Shades of Truth

[catelin]

After a discussion of family histories last week with icarus_after, I was inspired to dive back into the genealogy pool that I've dabbled in for the last few years (my mother was recently kind enough to gift me with a subscription to ancestry.com). I ended up finding census records for my great-grandmother when she was a child. The records confirmed what my mother and I have suspected for a while since I found some other stuff a couple of years ago. My great-grandma and her entire family was listed on the 1900 census as black. She moved from Georgia to Texas with my great-granddad and...voila!...in the 1920 census she was suddenly white! There are so many questions that will never be answered about this and it's sad and fascinating all at once to me. Was she passing when she met my great-grandfather or did he know? This was back in the day of the miscegenation laws, mind you. Would she have ever told my grandfather anything about her past if she'd lived longer? She died in 1925. My grandfather was only 13. His father lived a long time and never said anything about it.

My grandfather is so completely without guile and is completely clueless about any of this. He's 95 years old. Would it be fair, at this point, to take his history away from him? Doubtful. He's lived such a long time perceiving himself to be a certain person. He is, without being a racist, still very much a product of his time. I think it's a safe assumption that he would not be nearly as thrilled as my mother and I. Still, there is something in me that chafes at being party to keeping a secret that was born of such a disgraceful chapter from our southern past. I feel complicit somehow by not telling him. I feel especially tempted to lay it out full force when he tells my mom that he could never vote for Obama because...well..."he's black."

The right thing to do in principle is not always the kinder and best thing to do in the specific. Three generations later, and the compromises that come with the color of one's skin still hold sway. So I hold my tongue and keep my bargain--my silence for the certainty that the last shreds of this shame his mother felt for who she was will live only as long as he does.

Comments

[libgirl.livejournal.com]

I've been doing my families genealogy for quite a while now and I've got a similar issue. One of my close ancestors was Native and from what we can tell, no one by her name exists until she married my great-grandfather (she is actually my g.g. grandmother twice over as two of her great grandchildren married to produce my Mom and ultimately me). Family history says that she is Native and the photographs don't disprove this, but we're fairly certain she changed her name and race prior to marrying my G.G. Grandfather. It's sad, but at that point in time, in that place, it was better to be anything but Native.

I have a friend from the same area whose family has always been known as the "Black __________'s" because her great grandmother told everyone she was Black rather than admit to being Native. :(

It's sad what the attitudes and prejudices of the time have done people and their families in the name of what's right and true. :(

Congratulations on solving that family mystery though!! Great work!

[harriet-m-welsh.livejournal.com]

Mom (60) asked Grandma (82), a die-hard democrat, who she was going to vote for while they were on the phone tonight. I heard it from the kitchen and cringed, knowing what kind of answer she was going to get.

Later, Mom told me that the answer was, "Well, I don't know what I'm going to do because I can't vote for Hillary because she's a woman and I can't vote for Obama because he's black."

I don't know which is more striking, the sexism or the racism. Or for that matter, the more insidious indications behind referring to one by her first name and the other by his last.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

I've always been curious about my family's geneology; alas, having the last name "Smith" doesn't help...

[whatifitworks.livejournal.com]

That is a pretty amazing story. I'm not sure I'd be able to hold my tongue. But then, I might have a different perspective, not being white :) So fascinating, though, that people could somehow change who they were on paper... weird.

[lifeisacabaret.livejournal.com]

I can relate to this as well. I recently found out that one of my cousins does not know who his father is, because he is a product of rape. His mother was raped by her eldest sister's husband and the entire family kept it a secret "to protect the child." I have been so sickened by this. Here is my entire family protecting a rapist, while he sits as a patriarch in the family. Here is my poor aunt, raising her son, bringing him to family reunions where she was certain to encounter her rapist. Here is my entire family living with their fundamentalist religious principles, so heavy with hipocrisy. I just have had such a hard time getting my head around it. I know that it too was influenced by the time, but then there is the mystery of who my brother's father is... he was born when my mother was 16 and while she did tell us he had a different father from my sister and I, that she married him because you had to get married when you got pregnant back then, she has never told any of us who my brother's dad is. I long ago distanced from my family because of religious intolerance, and now that I know this and it pulls me in two different directions. On the one hand I feel even more strongly that I made the right choice in separating myself from them. On the other hand, sheds new questions on the issues of my brother and it makes me question if my relationship with my family is or should really be over. It leaves me so chilled and lost. I can't decide how to proceed... if this is just another way that my family draws me into their drama, or if it is another good reason to disown them. I haven't told anyone this. Interesting how the internet works.

I am happy for you that you found out more about your history, and that perhaps your generation can bring this to rights somehow. I certainly can empathise with your struggle with the older generation.

[thepetey.livejournal.com]

just be sure the "shame" ends with you and becomes pride in the divirsity of your past for you and your children

Payback's a Bitch

[forioscribe.livejournal.com]

I understand Karma or Akasa ensures that the bad things we do come back to us fourfold, and in my case it has always arrived promptly and with stunning specificity. So a part of me says that if I have had to endure the painful consequences of my actions, then everyone else should too. However, another part says there's enough suffering in the world, so why increase it? My abusive 89-year-old father died naturally in his sleep with a smile on his face, and his obit says he was loved by all who knew him. Oh, well. Maybe one day I'll get back to my hometown and piss on his grave.

[crapediem.livejournal.com]

With all the swirling thoughts and emotions on something like this, I've decided not to add - at least exactly - to the current thinking.

As I say this, it may not be the type of logic that makes sense, but other than the overt "I'm not going to vote for a woman/black man because I don't like them," there can be a somewhat different, but distinct difference. Many women and blacks (either raised in certain generations or in some upbringings) simply don't believe that either a woman or a black man can be *competent* enough, or that they would trust to lead them. It's not because they are either male, or white, but that they really don't believe their own demographic is competent enough. The most recent case in point was when I was talking about helping a woman I know get counseling and find a therapist. She's a black woman, but she told me pointedly that she wanted a white counselor, and specifically a male white counselor. She elaborated somewhat, but fundamentally it came down to that she is inherently uncomfortable with sharing her thoughts, trusting the integrity, of like kind. It boggled my mind, but not as completely since it's not the first time I've heard the sentiments.

my own geneaology; thoughts

[crapediem.livejournal.com]

Also unlike most/all of your responses thus far, I am considered (I think?) 2nd generation, meaning that I was born here, but my parents were immigrants. (Specifically Chinese ancestry.)

If we were mixed in some fashion, it wouldn't surprise me as I've wondered if we are as "pure" Chinese as families tend to like to believe and perpetuate. Even if my own direct lineage is technically "pure" Chinese (which essentially means, for us, "Han" Chinese) at least say 6-10 generations which I think isn't perfectly likely, I wouldn't be surprised if my cousins and extended family may have had some issues.

Separately, one of your friends commented on the family history of children by rape (incest, or other). On my maternal side, I apparently originally had more than 10 aunts (all girls in that side). Only 3 (including my mother) survived World War II. My parents (and their families) were trapped separately (not yet having met), during the various Japanese occupations over there. They have never discussed what happened during their childhoods, but their hatred and and venom remains to this day, though somewhat muted due to age. Not sure if there's a clear term in English (or at least in the U.S.), though I can respect the origins of my parents' anti-Japanese sentiments. The hate remains between our two groups, even if seemingly ignored, denied, or easily dismissed by other groups. (And though raised here in this country with very little direct contact with Japanese at all, I've actually experienced a few, rare times direct, if brief anti-Chinese discrimination from Japanese; separately, I've noted also very distinct "evil eyes" of Japanese towards others, Chinese, or Koreans etc. These were notable exceptions and not typical, yet not unexpected by me altogether.)

Separate from war and PTSD, there's also a lot of behavior patterns which my parents and extended family (at least the ones I've met) seem to perpetuate. Whatever the origins, and whether WWII was it or not, there's a lot of ugliness that has continued through the family. Though not formally diagnosed, I am suspecting a tremendous amount of mental illness historically. I'm sure there are a lot of skeletons in our closet, but unless I learn to speak Chinese fluently and pick up the sociocultural nuances, I'm never going to know more than I do now.

A bit of a friend's story

[crapediem.livejournal.com]

More on lineage, child by rape, etc.

A friend of mine, she and her husband were both born and raised originally in the rural south; both black. Both of them are middle-aged and up (her husband is more than 15 years her senior). He and his sister (not sure if there are/were more siblings) are the children of a single woman, a dirtpoor sharecropper. Her husband is, I believe, the youngest child.Talking about family and related, my friend told me one day that her husband's mother had been forcibly raped and sexually abused by the white owner of the farm that she worked, eventually becoming pregnant several times and having at least two children, one being my friend's husband. His mother, in short, was forced to work and submit to repeated acts of rape and sexual abuse her entire life, and her children also worked as sharecroppers on the same farm. My friend's husband, I believe, also did sharecropping work on the same farm.

When sometimes I hear about the legacies of American slavery which apparently officially ended in 1963 (what year did Lincoln issue the proclamation? bad with history details, eh!), it doesn't mean the brutalities ended. Black women and girls (and the rarely discussed aspect of black men and boys) being raped, sexually abused, and bear the children of their rapists while forced to serve them, during slavery continued - continues - to happen. Not always, these days, by whites, but unfortunately perpetuated within family as incest, other horrific abuse, etc. which you know better than me.

Separately my friend was incested when she was a child. She's very soft spoken and shy about some things. She does show various signs of trauma in different fashions, not necessarily attributed only to the incest.

One of the things that bothers her is how much denial there is in the black community that incest happens within, too. She hears many other black men and women truly believe that incest only happens in white families, etc.