Date: Sunday, June 03, 2001 8:03 PM
From: “Akin Jeje”
Subject: Letter to the Editor
A quick question- why does there seem to be such a considerable amount of hostility between those who identify as African-American and those mixed people of partial African ancestry who disavow being “black”, so to speak? I don’t know if some of the statements I have found in the letters are all that helpful towards multiracial advocacy, namely the notion that African Americans are trying to “tyrannize” mixed-raced people into being African-Americans. To be honest, you’re not each other’s enemy, y’all, and on top of it in a white supremacist society, if you’re not white, then the argument as to who is what weakens considerably in the face of a larger situation that posits you subordinate to white hegemony. This nonsense is why places like South Africa, Brazil and Haiti still have serious racial problems, with those of mixed race often in conflict with those are black or African-identified. Trust me, it does NOT help either group to fuss and fight like this. Be who you are, by all means, but proclaming your racial identity in opposition to what you’re not is divisive and ultimately futile. People, read your damn history books again. What you’re engaged in is called divide and conquer. Many Latinos of partial African ancestry ( Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Afro-Cubans) also identify apart from African-Americans, which is fair enough, but that does not avoid them being racially profiled and discriminated against. I recall reading a website of one Mr. Richard “Warbird” Miller which dealt roughly with the discrimination that he felt that he received from blacks because he was mixed, etc. Richard, trust me, your biological ancestry had less to do with how you were treated than the cultural values that you espouse. Put simply, your views lean somewhat more Anglo than African-American, which is fine. However, I don’t think that posting a Mulatto Nation website is necessarily the best advocacy. And to A.D Powell, while you make comeplling arguments about the fallacies of ascribing some sort of totalizing “blackness” on any historical figure with some African ancestry (e.g the Healy brothers), I’d be a little more cautious as to being seen to try and deny African ancestry, however distant and minute. In short, I see the problem between the two camps of belief to be a lack of listening respectfully enough to each other. I understand that mixed raced peoples don’t want to be umbrellad under a single racial definition that doesn’t suit their particular cultural situation, and that makes sense. African-Americans often have a sort of Pan-Africanist way of defining “blackness” to expand the community, and that is, well, okay to a point. Where I feel that both camps are wrong is in the fact that each group sees its stance as ultimate truth, with the others being sellouts, tyrants, what have you. Listen, people, no matter who may or may not have valid arguments on this very complex issue, I assure you that if it comes to armed ethnic conflict in the States ( and it might happen sooner than you think), those militias won’t give a damn what y’all call yourselves. Take a gander at the Turner Diaries, which Timothy McVeigh reportedly read before bombing the govt. building in Oklahoma. To a lot of the supremacists within your borders, mixed or African-American or Puerto RIcan, you’re all the enemy. Even beyond this apocalyptic forecast, ask any Cape Coloured or Brazilian mulatto if his life is much better than that of those of pure African due to his mixed racial heritage. Hell, we’re all mixed, and this in-fighting within peoples of color will not pan out well.