You, dear reader currently reading this, are almost certainly of miscegenated race (to use the good old, racially-loaded word of the 19th century.) And by that I mean that within the last two thousand years or so you have received blood from someone whom an American would identify at first sight as “another race.”
The exceptions are people from populations so isolated over the last two thousand years or so that they are effectively a single “race.” And even those, if you look beyond two thousand years are more meaningful mixes of well… the original human “races” or perhaps “Subspecies” is a better term here: Homo Sapiens, Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Nadeli, Homo Denisovan, Homo Soloensis. I’m probably missing ten or so of them, because every time I dip in after a while away there is another species discovered that contributed to our DNA.
I’ll note that those ancient species had a heck of a lot more differences from each other than any of our so called “races” which are mostly indistinguishable under the microscope, unless you’re looking for specific diseases of isolated populations, and even that, often, is not congruent with what we view as racial characteristics.
I have to tell you one of the things that drives me completely bonkers about my fellow Americans born and raised here is the way they’re completely obsessed with reading racial tea leaves.
I had a moment of shock when a friend and I selected someone for the cover of a romance who looked rather like a girl who is my cousin on both sides of the family (mom’s cousin married dad’s cousin) and the writer objected because the cover was “obviously” Hispanic and the character wasn’t.
Here I must point out that Hispanic and Latin are CULTURES, not races. Though Americans moved happily from the identification of a common culture to considering it a “race” and now insist you have to have Indian blood to belong to either, all of which is frankly goofy, since there are Hispanic and Latin cultures where the majority of the people consider themselves white, or for that matter part African.
The obsession with reading racial tea leaves from features strikes me as somewhere between giggle-worthy and the sort of horror you get when you find mom eating live snakes in the kitchen. Because it is for real and actually completely insane.
Part of this, and it worries me a little, because I wonder if it’s intentional malice or a fear of goring the deeply-cherished racial cows of the population, is that history is very poorly taught in the US.
I keep running into well-intentioned people who believe that wherever slavery existed black people were always slaves and white people masters.
I will illustrate this by mentioning the priest who on the feast day of St. Perpetua and St. Felicity gave a sermon on how the two saints overcame “racial prejudice” and proceeded, in the happy assumption that one of them was black and one white. This is in fact possible — I bow to Suburbanshee if she has sure knowledge — but not absolutely sure just from the fact one owned the other. It’s entirely possible (and some of the orthodox icons depict them this way) that one of them was of Mediterranean subrace and the other blond. BUT even if one of them was black, under Roman rules, the black one might very well be the mistress and the white one the slave.
HOWEVER every single depiction by and for Americans represent the slave as black. And a priest, who surely learned some Roman history in seminary (I PRESUME) also assumed this as correct.
This amounts to a rat’s nest of racial idiocy in American heads. Many schools teach — by default — that white people invented slavery to enslave black people. This discomfits both races, because it makes blacks feel both righteously oppressed and also that there must be something profoundly broken with them, else who could they have been thus selected for oppression. At best it stokes permanent anger at the world and white people. At worst it creates utter despondency. (Note that a lot of black parents object to CRT on that exact ground.)
To come up with that just-so story, it requires ignoring the fact that in fact slavery continues in Africa, and that the enslaved are mostly Africans, but also any skin color that comes within the slaver’s grip.
It also requires ignoring that every possible and impossible race imaginable has been both slaver and enslaved. The reason for this is simple: in subsistence societies there is always some number of tasks that no one with free will will want to do. Also, because humans are flawed and derived from Great Apes, we find we like owning vanquished enemies. At its origin, slavery is the “merciful” option, where instead of killing every member of the defeated tribe, you kept the inoffensive ones alive but as slaves, so that you could control them and they wouldn’t endanger your tribe. Which means most slaves were originally almost indistinguishable from the slavers. And yes, that you’re descended from uncountable numbers of slaves and their owners, be you black as pitch or blond as a Viking.
Yes, the most recent iteration of slaves, in modern Europe/America were Africans, mostly because on discovery of Africa the Europeans plugged into existing networks of slave trading. In other words, because African slaves were plentiful and cheap.
I’ll also note that since the industrial revolution, and through long and patient work of Christians, there were groups opposing slavery. In fact,t here were some working tirelessly from the sixteenth century or so on (That we know of.) These people were mostly “white” Europeans, of well-to-backgrounds, who fought tirelessly for the freedom of the enslaved, despite the fact that the enslaved looked quite different from them.
I’ll note in passing that yes, the Portuguese, Italians, Greeks and other Mediterranean sub races were often viewed by Northern Europeans as a “lighter African” mostly I believe because we tan, though possibly also because there were more black Roman citizens among us. Maybe.
Also, because of Othello the moor, Englishmen tend to think of “Moor” as black. Which is somewhat crazy cakes. The Middle East/North Africa of Mohammed was a boiling mess of remains of Roman mercenaries, Africans, etc. So, they were a ah “melting pot.” However, through the long (around 1000 years) occupation of the peninsula, the “Moors” became practically indistinguishable from anyone else, largely through enthusiastic taking of slaves on both sides of the moveable frontier.
Sure, you can say that the South of Portugal, which contains a higher rate of Mouriscos (secret Moors. Eh, in some variety) than the rest of the country is generally more tan, shorter, and of more gracile build than the North. But that assumption that this is because of “moors” would ignore the fact that the starting populations of both sides were different (The North being notably Celtic, the South having more Greek Colonies) and that the contributions to the genetic pool were by and large different. (Won’t bore you, but the South was more Visigothic, and the North more Swabian.)
In other words, looking at current populations for the characteristics of past races is sort of like looking at linguistics, and deciding that “HUman” is propaganda, since it refers only to races other than white, being derived form Hue-man. (No, it’s not. Just like History is not His-story. Both are insane and cause me to scream and foam at the mouth.)
Incidentally, the same applies to 23-and-me which compares your genetics to those of current populations. This means that even if you have fairy well documented Amerindian ancestry from the North East, that will show as “English or Irish” mostly because those tribes stopped existing, subsumed by English and Irish populations, which means that this is how they’ll show.
So, even if your “genetics” show as pure Scandinavian, Germanic, British, whatever, let me reassure you that you are in fact miscegenated as is the rest of the human race.
(It was hilarious before they had enough of a Portuguese sample, to see my genetics show up as…. well, all of Europe, part of Africa, and a decent amount of Amerindian. They have …. shaken out differently now.)
Anyway, all this came to a head with my watching the Bridgerton series. As other people know, it bothers the living daylights out of me to cast well-known historical figures as another race. Not because there can’t be decent actors of another race, but because I know there is a percentage of the population who takes fictional movies and shows as revealing “the truth.”
My mom, who is better educated (alas) than most American high school graduates is one of those. She will adapt her vision of the past according to some crazy movie she just watched. (The number of arguments I’ve had.)
For those who haven’t watched Bridgerton (bog standard regency romances, with gorgeous, if not period-accurate clothing) they cast a certain number of noblemen as black or indian or other “races” and the English Queen in Bridgerton is black.
The buried history in the mini-series (suggested and Heinleined in) is that black and white people coexisted in England side by side, until the king married a black Queen, and then suddenly mixed marriages were allowed.
This is obviously a fantastic parallel world history. Yes,t here were black people in England in the regency. I’m sorry to tell you there were very few and 99% of them were slaves or servants brought by people who had lived in Africa.
There was no “black nobility” and no system of apartheid.
HOWEVER as we found out, American people absolutely believe this nonsense. They believe Queen Charlotte (mostly German, honestly) was “black” based on a very bad portrait and rumors of a Moorish ancestress. (Note this rumor was almost certainly political slander. Also that Moor at that time in the peninsula depending on whether in the South or the North might mean slim, small and tan, but did not mean AFRICAN.) Weirdly the best debunking I found was from Quora.
HOWEVER I also found endless pages of well-educated black-Americans celebrating Queen Charlotte for “Black history month.”
Let me also point out that both the Queen and her husband (Yes, mad king George) were ardent abolitionists and that did she have any legitimate hint of African blood ALL the opposition would have fixated on this, and the caricatures would have been next level. However this never happened. Queen Charlotte was and looked German, even if a portrait can imply “stereotypical” African features…. As long as you remember that those features exist in a lot of other races, and that a lot of them are also Neanderthal.
Sure, if you go with the one drop theory, Queen Charlotte was black. So is everyone else. EVERYONE else, even those whose 23andme swears they’re pure Scandinavian. Because sometime in the last two thousand years all of us got an African ancestor, somewhere, on one of the many, many lines that fed into our family. (Note genealogy is also a lie to some extent, since it’s impossible to follow every single female (if you’re tracking the male. Vice versa otherwise) line that dropped into your family, and everyone who fed into every other of those lines.)
The problem is that it was the rats in the head of the American black producers of the series that led them to create this entire parallel universe which they THINK IS TRUE on the basis of “well the queen was black.” WITHOUT LOOKING.
And now those rats are reproducing everywhere, but most notably in black American heads, who now believe that “Well, the king married a black queen, so it must be true that the Americans rebelled to keep enslaving the black people.”
This is all not just arrant nonsense, but poisonous bullshit, and has no contact whatsoever with reality.
What can we do about it?
Correct it, ruthlessly, whenever we come across it. And keep pointing out that a queen who was blond and blue eyed was not in fact “black” unless everyone is. And that reading racial tea leaves is a pseudo-science, like phrenology.
I would very much appreciate if we could put this behind us so may family doesn’t keep getting asked “what is your racial background” by complete strangers. (And not just census takers, whom I like to answer with “human.”)
Look, in the end, the darkest African and the lightest Scandinavian have more in common with each other than not. To pretend otherwise is arrant nonsense.
Yes, our far-distant ancestors developed racism as a necessary survival tool (along with the uncanny valley discomfort) because you could fall into the hands of another hominin band and become “food”. (The chimps are less discriminating and will also eat babies of their own band.)
We are now past that, and I would like it not to return. Yes, there are physical characteristics that go with certain character traits, but it’s harder to track than you think, and they’re often things that have nothing to do with race, let alone racial stereotypes.
We all have one drop of slaves and enslaved, or saints, sinners, murderers, murder victims, kings and peasants, ascetics and whores. And we all have all the inclinations of all of mankind in varying degrees.
It’s what you make of it and with it that determines whether you can wear “human” as a crown, or in fact get cast out of the human race for shoving in line.
It’s time to stop with the nonsense.
(Update: fixed wrong word. Thank you John S. for pointing it out. The other one still comes up first for me, but I’m coming to the conclusion my search engine is weird.)
According To Hoyt 