Posted on 09/23/2006 4:24:32 PM PDT by flowerplough
After two years of digging and testing, Alternet.org contributing columnist Christopher Rabb discovered that there is more to a person's heritage than their ancestry.
In order to learn more about his black ancestors, Rabb and his family began a series of DNA tests, which unveiled several things he found troubling.
"I quickly realized that the more intently I sought to learn about my black ancestors, the more I would have to research the white people who owned them," he says. "A notable subset of the slave owners were also my ancestors."
Rabb discovered that some of his slave ancestors had been raped by their owners. While he always suspected this, testing and digging into his family's past confirmed it. It was not an easy fact to come to terms with.
(Excerpt) Read more at diversityinc.com ...
Goodness, Gracious, sheeat happened to a bunch of folks, way back then, wasn't my fault, it happened to my folks too.
Rabb, why don't you take my sympathy, and five bucks, to Starbucks, and trade it for a cup of coffee?
Whatever happened before my time, I have a strong and glorius daughter, and a strong and glorius grandson, and my son in law ain't so bad, either. I hope it is because I passed on my best, and tried not to be limited by my failures.
How can a slave consent to have sex with his master absent coercion, if only implicit?
Us whites have to face up to the fact that racism will never end until we no longer exist to continue the practice and keep alive the memory of those before us who must never rest.
DNA Tests Help Uncover Forgotten History ("slave ancestors had been raped by their owners")
Many tribes raped the other tribe's women and then sold them off if they didn't kill them.
Happens today, so what has changed regarding Africa the last 500 years?
At least I should write an article about it just for the attention.
House slaves, vice field slaves. Upstairs house slaves vice other house slaves.
I've come to the conclusion that almost no slaves were well treated.
If a male owner was sleeping with his female slaves, the wife was viciously jealous and took it out on the slaves. Slaves generally lived in hovels with no locks, the few possessions owned had to be carried to prevent theft.
All of the original colonies had slaves. Illinois put slavery to a vote in the early 1800s, it did fail but there were slaves in Illinois. Ohio and Indiana turned a blind eye to slavery, as did almost every other state prior to the war, even Wisconsin and Michigan. I didn't realize this until recently, I did some digging in newspapers and books.
A slave had no standing to consent or object to anything, any more than a child. Mistreatment was counterproductive but the issues were power and social rank. Slaves were beaten senseless for small offenses and were fed scraps they found for themselves. Horses got better treatment.
It was an awful institution.
His claim of rape is likely just militant boilerplate; he fails to elaborate upon his inflammatory claim. If he is absolutely sure that his caucasian ancestry was the direct result of an act of rape, which would have to have been perpetrated by a caucasian male, then he has had DNA testing done, and will know pretty well when and where, as well as the early ancestral origin for this male. So, does the author possess a caucasian haplotype or an African one? How about mtDNA, on the maternal side?
The lighter the skin the more a slave was worth and the better job was had on the plantation. Sleepin' in the Massa's bed was much of a lot better than workin the Massa's fields.
It was a strange thing. Southern woman were expected to dislike sex. They only had sex when they were going to conceive. Quite often married men became more attached to their slave women than they were to their own wives.
It was also quite common for a young man to be given a slave girl when he was 15 or 16. It was fairly common to stay with that slave girl most of his life.
My great, great, great, great, grandmother wrote to her daughter in Ohio, when my Great Great Grandfather was sent to Virginia to school. He was about 15 at the time.
My great great great Grandmother was told not to worry about her son getting into trouble with Young Ladies...He had been given a slave girl to take care of his "needs".
I remember thinking that when I was sent away to school that I had been born 150 years too late.
If you look at my last name, you will note that some of our black family .. took the same last name as mine. That was common for slaves. Slaves had no last names... at least not that they knew. Slaves if they were mistreated would not likely take the name of their former owner.
I often felt it might be fun to just claim I was black.. And if challenged ask if they wanted to compare my DNA with my cousin Moses.
I wonder if he wishes that his ancestors had remained in Africa, which would have made it highly likely that he would be living with abject poverty, squalor, disease, and senseless violence today.
> I would bet that Most blacks probably 80% who have slave ancesters have some white blood in them <
And don't forget contributions from the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Catawba. I'll bet the percentage of Amerindian genes among today's African-Americans approaches the share of "Causcasian" DNA.
I believe Thomas Sowell wrote a book in which he stated that they're were also around 5000 blacks who were also slave owners in the USA. Funny how the left has selective amnesia.
While your ancestor may have volunteered, the GAR wasn't an all-volunteer army.
Actually, the Grand Army of the Republic wasn't an "Army" at all.
The G.A.R. was a post-war fraternal organization founded in 1866 whose membership required being an honorably discharged Union veteran who had served between April 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865.
The G.A.R. was the post-Civil War era equivalent of the American Legion.
Good point!
*He had been given a slave girl to take care of his "needs".*
That slave girl had no choice in the matter. You don't think she had her own "needs" and feelings? Like her own family and husband? Picture your daughter in that girl's place. What you describe is evil.
The idea of southern women as sexless is a canard. It wasn't true at all.
WTF are you babbling about?
A 15 year old slave girl would be in no position to say no to their master. Call it non-consensual sex if not out and out rape, but sex between a slave and her master was always a coercive situation.
Yup, it was.
And we ended it.
You'd almost never know that if you got your news from the democrat party who were the ones who fought tooth and nail to keep it going.
I hate to burst this boy's bubble because he's on a roll but I had an ancestor who was an indentured servant from Ireland. She was "raped" (if “all sex is rape” as the NOW nags claim) by the son of a major textile mill owner in Massachusetts. They didn't want their son marrying a lowlife, Irish indentured servant so they sent her off to a convent in Rhode Island to have my great great-grandmother.
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