Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 09:27:54 -0500
From: A.D. Powell
Subject: J. Edgar Hoover as “black”
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,335802,00.html
Another idiotic “black” American, former Los Angeles teacher Millie McGhee, claims that the late Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) Director J. Edgar Hoover was really “black” and only “passing as white” because he possibly had some “black” ancestry. Let’s consider the idiocy of McGhee’s position.
1) She says her research shows that Hoover’s grandfather and great-grandfather lived in a segregated black area of Washington and were classified in a census as “coloured”.
The census is not only notoriously inaccurate, but “coloured” does not tell us much about a person’s actual ancestry. “Coloured” was a generic term for “non-white” and was applied to people of Indian (not “black”) ancestry as well as those with African ancestry who were not officially “white.” We cannot use the census to determine how “white” or “black” these ancestors were.
2) “Is this man so ashamed of his race that he would spend his whole life passing for white?” she asks. “How has our race offended him?”
Since the “one drop” myth so dear to McGhee is based in the idea that “black” genes are so super-inferior that even a tiny amount can destroy the “whiteness” of a person of predominately European descent, why shouldn’t Hoover have been “ashamed” of inferiority-complex-ridden Negroes trying to claim him for their own? Also, if Hoover is a member of McGhee’s “race,” because of a small amount of “black” ancestry, wouldn’t all the Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc. be members of her “race” as well? As long as “blacks” like McGhee are stupid enough to endorse a racist myth based upon their extreme “inferiority,” they will continue to “offend” many people who won’t put up with their “one drop” idiocy. You don’t see Jews being stupid enough to endorse “Aryan” mythology, do you?
3) She believes that his obsession with [Martin Luther] King and other black civil rights leaders stemmed in part from his repressed anger about his secret life.
Hoover’s small amount of “black” ancestry doesn’t constitute a “secret life.” If hated of King and other civil rights leaders comes from repressed anger over “black” ancestry, when are Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond going to be “outed”? May we assume that ALL those Southern white segregationists were “passing”? If they were, isn’t that really a confirmation of the “black inferiority” myth they promoted?
4) Ms McGhee says that the book is not an expos� of Hoover’s dishonesty, but more of a cross between “Roots and Danielle Steel”, in that it catalogues her search to discover the family’s secrets.
Hoover was dishonest about many things, but his “race” wasn’t one of them. There is a great deal of dishonesty in the fact that this kind of “black” idiocy is not directly challenged by those who know better. I might add that “Roots” was revealed to be dishonest as well.
I find it incredible that so many “blacks” in the United States continue to, with great cowardice, single out isolated “white” individuals to claim for their “race,” while carefully ignoring the masses of Latinos and Arab-Americans who show plenty of “black blood” and disdain to identify with “blacks.” The history of Mexican-American “civil rights” litigation, for example, consists mainly of the argument that they are “white” (despite their dark skins) and better than mere “blacks.” Find ONE “black” publication that denounces that attitude. No, they respect it by maintaining their silence.
Finally, let’s end this myth of “race” altogether. The idea that a person who looks “white” is really “black” is as valid as the Third Reich’s division of mankind into “Aryans” and “non-Aryans.”