Strom Thurmond's Not-So-Secret Black Daughter (US is a mixed-race nation

[Vitruvius]

By BRENT STAPLES

African-Americans and white Americans are so deeply entangled by blood that racial categories have become meaningless. When discussing the issue in public, I typically offer my own family as an example. We check "black" on the census and appear black to the naked eye, but we are also descended from white ancestors on both sides. Despite appearances, I told an audience not long ago, "I am as `white' as anyone in this room."

White people — mainly blank-faced and perplexed — typically don't get it. But black people get it fine: they chuckle, cover their faces in mock embarrassment or nod in quiet agreement. Racial ambiguity is a theme they have heard discussed in their families and communities throughout their lives.

Black families have always talked openly about white ancestors and relatives. In hotbeds of race-mixing like New Orleans or Charleston, S.C., black and white branches of a family sometimes lived so close at hand that they ran into one another on the street, and black children were warned that their pale relatives could react violently if approached. Black parents who passed on news of white ancestry to their offspring were not trying to arrange family reunions. They were debunking racism by showing their children that black families and white families were more closely connected by ancestry than racists liked to admit.

White families, by contrast, were terrified by blackness in the family tree. Relationships that could not simply be ignored were deliberately buried. The cover-up hatched 200 years ago by Thomas Jefferson's family was blown away a few years back after genetic evidence showed that Jefferson almost certainly fathered Sally Hemings's final son, Eston, born in 1808. This led historians to conclude that Jefferson fathered all of her children in a relationship that lasted more than 35 years. <SNIP>

The point was underscored dramatically when the family of Strom Thurmond, the former United States senator, dropped decades of denials and acknowledged that Mr. Thurmond, who died last summer at the age of 100, had fathered a daughter with a black maid in the family household in 1925. <SNIP> Like most stories of its kind, this one would have died out long ago had it not been carried for nearly a century on the tongues of black South Carolinians, who recognized the story of Strom Thurmond and Essie Mae Washington-Williams's mother as a universal story of black families across the state. <SNIP> Like the Jefferson story, this one seems more sensational because of who Strom Thurmond was. In truth, it is the story of the entire American South — and the great secret of race that until just recently dared not speak its name.

MORE at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/opinion/18THU4.html

And it's not just the South. If you take historical "Black" and Native American birthrates over time, correct for infant mortality & etc, you find there should be about twice as many people of color in America as there are today. Where are the missing Blacks & Native Americans? They were light-skinned enough to pass, and "became white" and married white (as my Father did). Which means we are a majority mixed-race nation today.

[demnan]

1. This is so very true

and much more acknowledged in early days, oddly, before desegregation, among whites.

Also there is the phenonenom of "passing for white" in which a mixed race person is so pale that they pass into white society in another town with another name perhaps.

I'm sure many whites today are descendents of "passing for white" persons. Perhaps even among KluKluxKlan members you may find descendants, unknowingly, of African-Americans.

[Vitruvius]

4. And a lot of white people know, and are scared to death someone might

find out. If you add up people of color (who are oppressed every day) and "white" people who are afraid they'd be in the same boat if their secret leaked out, you might have a majority. (If all mixed-ancestry "whites" knew, you would have a majority.)

America is not just a mixed-race nation, it's one seriously fouled-up mixed-race nation; a mixed-race nation that's still -- in part -- in denial and ashamed of what it is.


------ ----

P.S: I am proud of all my ancestors, but I keep my secret like all the rest (except on DU, because I'm semi-anonymous here). Because I know what my cousins go through, and if I came out, I'd damage my siblings, nieces, and nephews -- which I have no right to do -- as well as myself.

[FredrickDouglass]

11. Puhleeez

"I am proud of all my ancestors, but I keep my secret like all the rest"

Just think about that statement for a minute. Get real.

FD

[Vitruvius]

12. I know what my cousins go thru

-- the same guff that the racist ruling class inflicts on any person of color in this country. And neither side of the family sees any good that would come out of the "white" side of the family informing the enemy of who we are, and thereby allowing them to inflict that same guff on us, with no resulting gain whatsoever for our cousins.

In this world, you tell the enemy NOTHING. It took me years to become a proficient scientist & inventor like my parents. And I am not prepared to give that up -- or to be endlessly distracted from my profession by endless battles with a mindlessly racist ruling class.

So yes, I keep the family secret. And yes, it gravels me to do so -- you definitely touched a nerve. But when you're living in a primitive culture -- like Bu$h's America -- you watch your step and pick your fights. And rather than giving the enemy this information, I chose instead to be politically active as a Democrat, and -- when I was able -- work with a clique of people like myself to hire, develop, and promote as many able people of color as we could. We did pretty well.

Vitruvius

P.S: I am only a quarter Native American anyway -- so I think it would be stretching it to claim to be a Native American. What I am is a mixed-ancestry individual -- like the majority of Americans.

Incidentally, there are a LOT of mixed-ancestry "whites" in science & engineering -- I suspect that mixed ancestry promotes creativity; one can make a plausible argument for "hybrid vigor" in human beings as well as in plants and animals. However there is no supporting research and probably never will be, because the answer might prove too inconvenient to our shallow-gene-pool ruling class.

[DuctapeFatwa]

13. primitive culture

It is indeed. Thank you for saying so.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. Hello! Thanks for posting this! Maybe this will help the ones who ask

why Miss Essie has "come forth."

I don't doubt that her kids, and grandkids, and great-grandkids urged her to, but their voices were joined by a chorus of millions - a couple of centuries' worth - of other kids, and grand-kids and great and great-greats.....

[GainesT1958]

3. What's really sad...

About all this is the spectre of the denials that Strom Thurmond's family felt neccessary to invoke until just recently. Apparently, Strom himself accepted it from the time Mrs. Williams was 16, and supported her financially annually. Why it's been so hard for people to admit stuff like this ANY TIME in the last 40 years is beyond me...what's such a social disgrace in admitting a mistake--namely, that you fathered ANY child "out of wedlock", no matter what the child's race was--and going on to accepting the child publicly as your own? No stigma the child didn't create should be visited upon him or her, especially if it involved a mixed-race relationship. "Miscegenation", as it was called, was only a "crime" during the days of slavery, and then segregation; and of course was as wrongly classified as a crime as was, say, sitting on a city bus seat in the "Whites Only" section.x(

Much the same thing happened with Julius "Dr. J" Erving and his illegitmate daughter, who reached the Ladies' Doubles semis at Wimbledon a couple of years ago. Why not just come out and admit/accept publicly what you, and somebody else, did as a mistake that--who--turned out pretty well?

B-)

[wabeewoman]

10. Not sure how much 'accepted'

she was. He always referred to her as a family friend not daughter. His grandson is a doctor and there was an article about him in the Daily Chronicle. He doesn't remember meeting Thurmond although was told he did when very young. He was growing up and feeling the affects of Thurmond's policies on race while the family was 'protecting' him. Thurmond wrote him a letter of recommendation for school as a consituents son. IMHO would have been better to have spoke out much sooner about it.
No link as its subscription only so couldn't find it.

[Lisa]

5. he did himself out of a wonderful family relationship ...

Imagine the grandchildren (and great-grandchildren by now, probably) he could only hold in secret. He couldn't welcome them to his office like other Senators could, or display their childhood artwork proudly, or have any kind of normal life with them.

Sad for the kids ... and even worse for him, I think. He could have ended this at any time -- and in the process done a wonderful thing for his country. My guess is that he wouldn't have had to fear for his Senate seat, not now. It was his own fear and bigotry that kept him imprisoned.

If you ask any college or high-school student what "miscegenation" is, or what an "octaroon" is ... the vast majority don't know. They laugh when they find out -- they can't believe that people ever made a fuss over having black (or white) ancestors.

[amazing grace]

6. So true

As I noted in another forum, this demonstrates how racism in American harmed not only black people but damaged and diminished whites as well.

Racism damages everyone it touches and its damage is not limited to its targets. Those who inflict it - despite their evil and horrid opinions and actions - are also victims in the long run. I strongly believe that unless and until people realize that racism affects THEM as well, we will never really confront the issue.

Thurmond is a perfect example. Yes, he had reprehensible views, behaved despicably and did great harm to blacks and the country as a whole. But he was also a product of his time and was probably trapped into a situation that was far larger than he was. Of course, he could have bucked the system, rebelled against its strictures but, like so many other people, he did not behave heroically. He just went along with it and rode the wave.

Who knows the circumstances of Thurmond's relationship with Ms. Williams' mother? Many people assume that Ms. Williams was the product of a rape or something close to it. But it is possible that her parents had what passed for a mutual relationship in 1925 - it was not necessarily a rape or even a coerced situation. I say this based not only on the fact that Ms. Williams' mother seemed to have maintained contact with Thurmond and even arranged for him to meet their daughter, but also on my knowledge of numerous relationships by people in similar situations. For example, a member of my own family was the product of a consensual relationship between a black maid and the son of her white employer. They actually cared for one another, but knew they could never marry or even let anyone know about the relationship. When she became pregnant, his family sent him out of state to avoid scandal. Sound familiar? And this sort of thing was not uncommon at all - in fact, it happened all the time, it just was never talked about.

Of course, this relationship could have been something entirely different - none of us knows for sure - but we should not immediately discount the possibility that a relationship existed.

Like many white men of privilege during that time, Thurmond certainly knew he could never have a normal relationship with his daughter - for whom he obviously felt some affection and obligation - nor would he likely have even tried. But one doesn't have to be blind to his shortcomings to be somewhat touched by his efforts to be some kind of father to her - helping with her finances, arranging for her education, visiting her in college, staying in touch with her for the rest of his life. And one does not have to be an apologist for Thurmond to feel a little sad for him - after all, not only did he end up living a lie for nearly 80 years - for reasons largely but not all of his own making - but (as you pointed out), he also missed out on a real relationship with a child who would have greatly enriched his life and would likely have made him a better person.

Multiply this by the number of people who have missed out on so much in life because of the barriers put up before them - and that they themselves often helped to perpetuate - and we can better understand how racism has infected and pulled down our society in so many ways.

[Karenina]

7. Amazing Grace,

Your posts on this issue have all been STELLAR! PROSIT! :toast:

[Lisa]

8. just imagine how happy he could have been ...

.... if his eldest daughter had gone into politics, and perhaps even succeeded him in his Senate seat! I didn't know about his having provided for her college degree ... evidently he felt she had the potential, and in fact since he knew that she wouldn't be carrying his name (at least not while he was alive) it wasn't really a self-aggrandizing thing. I know lots of people who feel their parents are pushing them to achieve because they want to "glorify the family name" first and foremost, rather than thinking about the child in particular ... and I agree, it's rather touching that he tried to maintain contact with her.

I was remembering a story told by Al Gore, of visiting his own father in the Senate, and being inspired to enter public service after seeing all those elected representatives working together on important issues. Imagine if Ms. Williams had had the same influences!

[DuctapeFatwa]

9. She still could. 78 is not as old as it used to be

I'd love to see her move to SC long enough to establish residency....

[newyawker99]

14. Hi amazing grace!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: