Creole Fails DNA Test

[arisbe]

"My son was flabbergasted by the results," says Joseph. "He said, 'Dad, you mean for 50 years you've been passing for black?'" Joseph admits that, strictly speaking, he has. But he's not sure if he can or wants to do anything about that at this point. For all the lingering effects of institutional racism, he's been perfectly content being a black man; it has shaped his worldview and the course of his life in ways that cannot, and probably should not, be altered. Yet Joseph struggles to balance the intellectual dishonesty of saying he's black with the unimpeachable honesty of a lifelong experience of being black. "What do I do with this information?" he says, sounding more than a little exasperated. "It was like finding out you're adopted. I don't want to be disingenuous with myself. But I can't conceive of living any other way. It's a question of what's logical and what's visceral."

From AlterNet

Comments

[orlandobr.livejournal.com]

I think it was Clarence Page who wrote: ""If people cannot call themselves what they want to call themselves, they cannot call themselves truly free". If this man want to call himself black, go ahead!

However, I want to say the "professional victim" tone of the article: "Yet this knowledge has not deterred the racism many Europeans continue to harbor toward Africans, nor the wariness Africans harbor toward Europeans..." is annoying.

Blacks cannot be racist, they merely are wary? I suppose this idea somehow won't find much support among the Tutsis...

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

The idea won't find much support with my relatives, either, quite a few of which are mixed race couples and had just as many problems with blacks as whites because of it, down to being denied housing.

So odd to see my little cousins get an awareness of what they are. Nearly 3, and 4 years of age, they were warbling to me when I saw them, "my daddy is black". Other relatives, like my sister and brother in law, I didn't know them as small children, their identities about it seemed to be set, already. But to watch that awareness in children is very interesting.