How can a black, er, uh, how can an African-American person be guilty of racism?, my late first wife, Em, once asked me. Oh, ye, of little imagination....

If you were to look at me, you wouldn't think I'm black. I'm about as pasty-white as you ever see. President Warren G. Harding (who, like me, was born in Ohio) was 1/64th black. Bart and Lisa Simpson, the cartoon characters, are 1/64th black. I don't know what tribe Harding or the Simpsons come from, but I'm four times as black as they are, being a hexadecaroon - 1/16 black.

Passing Ease

I didn't find out until I was in high school. My mother didn't think I was smart enough to keep my trap shut; life is probably easier for one who passes as white. She was an octoroon, and her in-laws only learned of that after she was married. They really looked down on her until she discovered my father's mother tried to hide the fact she was 25% Cherokee. When they called her a damn nigger, she held her head high and announced that the only good indian was a dead Indian. It wasn't a good solution; in a mud-slinging contest, the only thing that's sure is that everyone gets covered with mud.

Over the years, I learned of other members of our small town that were legally black but passing for white. The funny thing was, I learned a lot of the local black history from a Buffalo Soldier who owned a shoe repair shop. If I had to do something after school, and needed someplace to wait until I could get a ride home, I was generally told to wait at the shoe repair shop.

Librarians And Barbers

The head librarian was pretty snippy at certain times of the month about young boys unescorted by parents, and at the barber shop, the barbers generally had a game of gin going in the back, playing for money, and as much bourbon was involved as was gin, and a considerable amount of salty language. Mom didn't want me picking up on the habitual use of impolite phrases, considering that I was clever enough to use them appropriately when adults were abusing me. Calling someone a cocksucker, for instance, isn't nearly as offensive when someone is assured of his own sexuality as when he was a closeted homosexual whose closeting wasn't nearly as effective was he hoped.

My father's father swore all the time about niggers, which was really odd when you considered that one of the members of the threshing ring - the ring was a group of farmers who formed a cooperative to purchase and operate a mechanized thresher - was what was politely called colored, and Leo, the shoe repair entrepreneur, was his best friend. I asked him about it once, and he threatened me never to call Leo a nigger. "Leo's just Leo," he explained, and niggers were people, largely from the cities, who were lazy, shiftless, stupid, and dishonest. He'd never have considered partnering in a threshing ring with niggers, nor, I suppose, would he have been happy about his son marrying an octaroon, pregnant on her 16th birthday. Although, I suppose I might point out, since I had been a pickaninny of the same union, my family was never quite as welcome as everyone else at his house on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Wits and Witlings

At the same time, the black side of the family contained all the writers, editors, school teachers, engineers, designers, merchants, and politicians. The native american side of the family were all dirt farmers, most of them sharecroppers (although I was in college before I realized that's what we were; we called ourselves "tenant farmers") although one of Dad's brother's escaped to become an engineer on the
Nickle Plate Road.

And it wasn't until my late 20s that I asked my mother for further details about my black heritage. "A slave was a slave for life, and so were his children. He was an indentured servant, which was like a slave for seven or ten years, whose children were never enslaved. He was what they called a low nigger, who managed to get to Europe, and who indentured himself to make his way to America."

Lenny Was A Muganda

At that time, I was sharing a room with Lenny, who was a brilliant black physicist, as black as anthracite, who was from Kenya. You've heard of Uganda, he told me. That means "land of the Maganda. The language we speak is Laganda." And he would have other African college students over to the apartment, and they would jibber-jabber away about this and that in Laganda, except that every third sentence would contain a word of English in it, a word that wasn't translated because there was no translation for the word. Allen - a Jewish graduate student from Maine - was the third occupant of the apartment, and we'd each be studying our own subjects, and both of us would break out with laughter simultaneously as the animated discussion would break out in the names of professors and politicians and of highly unlikely sexual perversions. One of us would turn to the other and say, "I didn't think it was physically possible to put your knee in your ear up to your elbow."

In any case, Lenny taught me that my heritage wasn't from "low nigger", like one might be from "Low Germans",but rather from the Luo, which was an east-african tribe, largely from from Kenya. When Barack was elected to the White House, I was pleased to have a cousin in high office - Barack's father was from the Luo as well.

Tribes Matter

He also taught me that tribal heritage was important. Most of the slaves sold into the triangle trade were slaves in Africa as well. Mostly what was sold were the culls, as the slavetraders knew the plantation owners were ignorant and would pay little more for top-notch labor than for shiftless, dishonest, stupid agricultural laborers. They were able to buy the culls for little or nothing in Africa from owners who were happy to get rid of them, and with so little invested in them, the slavers weren't too worried about a high rate of attrition aboard ship.

Lenny laughed at the black students' association. "They talk about Zulu and Swahili," he pointed out, and he'd laugh and shake his head. The Zulu were a tribe of fierce warriors from southern Africa. The Swahili were from the same general area as the Luo and the Muganda. "Zulu would die rather than surrender. They were never enslaved. And most of the slaves came from western central Africa. The Swahili were highly educated, and they were sometimes hired west as overseers, but they were highly valued employees, and slaveowners would not sell them to the slavers unless there was a real problem they needed to resolve, such as a murderer or a rapist. Any Swahili sold as a slave was no bargain. And the African students generally had a pretty low opinion of the black American students. "You don't get prize roses by planting thistle seed," Lenny put it.

Tribal Racism

And I wouldn't argue that you should buy Lenny's argument as if it were the whole truth. It wasn't like he was a disinterested party. On the other hand, students who came to the US knowing not a single word of English would pick up the language and graduate four years later at the time of their class in various majors, while native American blacks struggled to finish a baccalaureate degree in five or six years.

Having said all this, you don't know much about my ancestry. I don't claim to know everything, not by a long shot, and it's not like I'm a disinterested party, either. On the other hand, I've "outed" myself to the black community of the small town where I come from, and they've told me of many others who are passing for white with what appears to be a mediterranean skin tone. Blacks who look whitish-enough to pass are known as "high-yellow". For instance, I know that the doctor who delivered me was black, and the local Ford dealer. Ten years after I learned about the Ford dealer, his daughter married into our family; neither she nor he knew that either family was legally black, especially since the old one sixteenth rule of racial identity no longer was of any significance. (They know now, of course; each asked parents and/or grandparents, that knew both families to be nonwhite.)

Blondie Doesn't Buy It

All of which comes down to Blondie and me. I have such a wicked sense of humor that Blondie has never been sure whether to believe me when I tell her that I'm a hexadecaroon. I'm just too white for her to believe me. And Blondie has dark roots to her blonde hair, which is just fine with me.

She's had trouble getting along with one of our neighbors, however. Well, if truth be known, she has a little trouble getting along with many of our neighbors, but it's only a little trouble. She thinks her opinion matters on too many things. I get along just fine with just about everybody, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that I try my damnest to find no fault with what they do. You want to rub blue mud into your navel and dance nude in the midnight moon, it's your mud, and your navel, and your yard, and no concern of mine.

The Odd Man Out

One of our neighbors, however, doesn't like Marie, and the feeling is mutual. It's pretty hard to make an enemy of Marie. The cat claws Marie regularly, and Marie tries to be friends anyhow. Just this morning, for instance, Marie gave the cat a big ole kiss, a dog kiss being a big ole slobbery slurp with the tongue, and I can see why the cat might not find that exactly welcome.

It's no wonder he doesn't like Marie. He doesn't seem to like anyone.

A couple of years ago, this neighbor came to our door demanding that we buy his son another pair of $165 sneakers, because his son had stepped in some of Marie's feces. Normally, we pick up Marie's feces from the front yard within moments, but if it's raining out, we usually wait until the next day to do that. Blondie asked him to show where the feces were that his son had stepped in, and the feces were in our yard.

Reimbursing Trespass

"You want me to pay your son $165 in damages because your son ruined his sneakers by trespassing in our yard?" she demanded. He did. Blondie told him that she didn't normally object to people trespassing in our yard, but in this case, she was going to make an exception.

Shortly after that, that neighbor was cutting down a tree in his back yard, and a branch went flying against our brand-new back window right next to where Blondie was standing inside the house. She complained to him that he was being awfully careless, and if that branch had hit our house the slightest bit harder, it would have resulted in a smashed window and a visit to the emergency room for her. He was unsympathetic to her.

Yard Rage

Ever since then, he's been screaming at Marie every time she exits the house, insisting that Marie is defecating in his yard. That's not happening, although there are quite lot of people walking along our street, and I'm sure his yard is used by some of them. And lately, he's been stepping up the antagonism.

"You know," I told Blondie, a couple of months ago, "it's probably that you're blonde. You know that every black man wants at least one blonde lover of his own, and he's probably got a thing for you." I was teasing, of course. It's a stereotype, which is just another way to say, it's a lie. He may have a thing for Blondie, of course. She's got curves in all the right places, and she cleans up right purty, and the fact that she's a blonde is immaterial; in fact, I think she'd be more attractive as a brunette, although I can't say for sure, as I've never seen her that way. It's Blondie's opinion, on the other hand, that any woman can be a blonde if she wants to be, and if she doesn't want to be, she's got something wrong with her.

PenisBlonde Envy

But she got to thinking about what I said, and the other day, she noticed that when she pulled out to drive to work, he was already in his car, and he pulled out and followed her. What's more, when she left work, he was parked nearby, and he pulled out and followed her home as well. She telephoned the police and made a complaint that she was being stalked.

I don't know what he's capable of. Every so often, he gets drunk, and I hear awfully violent arguments through the common wall. It's hard to tell, though, whether he's throwing things or she is, and whether things are being thrown at other people, or if they are being thrown against the wall. I wouldn't worry much about someone who picks up a plate and throws it against the wall in frustration. That's different than someone who picks up a cast iron skillet and throws it at at someone else hoping to inflict injury.

You Can't Win

This morning, the girl that lives next door told Blondie, as she left the house, "You won't win, you know. You can't." I'm a peaceable man, but I've been widowed once. If something were to happen to Blondie, I don't have a lot of trust in the ability of the prosecutor to achieve justice. I'm an old man anyway. If someone were to take Blondie away from me, my life would further be dramatically shortened by that. I'd be willing to spend those few months remaining to me in prison in order to make up for the shortcomings of the criminal justice system, and with a minor in chemistry under my belt, I would know exactly what to do. Maybe I can't win - but I'd have little to lose. If he would realize that, maybe neither of us would have to lose.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Bart Simpson - Buffalo Soldier - Cherokee - hexadecaroon - high yellow - Luo - Muganda - Nickle Plate Road - octaroon - penis envy - playing gin - prosecutor - racism - sneakers - Swahili - Warren G Harding - Zulu