cheyenne and Dakota,
Hopi and Kickapoo, Kiowa and Mi’kmaq,
Osage and Paiute, Quapaw and Chippewa.

Hundreds of little groups, at war with one another.
Each the center of their own universe,
until they became one people in the eyes of the Europeans.

But that’s not all.

There were no Whites in Europe, either.
They didn’t become Whites until they reached America.

In Europe they were French and Polish,
Italian and Greek,
Russian and Romanian,
English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish,
Gypsies and Danes.

They hated each other,
They fought with each other, they killed each other.
There was no unity in Europe either.

“Unity” came everywhere
when the little groups became bigger groups,
usually against their will.

It happens on our side,
It happens on their side, too.
And then we fight.

Do we have to wait for the flying saucers to land,
and give us a common enemy?

Will it take that to force humans
to become humanity?

718. History Repeats Itself

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NEWS FLASH

I write these posts far in advance, then polish them repeatedly, which makes it hard to keep up with fast moving news. Two posts were scheduled for today and next week so that they would come one year before the release of a book. That will have to change. I have two things I need to say, so the scheduled posts will both get bumped forward, along with a general reshuffling of the next dozen.

This all started two days ago when I ran into a situation that called for a response to the ongoing war against Iran. It led me to write the post that you will see next week.

Then, three hours later on the same day, the news reported that Trump said he was negotiating with Iran, and Iran said they weren’t negotiating with him.

Really?

History seems to be repeating itself, so now I have to write this post.

I’ve seen this movie before, but not many people have, so let me explain. I grew up in north-eastern Oklahoma, which was the land assigned to the Cherokees. I learned all the cliches then, and later acquainted myself with their actual history.

The Cherokees came from the eastern United States, largely Tennessee and Georgia. During the first half of the 1800’s they lived in cabins not very different from their white neighbors, raised crops in similar ways, held slaves, and intermarried with whites. John Ross, their principal chief, was seven-eighths Scottish.

Nevertheless, their white neighbors wanted their land, and President Jackson wanted them, and most of the other tribes, out of the United States. He offered the Cherokees land across the Mississippi in exchange for their homeland, in an area owned by the United States but not part of any state. It came to be called Indian Territory, and later Oklahoma.

The Cherokees didn’t want to go.

Cherokees were divided in many ways, as human groups usually are. Some were unable to speak English and lived as closely as possible to the old ways. Some were more integrated into the white world.

That exact same sentence could be used to describe their white neighbors, if you slip in the word “proper” just before the word “English”.

There were factions among the Cherokees, with differing responses to the idea of removal. Jackson found a faction he could buy off, signed a treaty with them, then sent the Army to move the entire Cherokee nation whether they agreed with the treaty or not.

That is a lot of history to cram into 220 words, but it is essentially factual, if short on detail.

So what does that have to do with Trump repeating history? He says he  is “negotiating” peace with someone, but won’t say who. We have to guess, while also considering that it might be an outright lie.

It isn’t the Iranian government (unless they are flat out lying), but possibly some disgruntled diplomat, someone who wants out of the war, or someone who can be bought off. Like Jackson with the Cherokees.

So here are the choices we face:

One, Trump is actually negotiating with someone in authority and a treaty will come out of the process. I give that a 1% or less chance of being true.

Two, Trump is actually negotiating with someone who has no authority, and any treaty coming out of the process will be bogus. That is history repeating itself.

Three, there are no real negotiations, just another smoke screen.

The chances of a positive outcome don’t look good.

715. Pettus Bridge, a fable

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Once upon a time, there was a lovely young woman. Unfortunately, she was black, enslaved, and living in Alabama. The year was 1815.

Her owner was just back from fighting beside Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. He was a hero.

His wife didn’t think so. She had been running the plantation all the time he was gone. She hadn’t enjoyed that, but she enjoyed having him home again even less. In bed, he was quick and crude, and after three weeks his wife moved into a different bedroom.

A week later, he found the lovely young black woman in the fields. He ordered her to take off her clothes and lie down on her back in the shade of a tree. Ten minutes later he was on his way again.

Nine months later, the woman gave birth to a beautiful daughter. Nineteen years later, the hero’s son caught the daughter in the fields and did the same thing to her that his father had done to her mother. Nine months later, another lovely black girl-child was born, but now things had changed.

The plantation was failing. The hero’s son had become too fat to chase women, even slave women, and too drunk most of the time to miss the chase. The plantation was sold, the slaves were broken up and scattered. The girl-child stayed with her mother a few years, then was sold to a plantation south of Birmingham. When she turned seventeen, she was sold to a brothel.

When she was twenty-four, she gave birth to twins — but not identicals. One she named Flo; it had been her mother’s name. The other she named Cécile, since the father had been a Frenchman. She thought so, anyway.

The blood of Cécile’s white father, and grandfather, and great grandfather were strong in her makeup. He nose was small, her skin was pale, She would be a great addition to the brothel when she grew up. Flo had inherited the other side of the genetic lottery.

Both would remain slaves. Both were black, Cécile’s white looks notwithstanding, since the doctrine of that day was the one drop of blood was all it took to make you black.

Little Cécile was a favorite of all the men who came to the brothel. When her head was only up to their elbows, she had already learned how to lean against them, smile up at them, and laugh like she didn’t have a care. She earned coins that way and she kept them hidden. She listened to what they talked about as they waited their turn upstairs, and she remembered. She stored everything away in her finely tuned mind and she planned. She learned about Birmingham, but more importantly she learned about Memphis from a traveler who came often. Soon she knew all the street names, where blacks lived, and where they didn’t.

When she was fifteen, she ran away. Two months later, she was in Memphis. Her name was Celia, now. Celia White, because she had a sense of humor. Her name was White, and she was white, because she was intelligent enough to know that that was the only way to survive. Her husband never knew. Her children never knew.

Celia had eight children. Every time a child was born, she was in mortal fear that the child would have dark skin and kinky hair, but it never happened. When one of Celia’s grandsons had a black appearing child, he beat his wife for her infidelity, since the child clearly could not be his. Celia said nothing.

When Celia was 53, her husband moved to Selma, Alabama. Within a year most of the children and grandchildren had followed. Now Celia was only seventeen miles from the town that held the brothel where she had been born. She said nothing.

Celia’s mother was emancipated in 1865, but Celia never contacted her.

Celia had emancipated herself already. While the others traded slavery for Jim Crow, Celia had made herself white. Her emancipation was real, and she had no intention of jeopardizing it.

Celia live to be 71. They buried her in Selma, in a cemetery that black folks couldn’t use — but she did.

She had eight children, forty-seven grandchildren, and one hundred six great-grandchildren. Most of them remained in and around Selma, and many went into law enforcement.

In 1965, Celia would have been 116 if she had lived that long. She never saw her mother again after she ran away from the brothel. She never saw her twin, Flo, either. For most of Celia’s life, Flo was alive and in the area, having children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, just like Celia, but they never met again.

On March 7, 1965 near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Celia’s great-grandchildren, thinking they were white, brutally attacked Flo’s great-grandchildren who knew that they were black and always would be.

Behold, America, clubbing itself to death over the myth of race.

709. Redneck Granny

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Here is my redneck Granny, who died long before the original of this was posted. I’m sure she would hate everything I have said here, but I love her anyway.

Redneck Granny

I started this blog late in 2015. When Black History Month rolled around in 2016, I had a lot to say — enough to fill the month with posts. This, somewhat modified, was one of them.

— << >> —

The first African slaves arrived in America about 400 years ago. If we count twenty-five years as a generation, that’s 16 generations.

Let’s look at the typical American today. He or she had two parents and they had four parents between them, and their parents had eight parents between them. And so forth. Up the line sixteen generations, that’s 32,768 direct ancestors. If you don’t believe me, do the math.

All those ancestors sent DNA down the line to make our average American. What are the chances that not one packet of DNA was out of Africa? What are the chances that there weren’t a lot more than one out of Africa in his/her lineage?

You might think whites didn’t mix with blacks in the olden days, but are you sure? Are you counting all the times when a white man was in charge, and a black woman didn’t have any say in the matter? They wouldn’t even have called it rape in 1619. Nor 1719. Nor 1819. In a lot of places they wouldn’t have called it rape in 1919. 2019 — maybe.

So much for black purity, but that isn’t any big secret. What about white purity?

How white do you have to look to pass for white? Three quarters? Seven eighths? How many generations does that take? Not many.

Now what are the chances that a whitish, black female would claim to be white if she could? Or a whitish, black male? Forget the twenty-first century when African-Americans are proud of what they are. Project your thinking back to when being white meant being free, and being black meant being a slave. Wouldn’t you pass for white, if you could get away with it?

I would. Some of my (and your) ancestors probably did.

More math. Lets say that by 1700 (eighty years into the era of American slavery, thirteen generations ago), one hundred partially negro girls could and did pass for white. That’s not a big number to surmise. In fact, it’s ridiculously small.

Let’s give doubters no excuse for their doubts. Let’s say that these passing girls only averaged two children who went on to have children. That’s certainly a minimal estimation. Their descendants are boys and girls who would disappear into the white gene pool.

That’s 408,000 offspring after 13 generations. Which is to say, in 2025.

Wow. And after a couple of generations, if Mom kept her mouth shut, none of them would know they were passing. They would believe they were white.

That doesn’t cover all the other blacks, male and female, who passed in the last four hundred years. That is only one hundred, starting in 1700. But there weren’t just a hundred, they didn’t start in 1700, and they haven’t stopped to this day.

There is one big change in the twenty-first century. People who are light skinned and could call themselves white, now often identify as black. It’s probably confusing for “white” folks who haven’t thought it through.

I don’t think it confuses “black” folks at all.

If math doesn’t impress you, if you think numbers lie, then 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 Oklahoma relatives just disowned me.

That’s mighty white of them.

— << >> —

This was a modified version of a post from February 3, 2016. If you are wondering why this old “white” guy is so concerned with black identity, it is all a matter of upbringing. In my case, that means being raised on the edge of the South in the fifties in a culture that didn’t exactly hate blacks, but didn’t much like them either. My people fully believed in the separation of the races; the only good black was somebody who lived someplace else.

The problem with the community viewpoint was television. On the six o’clock news I saw black people being washed down the sidewalk by firehoses because they were marching for the right to be human.

They were right. We were wrong. Hardly anybody in my town got that message, but I did.

I escaped to college, where I studied Anthropology and got an extended view of what British imperialism had done to the black and brown people of the world.

Then I studied History, where I found out that English imperialism had been just as harmful to the ruddy-faced and red-haired poor in Scotland and Ireland. I also found out what white America had done to the Native Americans, the Chinese and Japanese immigrants, and even the Irish.

In California, where I now live, white incomers from the east now discriminate against the Latinos, who owned California after they took it away from the California Indians, and before the white east-coast Americans took it away from them.

Over the years I wrote about all of those displaced and disadvantage peoples in my blog and now that has all been gathered together for publication.

Originally I planned to call the book . . .

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

I had kept that provocative phrase in my back pocket for years, but when it came to reality, the title . . .

Your Redneck Granny has a secret

. . . seemed more likely to make a prospective reader curious enough to pick up the book.

I originally wanted to publish it early in 2026, but the five novels of the Menhir Series will take the whole year to release. Instead Redneck Granny is planned for release on January 20, 2027, just about a year from today. Keep it in mind and tell your friends.

704. No Room in the Inn

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No Room in the Inn

[Don’t even expect even-handedness here.]

In English we call him Joseph, in Italian he is Giuseppe, in Basque he is Joseba, in Spanish he is just plain Jose.

In English we call her Mary, in Hebrew she is Miryam, in German she is Maria, and also in Spanish.

In English he is Jesus, in Cornish he is Jesu, in Italian he is Gesu, and in Spanish he is Jesus again, but pronounced Hey-sous.

We are going to walk with these three this Christmas season.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And all went, every one into his own city. And Jose also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be taxed with Maria his espoused wife, being great with child.

Of course that could be written as Joseph and Mary, but surely they are the same couple, in any language. Jose was a carpenter. He built things out of wood to feed his family, and he paid his taxes like everybody else. All the world was to be taxed, and he had to go back to the place from which his people came.

Where would that be today? Perhaps a land with cities named Sacramento for the Holy Sacrament, or maybe Atascadero, Alameda, Camarillo, El Segundo, or Escondido. Perhaps cities like Fresno, La Mesa, Madera, or Mariposa show where his people once lived. Certainly they must have lived in cities like Los Angeles, Merced, Paso Robles, Salinas, or San Francisco. Even if his people no longer own the land, certainly the city named after him, San Jose, must once have belonged to his people.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

I think Luke shortened this a bit. Was there only one inn in Bethlehem? We can see the young couple, going from place to place, Jose leading, Maria on a burro since she cannot walk so late in her pregnancy. Everywhere they are turned away. Are all the sleeping places truly full? It may be. Or perhaps something about the two of them, perhaps the color of their skin, makes the innkeepers turn them away. Luke does not tell us.

I see migrant housing everywhere I go in California and I think, perhaps, a manger was preferable.

Now they are in a place where their people once lived, but to which they are no longer welcome. And here, their son is born.

Donald Trump would call Him an anchor baby. I wonder what He will call Trump, when they finally meet.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

To all people. ALL people. Imagine that!

703. No More Little House

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No More Little House

I wrote the story of Lupe after Donald Trump won in 2016, but before he took office. I presented it in fear of what might happen. I present it again knowing what is happening, now that he is back for a second term.

Ramon came in, stamping the snow from his feet, and shook the snow from his jacket before closing the door. The sun was low in the eastern sky behind him as Lupe moved up and hugged his leg. He smelled of sweat and manure and soured milk, but she didn’t mind. She had hugged him this way every morning for as long as she could remember, and he always smelled the same. For Lupe, the smell was as familiar and welcome as his cold fingers on the top of her head.

Every morning Ramon rose before the sun was up, and left the house. His daughter greeted him when he returned hours later, and saw him off again in the afternoon. She was usually asleep when he came home at night.

It is hard work milking cattle twice a day, and the pay is low. The cattle march in from the muddy lots to take their turns in the stalls, where fast moving men attach the milking machines. The cattle resent the process and the workers have to move quickly to avoid having their hands caught against he stanchions. It goes on for hours, in heat or cold, beginning every morning before daylight, and continuing again every evening until after dark.

Lupe stepped aside to make room for her mother. Today she seemed worried; her voice was unusually sharp as she asked, “What did he say?”

Ramon replied, “I didn’t tell him.”

I translate, of course. Every word was in Spanish.

“You got your money for the week?”

Lupe’s father nodded, “I told him I needed it today, to buy things for Christmas. I was afraid to tell him the truth. He is a good man, but it seemed best that he should not know.”

Lupe’s sister came out of the single bedroom with a cardboard box in her arms, tied up with twine. Lupe looked up with interest. It was not wrapped in paper, but any box is interesting so close to Christmas. Carmella put the box down on the floor and returned a moment later with blankets and bedding, also rolled up and also tied up with twine. Lupe asked what she was doing, but Carmella ignored her.

Her father carried the box and roll of bedding outside. Her mother came out of kitchen with a box of food, and that began a procession of boxes, coming from various parts of the house and out to the car. Lupe’s mother and sister had gathered up their possessions during the pre-dawn, while Lupe slept.

Now Lupe dragged at her mothers leg asking questions, but she was ignored until Carmella pulled her aside and said, “We are going away.”

“Where?”

“I wish I knew Lupita. I wish I knew.”

“But why?”

“It’s only a month until he becomes President. Everyone here knows who we are. We have to go away, somewhere where people don’t know us.”

“But why? I was born here. This is home.”

“So was I, Lupe, but mother and father were not.”

When they pulled out an hour later, Lupe stared back at the little house where she had spent her whole, short life, until it disappeared around a bend. Then she looked out the windshield, past her mother and father’s silent heads. It was a long road, wet with melted snow. Her father would not leave the house tonight before the sun went down and go to the cows. There would be no more money, no more warmth, no more little house. It would be again as it had been, before the job at the cows, before she was born. Lupe knew what that was like from hearing her parents talk. Now it would be like that again.

— << >> —

Is Lupe real? She was born from the hundreds of little Mexican-American girls I taught over twenty-seven years. How many were undocumented? I never knew. I never asked. I didn’t need to know.

Is she real? She is as real as heartache. She is as real as fear. She is as real as dislocation, cold, hunger, and injustice.