Pruning the family tree
I remember last year hearing and reading about fellow Black Americans who embarked on a personal crusade to trace their roots back to Africa. As a history buff myself, on many levels I found this to be very exciting. Even in my own family we have been able to retrieve bits and pieces of our family tree dating back to the Civil war.
Any historian who is worth their salt will tell you that the vast majority of Blacks (excluding first generation Africans) in this country are not 100% full-blooded decedents of the first Africans brought to this country for slavery. This means that the average Black person that you see on the street has a mixture of other races within their family linage. Just a casual study of the post-slavery era migration of Blacks will reveal that although Blacks (like other races) tend to stay within their group, it was not uncommon to see intermarriage taking place with native Americans, South Americans, Jews and Europeans.
Now let’s be real here–if you have a dark skin tone your natural proclivity is to identify with your African roots. But does this also mean that you deny or downplay your other roots? Being able to tell someone what African tribe or village your roots originate is great, but it does not tell the whole story. For many Black people, it has become the assumed fact that if you have any traces of white in your bloodline, you can be sure that it was due to rape. On the other hand, the mixture of other races is considered okay. I want my kids to know their WHOLE story, not just the portions that accommodate my personal biases. By withholding this detailed information, I am imprinting into their consciousness the same ideological boundaries that were created under Jim Crow.
Perhaps the deeper question here is that how can we push for policies that enforce diversity when in many cases we are not willing to acknowledge the diversity within us?
Related post: Loving the jambalaya under my skin
