Black/white sex is nothing novel

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 12/22/03 | Cynthia Tucker

[Holly_P]

Because though men, white men, created her, God did not stop it. He planted the seed which brought her to flower -- the white blood to give the shape and pigment of what the white man calls female beauty, to a female principle which existed, queenly and complete, in the hot equatorial groin of the world long before that white one of ours came down from trees and lost its hair and bleached out . . .

-- "Absalom, Absalom" by William Faulkner

It is the feigned surprise that vexes me most -- the stunned silence, the equivocation, the angry denials that followed the revelation that Strom Thurmond had bedded a black maid and fathered a black child. South Carolina state Sen. John Courson, who huffed, "This is ludicrous," and U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, who called the revelation "unseemly," have a distinct affection for dishonesty.

Miscegenation is as Southern as slavery and more intricately woven into the fabric of Southern culture than the Confederate flag, shotguns or NASCAR. If you didn't know that -- well, you must not be from around here.

When 78-year-old Essie Mae Washington-Williams stood before a microphone at the Adam's Mark hotel in Columbia, S.C., last Wednesday and began her story -- "My father's name was James Strom Thurmond" -- she confirmed the worst-kept secret in recent South Carolina political history. Despite Thurmond's repeated lies, most of her contemporaries -- and his -- already knew.

Not that Thurmond's denials were ever really meant to conceal anything; he was just keeping faith with the social conventions of his time. Even while keeping up (barely) the public facade, he sent his daughter money, visited her not-so-secretly and exchanged cards and letters. Her college classmates at all-black South Carolina State remember that then-Gov. Thurmond would arrive in his official car and spend an hour or so speaking privately with her.

Any hypocrisy in his ringing 1948 denunciation of the civil rights movement -- "There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches" -- was common enough. White men had integrated bedrooms centuries before.

What about it? . . . It can be put aside, no one will anymore dare bring it up than any other prank of a young man in his wild youth. And as for the child, all right. Didn't my own father begat one?

-- "Absalom, Absalom"

For all the denunciation and denials, Thurmond's duplicity required assistance from family and staff, so several people must have at least suspected the relationship. Family members helped to relay funds to Washington-Williams. When she visited the senator in Washington, she said, his secretary handled travel arrangements. Given that written accounts as early as 1968 suggested a biracial daughter, Thurmond's staff either knew or was, shall we say, deliberately ignorant.

If there is any real news here, it lies in the uncommon dignity with which Washington-Williams has conducted herself. A retired Los Angeles school teacher, she guarded Thurmond's secret all these years, saying she was "sensitive about his well-being, his career and his family."

"I never wanted to do anything to harm him," she said.

Imagine that. All the time that Thurmond worked assiduously to guarantee that law and custom would continue to harm her and her children, she protected him. It just goes to show you a child can rise above vile parentage.

. . . Though nobody ever did know if Bon ever knew Sutpen was his father or not . . . [he] only later succumbed to the current of retribution and fatality which Miss Rosa said Sutpen had started and had doomed all his blood to, black and white both.

-- "Absalom, Absalom"

In Faulkner's masterpiece, the white plantation owner Thomas Sutpen meets the end he deserves when he is brought to ruin by a black son, Charles Bon, he had abandoned.

But real life rarely brings such poetic justice. Strom Thurmond did not get what he deserved. He fathered a daughter much too good for him.

[steplock]

If there is any real news here, it lies in the uncommon dignity with which Washington-Williams has conducted herself. A retired Los Angeles school teacher, she guarded Thurmond's secret all these years, saying she was "sensitive about his well-being, his career and his family."

"If there is any real news here..." is the truth. There IS no news here - at least none worth more than the gossip-mongers whose prime directive is to destroy people.

[SF Republican]

whose prime directive is to destroy people whom is being destroyed?

[catpuppy]

Cheap shot by Cynthia who almost never misses the opportunity to fan the flames. If only she had the class and dignity of Strom's daughter ...

[AD from SpringBay]

I think Trent Lott needs to apologize.

[cyborg]

If you ask me, I think the liberals are talking way too much about this. Maybe they're amazed that is such a nonstory. In they haven't noticed there are white men married to black ladies, asian ladies, etc. This is 2003 and no one really cares except liberals.

Get a life libs. This is christmas. Have some spiked egg nogg. Maybe that will shut you up.

[familyofman]

"If only she had the class and dignity of Strom's daughter ..."

If only Strom had had the class and dignity of his daughter.

[SouthernFreebird]

All ths talk is more than likely the very reason they kept this a secret.

[ckilmer]

Charles Lindburg had a second family in Germany that were kept secret until long after his death.

[cyborg]

Honey please send your egyptian armies to zot all the liberals please.

[Arkinsaw]

The venom being generated against Strom Thurmond on this is amusing.

These authors seem to know nothing about Southern politics and racial relations in the middle of the 20th century and think that quoting a little Faulkner will make it all clear.

At least that is how it seems. But the authors actually know better. Strom just happens to be the guy who switched to the Republican Party. So it is convenient to portray him as the embodiment of Republican evil in the South in order to churn up a few more minority votes.

We won't hear that the Party in charge of the entire rotten structure was the Democratic Party. We won't hear about Orval Faubus, who attended an essentially communist school and whose father was a Wobbly with communist leanings. We won't hear that the overseer of successful integration in Arkansas was Republican reformer Winthrop Rockefeller.

Strom Thurmond's daughter is a nice, honorable lady and the press is using her vilely to attack a man she cared about and who obviously cared about her. Thurmond can and should be attacked for his early political stances on race, but it is below the belt to use this nice lady's relationship with her father for these attacks.

They should stick to what Thurmond said in his early political career, which is plenty enough for their purposes, and lay off her.

[cyborg]

Author: biogardener
Date: August 6, 2003 9:29 PM
Subject: maybe idea for an article
Some news about Charles Lindbergh has just appeared in Germany, and I heard it on the news from Germany, "Deutsche Welle," last weel. We get to hear that newscast every day in Canada's only daily German radio program here in Winnipeg.
I had always known that Lindbergh was a Nazi supporter, but I did not know about his other more serious connection to Germany. Turns out that he lived a double life and had another wife, probably common-law, and children in Germany. His German family kept the matter quiet until the death of the woman. She has died and the children have decided to make their parentage public.

The American news media have not yet picked up on the story. It is not going to do anything to endear their hero to American women.

[E Rocc]

Halle Berry:

has a white mother and a black father.

-Eric

[cyborg]

Now that Saddam is caught it's a slow news day. Besides with yankees leaving here in droves raving about how friendly everyone is in the South, how warm it is in the South, and all that, they haven't had legitimate reasons for South bashing in forty years.

[cyborg]

No all liberals love to do is talk about twisted relationships that mirror their own pathetic lives. They didn't know what to make of Tiger Woods who snubbed Clinton and Jesse Jackson.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Black/white sex is nothing novel

You're right. It's a Pam Grier movie. :)

[Eccl 10:2]

I see this whole story as symbolic of racial relations in the US in the 20th century:

Democrats screwing black people and lying about it

Democrats throwing them enough money and favors to keep them quiet

Democrats, realizing what ugly dinosaurs they are, morphing into Southern conservatives

Southern conservatives working in favor of blacks

The truth coming out

[KellyAdmirer]

I can only imagine that people using this as a thinly veiled way to attack a dead man is the reason the family kept this quiet for so long in the first place. From the sound of it, you'd think that Strom Thurmond, a hero of Normandy and one of the most popular men of his time, kept a hundred slaves chained up in his backyard until his death.

[ThreeYearLurker]

How could you ever possibly out-Mandingo Mandingo?