Comments on: Race, Psychology, and Family Dynamics

By: dianne

dianne — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:11:48 +0000

MSDAY – this is a good point. I am someone who actually IS of Cherokee descent (with parents from a part of the country where that’s shameful). Both grandfather’s were half, so I have that “fabled” great-grandmother on both sides – only we didn’t make them up, not to cover anything, not to prove anything.

Many who are of Native descent do KNOW it (rather than it being a family “rumor”), and it was often a family secret – as in my family. I have decided not to perpetuate the lie ~ and when people tell me I must be or “should” be proud, or suggest that my white Southern ancestors were slave owners (nope, too poor), I tell them about the Cherokee being slave owners. In short, I don’t want to hide my ancestry (and anyone who lives near Cherokee populations instantly knows I am of this descent anyway), but I don’t want to pretend it makes me or my ancestors “noble” either.

Maybe it’s a little perverse; I enjoy shaking people up w/ this information, especially if they are pulling “noble savage” crap out of their bag, but I also hope it makes them re-think things.

By: msday

msday — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:16:36 +0000

Don’t forget that Cherokee plantation, which was owned by a Cherokee slave owner was one of the largest in the region. If many of them are claiming Cherokee ancestry, there were Cherokee’s who raped as well. The Cherokees were hugely involved in slavery, owning both black slaves and other native tribes from the east coast.
There are a lot of people who cover up white ancestry by claiming Native heritage. However, it was and never will be a walk in the park being mixed with Native. Unlike Mulatto’s many were stigmatized as desperado’s, mean-spirited, crazy, and alcoholic. Ask your grandparents, people didn’t just claim native to cover because it wasn’t something to be proud of in a lot areas.

By: msday

msday — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:59:31 +0000

Hmm, if you had a choice of sleeping with the slave master or overseer, tied to a tree and whipped until the skin formed a keloidal tree, strung up and burned or sold away to someone who may have been ten times worse, what would you have chosen. You are applying modern day freedom of choice to people who were considered property.

By: Barb

Barb — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:09:09 +0000

Holy shit, I cannot believe some of the comments here. Proves the slave owner mentality is alive and well–that such a thing could be anything but coerced. I have white privilege, but ever since I read a book in freshman lit (Diary of a Black Slave Woman, or something to that effect) that included a real life account of a slave woman-slave owner “relationship” (shudder). It stuck with me *hard*.

Here is where “there is no race” (as so many racism apologists like to say)–any race can understand how awful that is, and any race can be sad at how that reality affects the current-day situation, because the feelings involved are human. Of course the root of the injustice is strictly racial.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:09:37 +0000

I recently saw “Dark River” (http://www.oaklandopera.org/FANNIEMAY.html), which is an opera about Fannie Lou Hamer. Very deliberately, I think, the director cast people with a variety of skin tones. One line in the score referred to it. Paraphrasing: Fannie’s mother pointed out how blacks all had different colored skin. White men, for all their talk against racial mixing, didn’t see it that was for themselves. Fannie’s mother told her to be careful and that her body was her own.

Fannie looked around nine years old at the time.

By: yeloson

yeloson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:18:22 +0000

And clearly you’re making her proud by showing that emancipation did nothing to free people from slave mentality…

By: dianne

dianne — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:45:45 +0000

Both of my grandfathers had Cherokee mothers, and I have often wondered how voluntary those marriages were – given that these 2 Cherokee women married white men right at about the same time as Andrew Jackson’s forced removal. His census takers were told to record any Cherokee women married to white men as “white” (which is one of the reasons matrilineal descent can be tough to document). Maybe there was love in these marriages, but as these women aren’t around to ask, I can’t assume that choices weren’t made for other reasons. I suppose I could ASSUME love, but that seems…naive.

The slave/former slave/free woman who might become a slave at any moment/Black woman in a soceity that denied her full humaity dynamic clearly had to have a powerful effect. How could it not? Maybe there was sometimes love, but speaking from experience, I can confirm that when there is a serious power imbalance, you do what you have to do to survive. I would be beyond foolish to assume what was true for me *due to class issues* 20 years ago didn’t apply to Black women 3 or 4 generations back. (And really, that’s NOT that long a time ago.

A power imbalance often plays into a woman being afraid to say “no.” As a young woman from a working class family, who attended college on scholarship 20+ years ago now, I can tell you that the sons of the rich and poweful knew that they could employ tactics ranging from coercian to violence and that girls like the me would have little recourse…and these tactics were generally employed on the same girls over and over and over…it was rarely a “one time thing.”

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:35:19 +0000

Dr. Joy DeGruy has done amazing work about Post-Tramatic Slave Syndrome. I do not think it is an unapproachable topic but care MUST be taken so that the tired dynamic of white folks dominating the conversation, whether with denials or guilt. As a matter of my opinion, I think that this issue MUST be talked about in a much more frank manner for healing to ever occur.

http://www.joydegruy.com/ptss/index.html

By: nojojojo

nojojojo — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:18:06 +0000

::holds up a “10″ card to Juan::

To Marlene: whiskey. tango. foxtrot.

By: Juan

Juan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:20:53 +0000

What can I say, that foolishness shorted out my brain long enough to not for it to not register pain. Good lord I hope she isn’t a writer or dares to write a historical piece on this subject.