Brent Staples is such a hypocrite. Most of his columns are devoted to promoting the “one drop” myth of “light-skinned blacks” and “passing for white.” He admits that blacks are cruel to the mixed-race, but in other columns he has claimed that every American “black” is really a mulatto. If that were true, then phenotype differences would be at least as accepted among “blacks” as they are among “Hispanics.” We know that is not the case.
When Staples claims that “whites” can have “black” children, he is endorsing
the very ideology he claims to oppose.”
Senator Strom Thurmond’s Deception Ravaged Two Lives
December 26, 2003
The New York Times
By BRENT STAPLES
White descendants of Senator Strom Thurmond are frantic about the revelation that he fathered the child of a black maid who worked in the family household in South Carolina during the 1920’s. The black daughter, a retired teacher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams, denied the relationship and met secretly with her father for more than 60 years. Her children encouraged her to go public after Mr. Thurmond died last summer at the age of 100.
A white Thurmond niece spoke for many in the family when she described the revelation as “a blight” on the family. White Thurmonds who share this sentiment should get over their misplaced shame – and think about the two lives that were irreparably damaged by 60 years of deception and lies.
Why is it so shocking to say that most African Americans are mulatto/mixed-race? That would seem to make perfect sense given the wide variations in phenotype of most “blacks”?