{"id":1246,"date":"2005-10-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp\/index.php\/2005\/10\/31\/why-race-isnt-as-black-and-white-as-we-think-2\/"},"modified":"2016-12-20T07:00:04","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T07:00:04","slug":"why-race-isnt-as-black-and-white-as-we-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2005\/10\/31\/why-race-isnt-as-black-and-white-as-we-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Race Isn’t as ‘Black’ and ‘White’ as We Think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Race Isn’t as ‘Black’ and ‘White’ as We Think<\/a>
\nThe New York Times
\nby Brent Staples<\/p>\n

People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a “white” name like Brent Staples. One letter writer ridiculed it as “an anchorman’s name” and accused me of making it up. For the record, it’s a British name – and the one my parents gave me. “Staples” probably arrived in my family’s ancestral home in Virginia four centuries ago with the British settlers.<\/p>\n

The earliest person with that name we’ve found – Richard Staples – was hacked to death by Powhatan Indians not far from Jamestown in 1622. The name moved into the 18th century with Virginians like John Staples, a white surveyor who worked in Thomas Jefferson’s home county, Albemarle, not far from the area where my family was enslaved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Race Isn’t as ‘Black’ and ‘White’ as We Think The New York Times by Brent Staples People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a “white” name like Brent Staples....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,141],"tags":[121,129],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-mixed-blog","category-news-clips","tag-biracial-and-multiracial","tag-evolution-and-human-migration"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-k6","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/News-Clips.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5527,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions\/5527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}