Posted on 10/19/2009 6:34:50 PM PDT by presidio9
Art always moves faster and more comprehensively than politics or technology. The recent DNA revelation that Michelle Obama has a redneck in the woodpile from which her family was built would only shock those who have never read William Faulkner. The Mississippi genius may have been an occasional redneck himself, but he was also our greatest novelist since Herman Melville.
Part of Faulkner's genius was expressed in the many ways he addressed an understandable obsession with color and color relationships in public and private. This was because he spent most of his life in the state that inspired Nina Simone to write the 1964 song "Mississippi Goddam." That song, written in response to the murder of Medgar Evers, acknowledged the seething racism that was only barely concealed beneath the skin of the white population.
But Faulkner knew well what almost all American Negroes and white Southerners once knew. Ours is a country in which it is veritably impossible to know exactly where your genealogical tree has been watered - no matter how a person might look, even "light, bright, or damn near white," as they used to say.
Melville knew that in many ways when he published "The Confidence Man" way back in 1857. Someone who looks black and crippled may in fact be wearing blackface in order to run a con job.
In "Huckleberry Finn," we see the roots of the resentment toward Barack Obama in the animosity that Huck's father feels toward a free, Ohio Negro who is obviously partially white, dresses well, is so sophisticated that he speaks more than one language, and, by all rights, should be snatched and put up on the auction block and sold into slavery!
When I was a boy in Los Angeles, a family from Oklahoma moved in across the street. The parents had gold teeth, were portly, down-home and dignified - but had children who broke every law I had been taught in science class about dominant and recessive genes.
Each one of their children looked quite different from the others, and from their mother and father. Junie, the oldest, was as dark as one of our handsomest men, foot ball's Michael Vick, but did not look half as good, which made no difference to his popularity with girls. Junie had a gift of gab and seemed to have been a weightlifter when he would never lift anything heavier than a teaspoon if he had the choice.
His first younger brother, Bruce, had red hair, green eyes and was a long drink of water and a lover of baseball who had little time for the opposite sex.
The third child was Ray, a good all-around athlete who was especially good at fencing (we fought on the rooftops whenever we could get to the top of one). Ray was as black as the ace of spades and a mortal enemy over whose head I broke a nice piece of wood because of the brutal way he was beating up Little Bud, a much smaller kid who had stolen some of his pigeons. I had to pay for that later but there are just some whippings that you have to take if you choose to make certain decisions.
Sarah Jane, the next child, was about the color of a sweet tan wafer, of medium female height and pretty much of a bookworm on the lookout for a boy with whom she could discuss her love of Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. The last was a long and pretty girl we then called a "red bone" because of her extremely light skin, her dark woolly blond hair, endless freckles, and other attributes too fine to discuss here. I think her name was Lillie Mae.
None of this was unusual. Reunions of families rooted in slavery are usually full up with all of those kinds of variations. That is one of the grand beauties of American life. Some of us, no matter our skin tones, carry variations on the entire species in our blood and our features.
With the celebratory "People in Me," jazz singer Abbey Lincoln saluted her epic ethnic heritage. It is something we should neither be ashamed of nor spend too much time whining about, because the history of the world is melding. My own line has African, Asian, Choctaw and Irish. All American.
For good or for bad, for love or because of imposed power, something is inevitable: Men and women will get intimately involved. Whether their descendants get it all together is another issue. That is what we are learning right now.
All is possible.
And what planet is this guy from?
It doesn’t matter if you think the White House policies are bad.
The only thing that matters is that if you disagree, you are racist.
This is a losing strategy. It worked at one time, and beating people over the head for 40+ years is no longer viable in the present.
Birth of a Nation
Was there a point to this?
This sounds like something written after two bongs and a half bottle of tequila.
Stanley Crouch
I once told a Black guy, who was selling advertising with me for the school paper:
“You know, sometimes I wish I was Black. Then when people tell me “no” on a sales call, or job interview, I would not have to blame it on my poor delivery, my bad attitude, my beer breath or the fact that someone else actually had a better product or a better resume!”
Honestly, the business folks I know bend over backwards when any young person, ESPECIALLY a minority, proves that they want to work.
Our President, and many of his supporters, often remind me of that co-worker, years ago.
“Race” only “cripples” those who insist on using race as a crutch.
That goes for Whites and Blacks and Hispanics and Asians.
If everyone reading this article got a genetic analysis of their ancestors, they would see how much of their DNA heritage comes from folks they didn’t expect. What was the statistic? If a branch of your family has been in the US for more than 150, you have a 25% of having African bloodlines, and a 10% chance of having Native American.
If you are presently classified as “black,” you know that you have “white” forbears back there somewhere. It’s just the way that history is in this nation - there’s at least 400 years of racial intermingling in this national endeavor.
Of course, ultimately it shouldn’t matter. We are all Americans.
Stanley Crouch (born December 14, 1945, Los Angeles) is an African-American music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and novelist, perhaps best known for his jazz criticism, and his novel Don’t the Moon Look Lonesome?
Crouch was fired from JazzTimes following his controversial article “Putting the White Man in Charge”, in which he asserted that white critics elevate white jazz musicians beyond their abilities.
Crouch was invited to a panel of judges for the PEN/Newman’s Own Award, a $25,000 award designed to protect speech as it applies to the written word.
In 2005, he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. The fellowship program is directed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University.
So he’s saying it’s Mark Twain’s fault? LMAO!! Laughing at the idiot so hard I’m snorting.
I am sure there are some genuine white racists who hate Obama. How many times do we have to say that our opposition to Obama is not based on his Kenyan dad, but on his policies? How many times do we have to say it? Even Carville’s study indicated that the opposition to Obama was not based on his race.
This writer has engaged in nearly every negative black-on-black stereotype that I’m aware, except Uncle Tom.
From his writing, such as it is, I guess he’s rather more fond of pre-Civil War, condescending stereotypes penned by a black female author, than he is of the post-Civil War upending of those very stereotypes, penned by a white male author.
No doubt he considers himself enlightened. I’d hate to hear what he has to say outside of mixed company, though.
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will be filed..... |
Okay - glad it wasn’t just me. Reminded me of reading my kids’ book reports from years ago. Lots of detail but obscure if you did not know the book, meandering, and no real point to the whole thing.
Thank goodness you said that. I thought my mind had ceased to understand English. The only language I know.
“For good or for bad, for love or because of imposed power, something is inevitable: Men and women will get intimately involved. Whether their descendants get it all together is another issue. That is what we are learning right now.”
There is so much truth in that. Of course, the descendants would stand a better chance of getting it together if there were no agitators telling them what they should think or who they should hate.
I would also remark that while some liberals are able to get over the use of the "n-word" and say they appreciate Mark Twain, Conservatives seem to get him on a much deeper level.
Bear in mind, when liberals try to claim Twain as one of their own, that Twain was a Republican who voted for Lincoln. Lincoln quoted Twain in his second inaugural address, and Twain returned the praise in print. Shortly thereafter, Lincoln was assassinated.
Actually, if you accept the hypothesis that man came from Africa, that means that we all have “black” DNA.
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