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Melungeons and the Mixed Race Experience

A speech given to the Melungeon "Sixth Union" Conference on June 9, 2006.

One of the many "hidden histories" of the United States has been the story of the massive government effort to deny the existence of mixed-race people and, especially, the multiracial ancestry within the so-called "white race" (or more appropriately, white caste).  Most Americans have probably been taught some form of what sociologists call hypodescent - the idea that the offspring of so-called "interracial" unions inevitably increase the population of the nonwhite ancestral group or, if there is more than one nonwhite ancestral group, the population with the lowest social status.

American history books are filled with sad stories of oppression designed to make students cry for the trials and tribulations of blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Asians, etc.  Students are often told, at some point, that there is a "one drop rule" in the United States forcing an unwanted and involuntary blackness on even the whitest people with that tainted ancestry.  They are NOT told that this so-called rule is openly violated every day by millions of people.  They are NOT told about the partial African ancestry in Hispanics and Arabs.  And they are most certainly NEVER told about Melungeons, Redbones, Creoles and numerous internal ethnic groups, sub-cultures and individuals who resisted efforts to push them into the lower caste of a binary racial caste system.  If students WERE told these things, they would have to conclude that hypodescent can no longer be forced AND, more importantly, that white racial purity does not exist.

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On Being Great, but Not Feeling ‘Good’

300 Million and Questioning Our Strength

by Adam Abraham

The occasion of America’s population odometer tripping over the 300 million mark should be a cause for celebration and rejoicing, but instead for many, it is a time of great caution and pause. We are a great nation whose people are not sure of their greatness; many of whom don’t feel great at all.

Many Americans don’t feel great about the current war in Iraq. We’ve moved from a country that respected the sovereignty of other nations’ right to govern its people in ways we disagreed, to unilaterally ordaining ourselves as the world’s police force. I’d like to say that we’re peacekeepers, but we’re not making peace with anyone. Our president thought that the events of September 11, 2001 gave us license to invade two foreign countries, turn over their governments, and wreak havoc on their people while trying to apprehend or kill “those responsible.”

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