Great Grandmother's Blog

the one-drop rule

I'm reading Sinclair Lewis' masterpiece, "Kingsblood Royal," and it's helped me to bring into focus that my mother's problem with me all along was the one-drop rule - even though it was no longer the Law, she had grown up under it, and certainly, legal or not, many white people still observed it.  Understanding this helps me to better understand the strange ways she often seemed to me to be 'reacting' to me, and some of the things she said.  She often said she felt a very serious responsibility towards me (the responsibility of bringing me up to be 'white'), and that she didn't 'know how to raise me.'  (Didn't know how to raise a white child.)  When I asked her why she felt that way, she said, "Well, I never expected to have 'you' - I expected a small child with dark curly hair."  My father used to say, "I don't know why she's so upset, all Danish children have blonde hair when they're little.  Often it darkens later."  My father also felt my mother should tell me about her 'Moor' ancestors, as did some of our relatives on her father's side of the family, but she was adamant that I was not to know.  Not to know was not to tell, because telling could bring down the one-drop rule on my head!  Nevertheless these 'relatives' tried to tell - Aunt Elizabeth coming over with a coin necklace draped over her head; my father pointing to the pyramids and the mosque and having me look and look at them, repeatedly, on his Camel's cigarette packet.

Yes, she was trying to protect me.  But by the time I came along, the African-American population was darkening, not whitening up - the light-skinned African-Americans were being sidelined in the Black Power movement of the Sixties - and she probably felt that if the 'Moor' heritage was hushed up, no one would ever be able to tell by just looking at me.  Yet, she had fears about it.  I remember when I was around fifteen, she sent me to the local country club, which was having some sort of 'open-house' for new prospective members.  I felt terribly shy about going there on my own, but she refused to come with me, probably so that I could appear in all my white glory, without a 'possible mulatto' Mom hanging around in the background.  I stood around the large upstairs room at the Country Club feeling very awkward, until a group of young men approached me and almost the first thing they asked me was whether I was a Republican or a Democrat!  When I answered Democrat, one of the boys whined, 'You're not actually going to say that, HERE!'  Well, after being snickered at by the 'boys,' I just went home and when I did my mother kept asking me, 'What happened!?  Did anybody say anything to you?!' as if some kind of crisis were occurring. (What could they have said?  What did she think they might have said?)   I kept muttering that I just didn't like it there - and I didn't.  These young (white) men were singularly unattractive physically, emotionally and in terms of their manners, in my opinion at the time, knowing nothing about how the elite white males comported themselves in their heyday. (Something I'm learning by reading "Kingsbook Royal.") Perhaps the malicious, ill-mannered question about whether I was a Democrat or a Republican was just their way of letting me know I didn't 'belong' there, or maybe it wasn't, but my mother and I fought, off and on, for months about that country club, she trying to get me to go and 'meet people' (other white people, presumably) and me refusing.

Looking back I can see that all my boyfriends were not from among the white elite, such as it was in our area.  My first boyfriend was Italian, the second was part-Sioux and probably part African on his mother's side (even though at the time I thought he was a young white intellectual - shows how much I knew about that world!), the next was Jewish and Japanese (although more a part of the 'elite' than anyone I'd known up til then), and after that, overlooking a couple of liaisons that never amounted to much, but who weren't white either, I met my husband who is from a similar background to mine.

Please forgive me for 'going on' about all of this.  It's just my process of understanding so many things that were confusing for me in terms of my relationship with my mother.  I guess before I die I'm going to figure all of this out, especially the ambivalence of the whole phenomenon.  Her solemnly giving me the life of Kateri Tekakwitha to take to heart somehow.  Her 'strange' (to me) fascination with the role of  Catholicism in the New World, Willa Cather's books "Shadows on the Rock" and "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and the fact that her father took the name Xavier when he 'converted' to Catholicism in order to marry my grandmother - while attending the Moorish Science Temple in Philadelphia (after it opened) and bringing my mother with him!  And all of the 'Moorish' paraphernalia we still had in the house decades after he'd died.  And how much I loved all of that, and yet when I began asking questions, my mother said to her mother, 'I guess we don't need these things anymore' - and then getting rid of them!

I've read other books about the  light-colored 'negroes', for example "The Darker The Berry The Sweeter The Juice" which was written by an African-American woman about her blonde, light-skinned African American mother who felt abandoned by her darker family, just cut adrift to supposedly live a 'white' life - as if looking white gave you all the cultural wealth and bias that the born-to-the-silver-spoon white elite demonstrate.  All that was supposed to come 'just naturally' to you if you looked white - at least, that is really what I suspect my mother thought!  And was part of her confusion about me, when I did not automatically play the part.  Yet, at the same time, surprised and gratified when I seemed not to be prejudiced - as if one is born with that along with the white skin!  Soooo many contradictions - it's amazing I never lost my mind completely!  ;-)  (just partially)

The focus nowadays is on the dark-complected African Americans and there is little sympathy for the old-time 'white negroes' (as I call them).  Maybe that's right and just, but I think it's difficult to compare 'sufferings.'  Who suffers more, the person who can't walk because of crippling arthritis, or because of diabetic amputations, or because of paralysis?  It seems to me that all of these 'sufferings' are part of a continuum, although some may be more painful than others, each has its own particular hardships, and how can we compare those?   Similarly, how can we compare the sufferings of those who have been deeply affected by racism, whatever their skin tone, and more than that - whatever their ethnicity?  Because it's been an ethnic problem for many in this country, and for many many more throughout the world!  This is a human problem.

Two other good books to mention in this connection are "Racing to Justice" by John A. Powell (2009), who helps us understand the deep roots of racism in our country and how it has affected our entire economic and social system.  And "Fields of Blood" by Karen Armstrong (2014), a history of violence and slavery worldwide throughout time.  Also, "A Chosen Exile" by Allyson Hobbs (2014).

atlantic creoles: the answer to the riddle

 
Above are my three ancestors who self-identified as 'Moors.'  On the left, Mary A. Carney Whittingham, born in 1832 in Delaware to John (listed as 'white' on the census) and Luisa Carney (listed as 'mulatto' which in Delaware often meant 'Indian' ie Native American).  In the middle, her youngest son Joseph Whittingham, born 1879 in Pennsylvania, and on the right his daughter, my mother, Dorothea, born in 1906 in Philadelphia.

Scroll down to the 'My Delaware Moor Great-Grandmother' post to read more about my convoluted journey to discover what the 'ethnic secret' of our family was.  This secret was withheld from me because to my mother and grandmother I looked 'white' and they wanted me to grow up with a white identity.  This certainly makes a lot of sense, since I look so very white indeed!  When I first moved to Berkeley California from Philadelphia, I met a beautiful woman with huge dark eyes and the most gorgeous golden curly hair, and she told me she thought I might be 'one of our people.'  She went on to explain to me that in the pre-colonial period, European, African and Native American people encountered one another in North America, had families together - and there was plenty for everyone, no fighting, and everyone was very happy that way.  This reminded me of a very similar story my mother had also told me.  Both of them went on to say that when so many colonists, especially the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the British Isles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries began arriving on the eastern coast, this idyllic situation began to change, and 'our people' were held in diminished repute, and often marginalized or isolated, primarily marrying in to their own communities.  This is why the villains in so many silent films and old-time dime-store literature were portrayed as dark and swarthy white men.  We were a sub-class.

At the time she told me this, however, I thought this woman was not in her right mind - making things up - because at the time, I'd more or less forgotten that my mother had told me the same story! This woman's husband got a job in Kingsport Tennessee and she did not look forward to moving there, because, she said, that area was a center for 'our people.'  Later, I realized that Kingsport is prime 'Melungeon' territory. 

Anyway, in all my subsequent searching and struggling to find out why my mother and grandmother seemed to feel my grandfather was such a special and wonderful guy, but never told me anything about him, and made only disparaging remarks about his mother (she couldn't read or write and did not speak proper English, but some kind of really antiquated dialect), leading me to believe there was some 'secret' involved here, I think I have finally come to the final destination in understanding.

These people were descendents of the Atlantic Creoles.  To me, this makes perfect sense, as my mother definitely had a Creole look and vibe to her, which I passionately loved.  The Atlantic Creoles were basically a product of the very earliest stage of the Atlantic slave trade which involved Native Americans being transported to distant places as slaves (little known fact), Africans who had been Christianized by the Portuguese and who are sometimes called Charter Generation, Free Blacks, and so on - who were often brought over and used as 'indentured servants' much like the poor white European indentured servants of colonial and pre-colonial times.  These individuals often took up housekeeping together - early clerics in America decried the lack of church-going and of legal marriages - had their families and after the massive influx of British, Scottish and (in our area) German immigrants, this group began to take on its own identity and in many regions were marginalized and excluded by the newcomers.

Atlantic Creoles are usually thought of as African-Americans, but of course even the term 'African-American' implies that there's something not African about this group - and in this case it would be the presence of both European and Native American ancestry.  Our family knew they had these connections, as both my mother and father attended something called the 'Moorish Science Temple' in Philadelphia, and had small tokens of this identity around the house: a small Moroccan flag, a crocodile letter-opener, various pieces of Tuareg jewelry and other items, indicating an African identity.  We also had Lenape textile and a basket in our home, indicating some relationship to local Native American identity.

Linda M. Heywood writes in her book, "Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585 - 1660," that on the eastern shore of then Virginia, "Many of these African-Americans came to be known as 'Indians' in the hostile racial climate of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It was from such groups that the modern-day 'Melungeons' or the 'Nanticokes (or Moors)', 'Lumbees,' and 'Piscataway' emerged, as genealogical research has shown." (p.283)

My ancestors John and Luisa Carney first appear on the Delaware Census in the 1790's, around the time that refugees fleeing from Haiti arrived in New Orleans and the Chesapeake Bay area.  It's not known whether Luisa Carney (mulatto) was native to Delaware, or whether both may have emigrated from Haiti.  I still need to do the research on that.  It's a possibility.  This would give them Taino ancestry, which I see in my great-grandmother's face.

On the term 'Moors': "When a prize ship carrying 130 Africans arrived in Middleburg in the Netherlands in 1596, its cargo was consistently referred to as Mooren ("Moors"), the medieval European term for Africans." (p.314) However, the Dutch traders quickly switched to the term negroes, borrowing the latter term from the Portuguese.  However, our area, New Jersey, eastern Pennysylvania, and Delaware was strongly under the influence of the Dutch, so much so that Dutch ways predominated.  Heywood also talks about the heavy Dutch influence among the Atlantic Creoles of the Ramapo Mountain region in northern New Jersey, whose surnames were usually either Mann or Groot (and our family had a marriage with a Groot of northern New Jersey back in the mid-nineteenth century, and this would fit with the notion that these 'ethnic' groups tended to intermarry). Anyway Dutch influence may have cemented the use of the term 'Moors' for our 'Delaware' ancestors.  (I mark this word 'Delaware' because in fact these people spread out in a sort of diaspora throughout southeastern PA, NJ, and even as far away as Wisconsin and Canada).  Search for www.mitsawokett.com for more information.

In her book, Heywood differentiates between slavery and indentured servitude, but remarks that even the word 'slavery' in the sixteenth and seventeenth century eastern seaboard did not mean what it came to mean during the later period of plantation-slavery.  Apparently, from what I've read, there has been a rift even in the African-American community between those who identified as descendents of the 'free people of color' 'charter generation' Africans versus the later mass agricultural slave population.  But that is someone else's story.

Heywood writes, "Atlantic Creoles seem to have attained freedom remarkably easily, considering the later history of American servitude." (327)  Scholars believe that the fact that they were already Christian and already familiar with European culture facilitated their frequent manumission and subsequent success as free people.  "Both English and Dutch popular wisdom, if not law, maintained that a Christian could not hold another Christian as a slave." (p.328)

"Occasionally, mixed-raced individuals petitioned for their freedom on the basis of their upbringing among Christians.  Doll Allen, a mixed-race woman of Bermuda, claiming freedom from being a 'perpetuall slave' in 1652, asked to be set apart as 'God set a distinction between her and heathen Negroes, by providentially allotting her birth among Christians.'  Elizabeth Key lodged a similar complaint in 1656, also counting her baptism as grounds for obtaining freedom and, like Allen, Key was born of an English father."  (p.329)

I'm thinking this may be the case with my ancestors, as John Carney is listed as 'white' on the Delaware Census in the 1790's while his wife, Luisa, is listed as 'mulatto.'  I'm sorry to say I have no surname for Luisa, so cannot research her any further back.  I have heard that 'Luisa' is considered to be a popular Portuguese name in 'the new world,' and so may indicate an Atlantic Creole origin.

My DNA test showed a high percentage of African DNA, mostly North and East African, which would indicate to me sea-faring Africans, such as pirates, more than the Central and West Africans who apparently made up the original Portuguese Catholic slaves and indentured servants of the precolonial period.  And the Delaware Moors used to subscribe to a pirate origin, although now the group still living in Delaware don't want to be called Moors, and regard themselves as Indians.

Dorothea and me 1986

Thank you for reading, please address any comments to me in an email at [email protected]

jack d. forbes, red blood

I'm finally getting around to reading jack d. forbes, university of california, davis, professor of native american studies.  I'm starting with one of his scholarly books, "The American Discovery of Europe" and also his only novel, "Red Blood."  I am really impressed by the novel.  It is written in the peripatetic motif popularized in the English tradition by Smolett, but found also in that sperm-seed of western literature, Don Quixote. So, nothing much happens, there is no suspensful 'plot,' but the protagonist, Jesse, travels around and meets different people of various native american backgrounds, reflects on what he sees, and gains insight into what it means to be native american, or part-native american, at this particular juncture in time. 

It seems to me he covers every possible permutation.

It's a great loss that Jack Forbes has recently died, in February 2011, because he was clearly a man of great insight with a basically gentle attitude toward differences, a lot of love, compassion and intelligence.  A jewel.  He was of Powhatan-Renape and Lenape background, which may mean he looked more brown or more white than the popular conception of what 'Native American' looks like.  He writes a LOT about all the various shades of color and subtleties of feature found in our population.  Young white readers, in particular, (from what I've seen in the comments on blogs that deal with these issues) often find this kind of writing 'racist,' but really, it's just revealing the racism that is already there in our society, but goes unacknowledged.  There's been a fairly large acknowledgement of the racism heir to the plantation-slavery of Africans prior to the Civil War, but there is less awareness of the widespread slavery prior to the rise of the South's cotton industry.  Slavery or indentured servitude were very common throughout the thirteen colonies and early states and involved white, black and red persons, who often united in bands of community and through marriage.  Their descendents, along with the descendants of many later immigrants, form the 'unentitled' masses of America. 

For people who fall into that latter category, 'Red Blood' is a helpful book.  For people like myself, with perhaps only a smidgen of native blood but a fairly wide streak of influence from the native forbears, it is comforting to see just where these influences come from, and that we have a sort of 'right' to our beliefs and our lifestyle.  We are not simply somehow defective white people or 'anti-social' or whatever label might have been applied to us in our difference.  We are not simply 'black' Americans, either, but that is someone else's story to tell, not mine. 

For myself, to look at me, I understand why no one would credit that I am part-native american, or part African, even though my dna tests show that, and my family (barely) acknowledged it, regarding it as something too precious to share abroad, only eliciting criticism, ridicule or negativity.  Rather, our truth was like a precious pearl kept secret in a special container deep inside our home.  Anyway, I'm not going to try to convince anybody - about myself, I mean.  It will be a fairly private thing for me, and an online post doesn't really change that.

I look forward to reading more Jack Forbes and I encourage you to read him too.

atlantic creoles

i've been thinking lately that it might make more sense to tell people that my mother was a kind of creole.  Doing research, i've discovered that academics identify a group centered in the chesapeake bay area as 'atlantic creoles.'  the atlantic creoles are a simiar ethnic makeup to the well-known louisiana creoles - french, english, spanish, african american, native american and sometimes caribbean.

Links to information about creole people can be found here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole_people

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_peoples

www.frenchcreoles.com/CreolesWeAre.html - this is a nice one with music, slide-show, videos, etc

berkeley lawrence hall of science race exhibit

i visited Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science's exhibit on RACE on Saturday, March 27th.  It was a beautiful day, and the view from the Hall was spectacular, looking out towards the Golden Gate bridge with the Marin Headlands on the right and San Francisco on the left.  The fresh air blowing in from the Pacific was intoxicating!

i went with my friend eva marie, who is from sweden, and a friend of hers who is also a hospice nurse in san francisco.  Some of our favorite parts of the exhibit included the Hapa Project, and the many video-taped interview with people of all perceived-races talking about their own experience with 'race' and their own process of relating to these experiences.  Their voices, words and faces were memorable and quite remarkable really.  I mean, it is remarkable to hear people talking cogently, with feeling but without rancor, about race in America.

you can link to the exhibit: here.  The exhibit runs until May 2, 2010.

the exhibit made me feel  good about the many attempts i've made on my blog to discuss my own experience of race, my mother's experience, and also to explore and learn more about the various ingredients that went into that stew.

the panelists on the exhibit were far more articulate than i could ever be, but basically they were saying that there are many principles, laws, practices and procedures that have had to come to the fore in our social evolution, but the real key to 'racial' harmony lies in personal connections.  until people can share their personal experiences in a non-judgemental atmosphere, we won't be able to move forward.  when people connect personally, so many of the various prejudices, fears, pre-conceptions and so forth fall away, or at least can become contextualized in a way that laws and policies will never achieve.