Colonia History, and color of skin

[nadinbrzezinski]

now at the risk of making some people very uncomfortable there is a reason why the US has equal opportunity programs. So lets take Reid's statement as a teachable moment.

What he said, should not have been said, but he gave us a little gift.

If you look at US History (or for that matter many other post colonial nations) people of color do have less opportunities than those who are white. And those who are lighter skinned do have better chances than those who are darker skinned. This is a crazy fact, but one that even a professor is dealing with a the Rachel Madow show. And the reality is... this is not just the US... as I said it applies to other societies as well. Mexico comes to mind.

This color hierarchy is not fully conscious... but trust me it is there.

So the question as a society is... now that Reid has brought this onto the open, lets start discussiing this, and for god sakes dealing with it.

[Political_Junkie]

1. Yep

Even my Somali friends have the belief that lighter skin is better. According to stories they have told me about their lives back home, it was the same. More opportunities for light skinned people.

[Hekate]

2. Recommended read: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. His epilogue "A Jamaican Story"...

... taught me a tremendous amount about the "fetishization of lightness" by non-whites in Jamaica down through the generations. Jamaica's slave system was different from ours in some substantial ways: whites were outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by their slaves, and there were few if any white women. Ultimately white men took black concubines (i.e. they bought a woman who took their fancy). The children of those unions were emancipated, treated as heirs, and sent to England for schooling. Their mothers also could inherit. It was immediately apparent what the advantages of "lightness" were, and generation by generation this played out in non-white families, choice of marriage partners, and in society at large. Thus was the upper tier of Jamaica's society created.

Gladwell uses his mother's Jamaican family to illustrate this history, with commentary. He also mentions General Colin Powell's family, as they came from the same place.

Gladwell believes in hard work and intense perseverance (what he calls the "10,000 hour rule") for success in any field, but he also believes in the power of family and culture to pull us along, lift us up, or hold us back or even get us killed, and demonstrates that a community's culture-of-origin will persist for generations after they've moved away from their original mountain in the Balkans or hollow in Appalachia.

The entire book is fascinating to read, and in the year since I first read it I keep thinking of the many topics he brings in. Although I highlighted race (since that was what the OP is about) for myself the chapter "Harlan, Kentucky" about the Scotch-Irish who came from the "debatable lands" to settle the Appalachians was almost worth the price of the whole book. I'm Irish-American, but "my" Irish did not come from the warring borders, nor are we Southern today, and I had NO idea.

Sorry for the digression, Nadine. You bring forth a worthy topic and I hope you get replies worthy of your effort.

Hekate

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Been readhing on the Borderland culture as well

and there is also an element of race there, just not color related. And I wish Reid's little mistep was used as a teachable moment. If we are going to overcome some of our race problems we need to work on the less obvious... and color is one of them... so is county of origin in the case of the Irish Americans and southern border color. Hell some of the clans, speaking of race, have kept themselves "pure" across the generations.

(And by the way, readying some of that is like readying a book on anthropology)

[Hekate]

4. Is it Senator Jim Webb's 2004 book? I heard him being interviewed on NPR and was quite impressed...

He was discussing his book "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America" and that was the first time I had ever heard this history. Gladwell's book followed later. Webb strikes me as extremely thoughtful and intelligent, and that book is now on my to-do list. His thesis seemed to be that the US has got to get a grip on understanding how different a culture this is, in order to deal with it intelligently (and hopefully modify it, or at least that is how I understood it).

You're right about the anthropology part. The older I get the more I realize that the US, contrary to what we were taught as children, actually does have several (or many) very distinct cultures, and is not as much as a melting pot as we thought. Gladwell's notion (and Webb's apparently) about the persistence of cultural attitudes/behavior among groups that immigrate and initially establish their own communities in out of the way places is fascinating.

Last year I picked up a book by linguist Derek Bickerton called "Bastard Tongues: A trailblazing linguist finds clues to our common humanity in the world's lowliest languages" -- meaning creoles, pidgins, and original contact languages. I don't know if you are interested in languages, but this book was very breezy and fun for me. (I don't actually >ahem< read or speak anything but English, but I like learning about others anyway.)

Hekate

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. NO actual jourmal articles

got them on Kindle... been working on and off on a novel based on Clay County, and it deals with some of that.

It is obvious on things like food, and this has strengthened my belief that the US may actually break apart if stressed enough. (Well it will, just a matter of time. The civil war was not an accident)

[voc]

5. Light skinned Blacks..

Have always been perceived as being closer to"white".

From slavery the mulattos and quadroons(bi-racial,today) were more trustworthy due to their white blood.
Therefore they were allowed to work inside as slaves which was preferable to the fields.

As a result, Blacks themselves took on the thinking of the slavemaster and decided to
seperate themselves by color. This worked well for the slavemaster.

The darker-skinned blacks were subjected to more whippings, lynchings,more injustices.
The same is true today.
Look at the prison system. It is a rarity to see a light skinned black in prison.

It has more to do with how society perceives them,they are more likely to be seen as
criminals,angry,etc. The media reinforces this.

Teachable moment it is. Profitable for America, it is that too.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. 'xactly this pattern was established early on

in Colonial history. So instead of going... Bad, bad Reed, we should be going... ok this is real. How the hell do we deal with it?