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Thanks Kaywil! “Why aren’t African-Americans achieving all that they could?…His conclusion was that hardworking black and Hispanic children, unlike non-Hispanic white kids, lost friends if they studied hard.”
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Thanks teachergirl! “Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas…It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census record
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Thanks Kyla! “His termination came after a Wednesday meeting in which staffers discussed a lack of racial diversity in the paper’s hiring…Blum responded to concerns in a way some may have construed as offensive or dismissive.”
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Thanks Kyla! “Aides to Mrs. Clinton dismissed suggestions that they were following Mr. Obama, but members of Congress traveling to Selma said they were encouraged by her allies to attend her speech, not his.”
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Thanks teachergirl! “A high school divided students by ethnicity for separate pep talks on boosting test scores… also held separate assemblies for white and Hispanic students, stirring accusations of segregation from some students’ parents.”
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Thanks ananser! “The 250,000-member Cherokee Nation will vote in a special election today whether to override a 141-year-old treaty and change the tribal constitution to bar “freedmen,” the descendants of former tribal slaves, from being members of the so
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Thanks Kimberly! “A sorority at Depauw University is being accused of discrimination after officers of the Delta Zeta sorority asked 23 members to leave the group. The members who were asked to leave…are minorities or could be considered overweight”
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Thanks Rob! “Step aside, Superman. The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis is hosting a one-day program on “Native American Portrayals in Comics.” From Turok to Tribal Force, BIG CHIEF WAHOO to SCALPED, the spotlight will shine on seven decades of Indians in
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
gatamala wrote:
“Don’t get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry,” Darren Buzzard, an advocate of expelling the freedmen, wrote last summer in a widely circulated e-mail denounced by freedmen. “Don’t let black freedmen back you into a corner. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. FOR OUR DAUGHTER[S] . . . FIGHT AGAINST THE INFILTRATION.”
What people will do to survive in America. If the whites killed physically, the “tribal leaders” will commit cultural and spiritual suicide.
As pathetic as this is, I’m glad this story made it into the WaPo. It clearly demonstrates the true history of America vis-a-vis slavery, race, Native Americans and money and how slavery is not something that just “happened in the past”. Its legacy has some very powerful and real implications for today.
This story of slavery and not being included (while mixed-race whites were and ARE) is one that we’ve always discussed as it is part of our (personal and collective ‘our’) family history. What is so telling is how those who are of mixed black/Cherokee heritage merely want recognition of their existence and their family, while the privileged “tribal leaders” merely want $$$$$$. My paternal grandmother’s grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee (Choctaw on the other side) and any interest I have in that branch of the family is just that. Considering that such descendants actually have the ability to tighten or sever the purse strings on tribal appropriations you’d think that any ally would be valuable. Why not enlarge the pie instead of cutting out those who rightfully deserve a slice????
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 9:10 am ¶
m wrote:
So Barack Obama’s white ancesters might have owned slaves, does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton’s family didn’t own slaves, or Bush’s family? How about McCain’s family or Edwards’? Slavery in America didn’t happen in a vacuum. It is an unfortunate feature of our past. Barack Obama certainly cannot be blamed for that.
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 10:19 am ¶
Erica wrote:
This whole thing about Barack’s ancestors owning slaves pisses me off. For people to demand that he address the issue is absurd. What is there to address?
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 11:22 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
he can address it….along with every other candidate
step ya game up Hillary
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 12:13 pm ¶
berrybrowne wrote:
the whole cherokee nation/freedman expulsion story has been hurting my feelings for weeks now. why oh why can’t black people get any love?! (not to be overly dramatic, or simplistic) particularly as descendants of slaves, we often don’t get the opportunity to know where our african ancestors are from, so finding connections within native american tribal nations is incredibly meaningful. i rememberhow grateful i was to learn of my blackfoot heritage in fifth grade when all of the white students could discuss their heritage in pie chart terms: i’m 1/8 german, 1/3 polish, 1/8 welsh, etc. it’d be nice to think that a shared history of suffering would bind peoples together, so this is even more disappointing. it reminds me of the story about the controversy surrounding the biracial miss navajo nation’s unacceptably “black features,” in 1998. i’ll send a link to carmen…
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 1:10 pm ¶
blair wrote:
Barak Obama’s link to slavery should be a non-issue. If researchers traced Obama’s African lineage they would undoubtedly discover that he has black as well as white ancestors who owned slaves or participated in the slave trade in Africa. In the United States, virtually everyone, regardless of race, has ancestors who owned slaves or participated in the slave trade. This includes African Americans since free blacks also owned slaves (one of the South’s largest slave owners was a free black man) and many—probably most—African Americans have whites in their family trees. The percentage of freed blacks who owned slaves was small, but so was the percentage of whites who owned slaves.
Slavery was also practiced in all Northern states and was still legal in some Northern states at the time of the Civil War. Most Americans have ancestors who fought for the North as well as ancestors who fought for the South. Hispanic Americans also have ancestors who owned slaves (more than two-thirds of slaves transported from African to the Americas went to Mexico and South America). American Indian tribes had both before and after the arrival of Europeans (the largest slave market that every existed in the Americas was one the Aztecs maintained near Mexico city prior to the Spanish conquest). Slavery continued to be legal on tribal lands inside the United States after the Civil War. The United States finally ended slavery within its borders by purchasing slaves from the Indian tribes and setting the free. The Cherokee was the last to give up their slaves. Just this weekend the Cherokee Nation voted to oust the descendants of Cherokee slaves from tribal role.
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 2:32 pm ¶
teachergirl wrote:
My hunch is this – the trend of dredging up the fact that Obama’s ancestors owned slaves does two things, both basically with the same effect – it’s useful in absolving white people from white guilt and from having to take responsibility for the remaining legacy of slavery.
1. it’s “proof” that any legacy of slavery is rather “passe” because races (specifically slave owners and blacks) mix and “clean and articulate” candidates are the result.
2. it’s Obama’s responsibility to deal with these “charges” now. White people can now just watch with their arms cross and evaluate the black man addressing this. Al Sharpton’s recent discovery that he is a descended from a slave owned by segregationist senator Strom Thurmond, in my mind, functions the same way. The burden is on the black man in the spotlight.
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 3:41 pm ¶
kim wrote:
gatamala and berrybrowne:
This is so saddening to me, that once again Black people are found to be the undesireables of the world.
Have to wonder, are Blacks the Chosen People?
This saddens me for thousands of reasons, many of them for the collective disgrace that members of the Native American communities, who have maintained those ties and/or documented their lineage, a few of them for the person stain it paints on my own family, also Blackfoot.
While just one family member actively lives and models the Blackfoot contribution to our lives, through custom and that inextricable face of hers, we all respect the stories she tells us, and have begun to sprinkle ideas of the Native ancestry into our raising, and naming, of our children. This particular aunt was not even charged retail tax in NYC when I was growing up, though she carries no card, because the merchants knew that they were not to charge the Native American sales tax. They would actually block her hand from forwarding anything ove the amount of the actual tag price.
Still in all, I have to remember an old poem, by whom I cannot remember right now (maybe Madhubuti, or Baraka) about the lunacy and slap in the face of the Black American constantly rattling on about being “Indian,” while no Native American goes out to spin tales of their Black American connection. To me, there is so much of personal shame in the resonant aspects of that poem, needing to reach out to be “more than” just Black: Black+.
I do not mean to indict anyone here, least of all my own family, but there seems to be no love…
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 4:01 pm ¶
teachergirl wrote:
To go with my previous comment, look how this is framed:
(from Thurmond’s Black Granddaughter Reaches To Sharpton)
“The black granddaughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond said Monday that the Rev. Al Sharpton should try to make peace with the revelation that his family is linked to that of the former segregationist.
‘We made our peace with ours,’ said Wanda Terry, whose mother is Thurmond’s biracial daughter. ‘My mother addressed that. She has a relationship with her family members, and she’s moved on. There’s no animosity, and there’s no point in having all this resentment because it’s not healthy and it’s not doing anyone any good.’”
In other words, from one black person to another: get over it. Slavery is over. White America just watches and moves on: “Doesn’t concern us. I told you so.”
Posted 05 Mar 2007 at 4:12 pm ¶