Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Any advantages that some received would have been gone within one generation had it not been for hard work. And many others were given nothing and worked hard to create their successes.
I truly resent the implication that light skin translated into upper class status.
I have now officially vowed to never again call myself Black or African American (God, I hate that term) again. I could say I'm Black and European, or colored (non-white) but I am through saying I'm black and now realize I should never have identified as black.
I'm half Black American, half Italian...okay, my black father was 1/4 Cherokee and 1/8th English, but he's pretty dark. My mother was as Italian as Al Capone. My grand parents were fresh off the boat Italian, from Catania, in Sicily. We had the traditional seven fishes every Christmas and I was fed Italian wine when I was like twelve and my grandfather would play opera records while he worked around his house and I was raised Catholic. My father was black, and I spent a lot of time with my black family too.
Anyway, I was at a bar with some folks the other day and I mentioned that I always wanted to learn Italian, which I never picked up from my relatives and I said I always wanted to know my family's mother tongue. Well, a black guy overheard and gave me the look of death, but didn't say anything. I asked him what his problem was and the SAME F^^^^ fight that I've had numerous times with black people broke out. He said, and I quote, "n^^^^a, you know you ain't no damn Italian! What, you gotta problem being black?"
My chums at the bar were quite loud in their rebuttals, and the outnumbered black fellow made that hiss sound and walked away.
I've gotten this SO DAMN MUCH. Black folks, insisting I call myself black exclusively and ignore the dominate part of my DNA (My mother was all Italian, my father was not all black, hence, genetically, I'm mostly Italian) They give me this reaction of contempt and anger if I so much as acknowledge my other side.
And then, they even seem to get mad at me for the crime of being alive. Some pure black Americans look at me with hatred when they hear me talk. It's like they're afraid I'm going to pollute their Afro-Aryan gene pool, being this brown skinned fellow who has the nerve to speak proper English.
And spare me...SPARE ME that "one drop rule" crap. That was the law once upon a time, yes...but it was also against the law for anyone with black blood to learn to read, does that mean I should never go back to school? How much should I care about what some long dead bigot thinks?
Or, they say "if this was back in the day, you would be enslaved by the white man." Yes...and if I was in Haiti right after the revolution, the blacks would have gladly lopped my head off. If I was in South Africa RIGHT NOW I would be treated like dirt by the black majority who discriminate against the mixed-race coloureds. So, I shouldn't identify with a group that wants to oppress me...unless that group is the blacks, then it's okay if I identify with the oppressor.
And I don't identify as only white either, but the more I think about it...why should I be ashamed for having white blood? If I called myself black exclusively, as many mulattoes do, wouldn't being ashamed being exactly what I'm doing? I mean, if a mixed person said "I'm white" despite being light brown, people would think they're ashamed of having black blood. But, if they say "I'm black," no one thinks it's because they're ashamed of having white blood.
And the funniest part is, I've met so many people from Italy, and none of them had a problem with me being black and Italian. I say I want to learn Italian, and they think I mean right then and there and they try to teach me some words. They never seem to have any problem with a mixed race Italian...but "my brothers?" The minute they find out I am mixed and am not afraid to admit it they have problems.
As none-PC as it may be to say, in my lifetime I have found that blacks are twice as racist as whites when it comes to this. I got beaten up as a kid by the pure blacks who hated me for having lighter skin and clearly Italian features (strong cheek bones, dark under my eyes, shorter statue etc)
It was never a member of the KKK or a skinhead who chased me around calling me the "N word" and trying to kick my butt, it was the black kids who did just that. Plus, I'm not culturally ghetto, so it was even worse...
...look at it this way: a white kid wearing a T-shirt of a heavy metal band walks past some black ghetto kids. They wouldn't do anything...but a mulatto kid in a T-shirt for a heavy metal band walks past the same black thugs, and they are going to attack him for listening to "white music." I know because I WAS that mulatto kid.
I mean, is a white guy betraying his race if he prefers rap to blue grass music? No, and hardly no white people would give him any problems. But if a person of black origin, part or full, hates rap and likes heavy metal and rock? All of a sudden he's "acting white" and he's a traitor.
First of all, listening to Jimmy Hendrix as opposed to Kenya West is hardly "acting white" and second, I am half white! So I should never listen to music or experience the culture of the other side of me? (again, I should be ashamed of having white blood, and no one has a problem with that)
And yes, I hate rap...if no one is singing, playing an instrument, or composing, IT ISN'T MUSIC! I would much rather listen to rock, metal, electronic music or classical. But because that is not "orthodox Negroid thought" and it is bad enough that I am breathing while mixed and not a pure Afro-Aryan, I am a target for so many racist blacks.
I have nothing against black people, or my black blood. But, if I call myself black, I would be betraying my other half and embracing a people who so often have issues with my very existence. Hence, I am half-black, and will never call myself black again...
...and for the record, Obama isn't black either. But he lived a sheltered upperclass lifestyle in Hawaii and didn't go through what I went through on the East Coast, so he's a different story. He's also a failure of a president who should be a one term wonder...but that's another thing blacks would attack me for saying out loud.
Just take an anthropology class so you can see how stupid the "racial" categories are, and start calling yourself what you are, a human being.
Racial categories were created in order to divide humans and institute a "racial hierarchy" with darkest on the bottom and lightest on the top.
Race is the biggest psychological mind F*** Lie ever perpetrated on humanity.
Don't buy into categories of "race" or hyphenations when describing yourself, it's ridiculous.
Indeed, my proper English and lack of desire to father illegitimate children is a problem I should rectify.
If Langston Hughes had grown up where I did, he too would be called "bougie" and treated like trash.
Only the most discriminating Anglophile such as myself who reads far too much F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.P. Lovecraft and Ernest Hemingway...but I forgot, only "white boys" read for the joy of reading
EddieB is typical, especially of Black males, any intellectual pursuit is deemed white or even gay. Stay away from them.
I think it was condescending of the OP. What do you have to say about that? Like I said: THICK SKIN. Everyone in here is different, what you think is rude may not have been intended to be rude. Sometimes people act like crybabies in these threads.
I just think someones as human beings , we could use to be a bit more thoughtful of others feelings or thoughts example the OP of this thread.
Not intending something to be rude doesnt mean it isn't. I might not mean to hurt someones feeling but it doesnt change that , that persons feelings are hurt.
and I am NOT saying you directly are being rude just that some of the post in the start of this thread I would say is condescending , which is rude
So how does it happen that a white and a black partner – who would usually produce, as Alyson and Errol did in their other children, black-skinned offspring – have a child who is as white as his mum? I spoke to Dr Jim Wilson, population geneticist at Edinburgh University – and his first question was, "What is Errol's heritage?" Errol is Jamaican – and that, says Jim, is the basic explanation.
"It wouldn't really be possible for a black African father and a white mother to have a white child, because the African would carry only black skin gene variants in his DNA, so wouldn't have any European DNA, with white skin variants, to pass on," he explains.
"But most Caribbean people, though black-skinned, have European DNA because in the days of slavery, many plantation owners raped female slaves, and so introduced European DNA into the black gene pool.
"The thing about skin colour is that even a bit of African DNA tends to make a person's skin colour black – so to be white, the child must have inherited more of the father's European DNA with its white skin variants. Added to the mother's European DNA, this led to a child with white skin – while his brother, who is black-skinned, inherited more of his father's African DNA.
This can actually work in reverse where two white appearing individuals have a black baby. There was a famous case in Apartheid South Africa and happens to a degree in Spain. Especially in the South where African DNA, mainly North African DNA, was introduced into the blood stream by the Moorish conquest.
The sad thing about your rant is that you are attributing "Black" American achievement to the amount of European ancestry that one has in their lineage. This is actually one of the arguments that racists use to explain the successes of the Black upper class. One thing that you really need to remember is that even though some of our ancestors were given some advantages and privileges due to our connections to "massa" they were not given a "carte blanche" in life.
So call yourself whatever makes you happy. However, in America, we tend to follow the One-Drop Rule and people will classify you based on what they "think" you are using the eyeball test.
I never said they achieved more because they had white DNA. They were the middle class because they were the descendants of free blacks, most of whom were mixed.
Anyway, again, I ask you: one drop rule, so is Rebecca Hall black and nothing else? Rebecca Hall - AskMen
Quote:
Black Americans understand quite well that the color of our skin runs from lily white to blue black with every minutia of shades in between. But this is 2012....the paper bag/fine tooth comb tests no longer bars darker skin Blacks from achieving great successes.....just ask Oprah.
Bull $^^^. The blacks I've been around seem to believe in this "afro-Aryan" concept that if you look mixed, there is something wrong with you. Example: blacks call other blacks who are dating or married outside their race "race traitors" all the time, and no one bats an eye. If a white person said the same about a white person in an interracial relationship, they'd be labeled Nazis, and rightly so.
But, as usual, it is okay for blacks to be racist.
EddieB is typical, especially of Black males, any intellectual pursuit is deemed white or even gay.
Amen. I remember one incident that I will never forget for as long as I live: I was sitting down in High School and a couple of ghetto blacks approached me and started calling me names. I was reading a book, and they had a problem with that. One of them said, AND I QUOTE:
"He wants to be white. Hell yeah, cause only a straight up, wannabee white boy would be sitting here reading some dumb book called NATIVE SON."
So, reading "Native Son" means I want to be white? God forbid it had been the Autobiography of Malcolm X or something, or I would be accused of being another Michael Jackson...
Indeed, every time a person with black blood gets an education, speaks proper English and tries to better himself the ghetto blacks come out and accuse him of betraying his race...or, for that matter, the ghetto in the blacks around him or her rears its ugly head.
This can actually work in reverse where two white appearing individuals have a black baby. There was a famous case in Apartheid South Africa and happens to a degree in Spain. Especially in the South where African DNA, mainly North African DNA, was introduced into the blood stream by the Moorish conquest.
I've seen it myself: I know a light skinned Mexican guy who married a mulatto and their first baby was black. It's DNA, it happens...but it makes the "one drop" thing look ridiculous. Would a pasty skinned, light haired guy like Martin Gore from Depeche Mode really be expected to call himself black exclusively just because he has a black grandparent?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
