As always I'm fascinated by the racial question that dominates the undercurrent in America's socio-politics.
A few years back when my paternal grandmother died, my younger brother was looking to get a sample of her mitocondrialDNA, said there was some test at Howard University (and a few other places) that enable one to determine the global-regional genetic make-up of an individual (my brother wanted my paternal grandmother because everything after her can be accounted for).
My dad wasn't going to allow his mom to be used in a science experiment, so my brother hoped to get some tissue samples from our grandmother's sister (who one recently passed) -- alas that never came to happen.
However, I ran across this article in today's NYTimes
Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think
By BRENT STAPLES
Published: October 31, 2005
People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a "white" name like Brent Staples. One letter writer ridiculed it as "an anchorman's name" and accused me of making it up. For the record, it's a British name - and the one my parents gave me. "Staples" probably arrived in my family's ancestral home in Virginia four centuries ago with the British settlers.
The earliest person with that name we've found - Richard Staples - was hacked to death by Powhatan Indians not far from Jamestown in 1622. The name moved into the 18th century with Virginians like John Staples, a white surveyor who worked in Thomas Jefferson's home county, Albemarle, not far from the area where my family was enslaved.
The black John Staples who married my paternal great-great-grandmother just after Emancipation - and became the stepfather of her children - could easily have been a Staples family slave. The transplanted Britons who had owned both sides of my family had given us more than a preference for British names. They had also given us their DNA. In what was an almost everyday occurrence at the time, my great-great-grandmothers on both sides gave birth to children fathered by white slave masters.
I've known all this for a long time, and was not surprised by the results of a genetic screening performed by DNAPrint Genomics, a company that traces ancestral origins to far-flung parts of the globe. A little more than half of my genetic material came from sub-Saharan Africa - common for people who regard themselves as black - with slightly more than a quarter from Europe.
The result that knocked me off my chair showed that one-fifth of my ancestry is Asian. Poring over the charts and statistics, I said out loud, "This has got to be a mistake."
That's a common response among people who are tested. Ostensibly white people who always thought of themselves as 100 percent European find they have substantial African ancestry. People who regard themselves as black sometimes discover that the African ancestry is a minority portion of their DNA.
These results are forcing people to re-examine the arbitrary calculations our culture uses to decide who is "white" and who is "black."
As with many things racial, this story begins in the slave-era South, where sex among slaves, masters and mistresses got started as soon as the first slave ship sailed into Jamestown Harbor in 1619. By the time of the American Revolution, there was a visible class of light-skinned black people who no longer looked or sounded African. Free mulattos, emancipated by guilt-ridden fathers, may have accounted for up to three-quarters of the tiny free-black population before the Revolution.
By the eve of the Civil War, the swarming numbers of mixed-race slaves on Southern plantations had become a source of constant anguish to planters' wives, who knew quite well where those racially ambiguous children were coming from. This is what I want to know more about. What these so-called Women of the Master Race thought about the power of Negro koochie that had some uncontrolable magnetism. What does the slave master say to his white wife? That it's nothing to worry about, because it's just like fucking a farm animal (don't put this past white people, as indicated in the fantastic book GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL most of our infectious diseases came from white people in Europe living too close to animals and/or having sexual relations with the livestock)! Wouldn't that irreparably shatter the white women's sexual confidence? Or force them to be that much more sexually active? What ever the case, white woman no doubt made up all the lies about black female sexuality
Faced with widespread fear that racial distinctions were losing significance, the South decided to define the problem away. People with any ascertainable black ancestry at all were defined as black under the law and stripped of basic rights. The "one drop" laws defined as black even people who were blond and blue-eyed and appeared white.
Black people snickered among themselves and worked to subvert segregation at every turn. Thanks to white ancestry spread throughout the black community, nearly every family knew of someone born black who successfully passed as white to get access to jobs, housing and public accommodations that were reserved for white people only. Black people who were not quite light enough to slip undetected into white society billed themselves as Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, South Asian, Native American - you name it. Any thing that avoid a social damnation that is attributed with being called "black." These defectors often married into ostensibly white families at a time when interracial marriage was either illegal or socially stigmatized.
Those of us who grew up in the 1950's and 60's read black-owned magazines and newspapers that praised the racial defectors as pioneers while mocking white society for failing to detect them. A comic newspaper column by the poet Langston Hughes - titled "Why Not Fool Our White Folks?" - typified the black community's sense of smugness about knowing the real racial score. In keeping with this history, many black people I know find it funny when supposedly white Americans profess shock at the emergence of blackness in the family tree. But genetic testing holds plenty of surprises for black folks, too.
Which brings me back to my Asian ancestry. It comes as a surprise, given that my family's oral histories contain not a single person who is described as Asian. More testing on other family members should clarify the issue, but for now, I can only guess. This ancestry could well have come through a 19th-century ancestor who was incorrectly described as Indian, often a catchall category at the time.
The test results underscore what anthropologists have said for eons: racial distinctions as applied in this country are social categories and not scientific concepts. In addition, those categories draw hard, sharp distinctions among groups of people who are more alike than they are different. The ultimate point is that none of us really know who we are, ancestrally speaking. All we ever really know is what our parents and grandparents have told us.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Idiot & Fascist
The Chump-in-Chief has spoken again, and once again the worst kind of diarehha has come out.
Prescott's grandson has nominated Judge Sammy Alito to replace Sandra O'Connor. Alito is the kind of backwards thinking Republican thug who, while born '50s, believes that's the best decade of recent American history and that the nation should strive to recaputre those halcyon days.
For some reason the White House press conference today brought back memories of this unholy union:
I hope the Democrats fillibuster this nomination. The big thing is, will the GOP attempt to destroy the right to fillibuster the way they almost did early in the year.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The Olsen Twins of the White Supremacist Set
I gotta tell ya, these girls are living life to the fullest as members of the Paris Hilton generation.
Hitler is being celebrated by some chump-ass white girls, most likely in middle America somewhere; girls who are waiting to get old enough to suck down crystal meth and get dicked down by white dudes (while they secret yearn for the rabid nature of Black dick as it is championed in the music videos) in the backseat of poorly-designed an uncompetitive cars from the Detroit Two.
I feel like vomitting -- on these girls sandaled feet after eating White Castle and Taco Bell.
In November's AMERICAN PHOTO there is an article about photojournalism stories that haven't been shown to America for being too sensitive. One of those stories is about the Klu Ku Klan, and how they are on the rise. In someplaces tripling in size since 9/11.
America's heartland is a joke, the wool has been pulled over their eyes and they don't even know that their way of life, is about to be under attack from peoples that they hate the most - brown and yellow skinned immigrants, who don't know a lick of southern drawl English.
Hitler is being celebrated by some chump-ass white girls, most likely in middle America somewhere; girls who are waiting to get old enough to suck down crystal meth and get dicked down by white dudes (while they secret yearn for the rabid nature of Black dick as it is championed in the music videos) in the backseat of poorly-designed an uncompetitive cars from the Detroit Two.
I feel like vomitting -- on these girls sandaled feet after eating White Castle and Taco Bell.
In November's AMERICAN PHOTO there is an article about photojournalism stories that haven't been shown to America for being too sensitive. One of those stories is about the Klu Ku Klan, and how they are on the rise. In someplaces tripling in size since 9/11.
America's heartland is a joke, the wool has been pulled over their eyes and they don't even know that their way of life, is about to be under attack from peoples that they hate the most - brown and yellow skinned immigrants, who don't know a lick of southern drawl English.
The Original King of Cronyism
Yeah, I swiped this entry's title from a goof name on last night's REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER (his guests were Spike Lee, Tucker Carlson, Michel Michaels, Chris Webber and Arianna Huffington).
Much to my delight ramrod Tom Delay was fingerprinted and photographer like the common criminals he hates this week. Unfortunatley he was released on bond (I wonder how much that was?), so he wouldn't have to suffer any more indiginity and share jail cell with some Mexicans and Blacks -- waiting to bend him over and fuck his ass, the way he's been doing it to the ever-dwindling middle class and poor since he was in short pants.
There is this claim by Delay's people that the venue of his embarrassment needs to be changed, because the overseeing judge is a sympathizer with MoveOn.org, that watchdog group that sticks it to the ass of each and every Right Wing Fuck that gets some shady soft money behind him.
What's really crazy is that the GOP changed the rules of conduct and perhaps the definition of "breaking the law" when it comes to their jack-booted, stuffed shirts up on Capital Hill and in the White House. Must I recall that fact that Bill Clinton was villified like he sold state secrets just for squirting nut on an LA dilletante's dress and face, and stimulating her labia with a Monte Cristo cigar.
What the GOP leadership and Presidential advisors are being accused of should have them all drummed out of Washington in leg irons; ranging from Karl Rove's bitch-ass activities to Trent Lott's impunging Blacks to Prescott's Grandson sitting on his ass as he cuts taxes so he can accelerate the spiraling federal deficit -- when these guys ride off into the sunset like some banditos in a Sergio Leone western in January of 2009, the country will be slip-sliding into complete debasement. Yet all these supremem fucks will have fatter than fat bank accounts (chock full of Euros, Yen and Chinese Yuan in overseas banks), while the rest of you wonder why the heartland is being consumed by crystal meth.
I'll be watching from afar, shaking my head in disgust.
Much to my delight ramrod Tom Delay was fingerprinted and photographer like the common criminals he hates this week. Unfortunatley he was released on bond (I wonder how much that was?), so he wouldn't have to suffer any more indiginity and share jail cell with some Mexicans and Blacks -- waiting to bend him over and fuck his ass, the way he's been doing it to the ever-dwindling middle class and poor since he was in short pants.
There is this claim by Delay's people that the venue of his embarrassment needs to be changed, because the overseeing judge is a sympathizer with MoveOn.org, that watchdog group that sticks it to the ass of each and every Right Wing Fuck that gets some shady soft money behind him.
What's really crazy is that the GOP changed the rules of conduct and perhaps the definition of "breaking the law" when it comes to their jack-booted, stuffed shirts up on Capital Hill and in the White House. Must I recall that fact that Bill Clinton was villified like he sold state secrets just for squirting nut on an LA dilletante's dress and face, and stimulating her labia with a Monte Cristo cigar.
What the GOP leadership and Presidential advisors are being accused of should have them all drummed out of Washington in leg irons; ranging from Karl Rove's bitch-ass activities to Trent Lott's impunging Blacks to Prescott's Grandson sitting on his ass as he cuts taxes so he can accelerate the spiraling federal deficit -- when these guys ride off into the sunset like some banditos in a Sergio Leone western in January of 2009, the country will be slip-sliding into complete debasement. Yet all these supremem fucks will have fatter than fat bank accounts (chock full of Euros, Yen and Chinese Yuan in overseas banks), while the rest of you wonder why the heartland is being consumed by crystal meth.
I'll be watching from afar, shaking my head in disgust.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Supremors
Apparently Harriet Miers' written questions to the Senate Judiciary Committee were handed back because the answers were insulting, insufficient and all-together bitch-ass.
I hope this woman gets recalled the way Bork did, just to give Prescott's grandson a slap in the face. He sure needs someone or something to kick him while he's down.
I hope this woman gets recalled the way Bork did, just to give Prescott's grandson a slap in the face. He sure needs someone or something to kick him while he's down.
Strongman gets the Strong Arm!
Our favorite dictator Saddam Hussein started his FIRST of many trials today. He was his defiant self, glad to see that year of captivity hasn't diminished his spirits -- otherwise the trails wouldn't be that much fun (look at Slobodan Milosevic's boring shit in The Hague... can't have that with your boy!).
Saddam was shoving his guards away when they escorted him from the court, and damn near punked the judge.
Meanwhile, in Mr. Hussein's home town of Tikrit crowds gathered to show support for their former leader, chanting such slogans as "You are still the son of Iraq." They appeared to be in a frenzy, waving Iraqi flags and photos of Mr. Hussein. Iraqi police officers, wearing blue uniforms and carrying Kalashnikovs, walked through the crowds but did not appear anxious to break up the demonstration.
No that's the reason why Iraq just needs to disintegrate and we can forget about it. The oil field regions need to be autonomous zones controlled by the G8, so they can get their oil and refuse to make the drastic changes necessary to wean the Western economies off of oil for energy (it's gotta be saved for all the consumer products that eat the fuck up, since plastic is quite difficult to recycle -- which should be the number R&D Dollar Get'er).
I guess is Saddam gets all these accolades and plaudits from his hometown, then he still much loved. I wonder if Hitler was much-loved after the War or Stalin or Pol Pot or Pinochet? Or George H.W. Bush? I know Reagan was - for crying out loud.
Saddam was shoving his guards away when they escorted him from the court, and damn near punked the judge.
Meanwhile, in Mr. Hussein's home town of Tikrit crowds gathered to show support for their former leader, chanting such slogans as "You are still the son of Iraq." They appeared to be in a frenzy, waving Iraqi flags and photos of Mr. Hussein. Iraqi police officers, wearing blue uniforms and carrying Kalashnikovs, walked through the crowds but did not appear anxious to break up the demonstration.
No that's the reason why Iraq just needs to disintegrate and we can forget about it. The oil field regions need to be autonomous zones controlled by the G8, so they can get their oil and refuse to make the drastic changes necessary to wean the Western economies off of oil for energy (it's gotta be saved for all the consumer products that eat the fuck up, since plastic is quite difficult to recycle -- which should be the number R&D Dollar Get'er).
I guess is Saddam gets all these accolades and plaudits from his hometown, then he still much loved. I wonder if Hitler was much-loved after the War or Stalin or Pol Pot or Pinochet? Or George H.W. Bush? I know Reagan was - for crying out loud.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
State become Church
Wow, the chump-in-chief is really looking to push this country into something we haven't seen in a quite awhile a fundamentalist Christian state with the ability to shape the world.
This woman Harriet Mier is a scary person to even consider to have a Supremor, because her views don't reflect what the country was founded on a strict seperation of Church and State. She was baptized at the Valley View Christian Church. And apparantly, it was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Chump and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.
Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.
That's because being a Democrat, for some strange reason, means that you can't have belief in God, that you fuck children in the ass and squirt nut in the eyes of women, or twist mens balls when your having sex.
yeah, that's how the GOP really see Democrats.
And there's really nothing the public can do about preventing someone so polarizing from doing what the GOP complains about the most - legislating from the bench!
Damn, we're fucked. We you're fucked, I'm getting out.
This woman Harriet Mier is a scary person to even consider to have a Supremor, because her views don't reflect what the country was founded on a strict seperation of Church and State. She was baptized at the Valley View Christian Church. And apparantly, it was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Chump and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.
Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.
That's because being a Democrat, for some strange reason, means that you can't have belief in God, that you fuck children in the ass and squirt nut in the eyes of women, or twist mens balls when your having sex.
yeah, that's how the GOP really see Democrats.
And there's really nothing the public can do about preventing someone so polarizing from doing what the GOP complains about the most - legislating from the bench!
Damn, we're fucked. We you're fucked, I'm getting out.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Bush with Clean Hands
L.A. is perhaps the most geographically segerated city in the US, if not the world.
The city planners knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they errected the freeway systems and said (under their breath) put all the niggers and spics on the OUTSIDE boundaries of the freeways.
I was just listening to an interview of David LaChappelle about his film RISE, and his trip down to the oppresive neighborhood that is ignored by the entire establishment and community.
It's like 45 minutes from central Hollywood, but it's another world.
You can't even really get a healthy meal in South Central, 'cause only liquor stores and 7-11s and shitbag fast food joints litter the landscape which is fucked up...
All these people who are going to Southeast Asia or Africa to see "another part of the world" go check out South Central L.A.
And what's crazy is, South Central is probably where the most life and vibrancy in the entire city. Whereas in Beverly Hills and the Westside is a movie set for a story on childhood alienation...
South Central isn't even the kind of ghetto that is depicted in the media. It's not the burned out buildings of Detroit, Cleveland or New York... all the blue skies trick the fuck out of you.
But what seeps in is the vacant nature of the entire environment. The worst thing is that there IS NOTHING for the Blacks down in South Central, no after school programs, nothing but desolation. I wonder if this another varient of the Mad Max scenario that I see on the rise.
Of course, our chump-in-chief ain't doing shit about shit. I heard that the fool doesn't even read newspapers or watch TV or eventhing that gives a potential unadulterated image.
The city planners knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they errected the freeway systems and said (under their breath) put all the niggers and spics on the OUTSIDE boundaries of the freeways.
I was just listening to an interview of David LaChappelle about his film RISE, and his trip down to the oppresive neighborhood that is ignored by the entire establishment and community.
It's like 45 minutes from central Hollywood, but it's another world.
You can't even really get a healthy meal in South Central, 'cause only liquor stores and 7-11s and shitbag fast food joints litter the landscape which is fucked up...
All these people who are going to Southeast Asia or Africa to see "another part of the world" go check out South Central L.A.
And what's crazy is, South Central is probably where the most life and vibrancy in the entire city. Whereas in Beverly Hills and the Westside is a movie set for a story on childhood alienation...
South Central isn't even the kind of ghetto that is depicted in the media. It's not the burned out buildings of Detroit, Cleveland or New York... all the blue skies trick the fuck out of you.
But what seeps in is the vacant nature of the entire environment. The worst thing is that there IS NOTHING for the Blacks down in South Central, no after school programs, nothing but desolation. I wonder if this another varient of the Mad Max scenario that I see on the rise.
Of course, our chump-in-chief ain't doing shit about shit. I heard that the fool doesn't even read newspapers or watch TV or eventhing that gives a potential unadulterated image.
Slop Words For What We Love
Ever notice how there are uncomfortable words for things that we just LOVE. Take vagina for example, I'm reading this comic book today (Ex Machina #13) and at the end of the book a guy takes an old woman hostage, pulls a knife and tells the mayor, "back off, or I cut this bag from her dentures to her dick-slot!"
Dick-slot? I had never heard of that. You all know my favorite, "cumdumpter," but I
Dick-slot? I had never heard of that. You all know my favorite, "cumdumpter," but I
Take What You Can When You Can
I never knew how much Black people twist in the wind in this country. The more I think about it, the more I look at the Katrina Disaster and wonder what's going to happen to Blacks when the economies really begin to crumble?
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