Got empathy?

It’s an informal, intimate moment. I've given a ride home to a young mother of two. ‘LC’ has spent (as in donated) her evening to help organize a grass-roots attempt to eliminate racial profiling by Portland Police. It’s been six years since police killed unarmed, mother-of-two Kendra James at a traffic stop. In a few months an unarmed father, Aaron Campbell, will be executed during a welfare check by police. Campbell’s mother will lose two sons that day; one to heart disease and another – despondent over his brother’s death – to a police sniper acting outside his chain of command.

Campbell’s will be the fourth police homicide of an unarmed black man or woman in the preceding several years of Portland’s long history of disparate treatment of people of color. Like the victims, LC too is a person of color. It is deep concern that has brought her away from her family to plan a campaign to get Portland City Council to change police policy.

My companion turned to me to say, “As a mother, it is so important to get this right.” LC began reflecting on the challenges of physically disciplining her boys.

It would be years before I was exposed to Dr. Joy DeGruy’s work: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome— America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. I was then only superficially aware of the abject brutality that slavery invoked. Writing this today, my own family history research has revealed to me a staggering capacity for inhumane treatment of slaves. Genial stories about ‘Uncle’ Dave and ‘Aunt’ Mary have receded in importance. I've read warnings from my Christian, slave-owning antecessors. They cite the the ill effects of slaveholding to be the corruption on morals that such absolute, life-and-death domination has on character. Slave-holding kin explain that such power corrupts their neighbor's character.

“You know, they used whips on us,” says LC meekly. She is torn. She doesn't want her parenting style to be a continuation of the physical coercion that has shaped African American culture.

“But, if I don’t get this right,” she says, meaning if undisciplined children run afoul of the law, “the police will kill my boys.”

And I am stunned. I have glimpsed across the divide of my White Privilege. I am a parent, flying by the seat of my pants: at no point have I felt it necessary to contemplate that my failures in fathering bear the remotest possibility of such lethal consequences. As a parent, I care about this issue in a new way.

I informed myself. I now know that Portland over-polices LC’s neighborhood. The odds are far greater that her children will encounter law enforcement than mine. In fact, the police target LC’s children. The City of Portland’s own stop data has consistently shown racial disparities since they began collecting it in 2004: people of color are twice as likely to be stopped than whites; once stopped, they are twice as likely to be searched (an amplified effect). Yet people of color searched by Portland Police in 2010 (latest available figures) are a third less likely to have contraband.

Based on false assumptions, and society’s massive expenditures in a War on Drugs, my country now systemically hunts her children. [While white youth experience drug-related emergency room visits thee times more frequently than black youth, and whites (ages 12-17) are a third more likely to have sold drugs; and while the use of drugs has long been about par for white youth and those of darker pigmentation, black children (about 16% of that population) make up 58% of the youth cohort committed to state prison as adults.]

Even if she gets it right, and LC’s children grow up well-disciplined and productive members of society … beyond the sphere of criminal activity … they run a much higher risk of death at the hands of police than my fair-skinned children ever will.

But who cares?

Looking for images of Kendra James, as Portland memorializes the ten-year milestone of her homicide (where, as with Aaron Campbell, no one has been punished): I was directed to The Empathy Blog. In an analysis of missed empathetic opportunities during a public forum following James’ death, the author decried “re-activating histories of violence, victimhood and hatred.”

“a re-telling of the Kendra James incident that raised memories of old familiar stories of white on black violence, and evoked resonances of rape and slavery … began the collapse of the opportunity for empathy.”

I don’t know what to do with my empathy. My vicarious experience of KC’s fears led me to an intellectual identification with the debilitating effects of racism. I was spurred to take public risks and work for the passage of a Police Plan to Address Racial Profiling in 2009.

But, in this online community of well-meaning folks committed to understanding and evoking empathy, I find no appreciation for historical trauma ... a condition I'm reasonably certain resonates in the lives of people not too far removed from the author. The depiction of ‘victimhood’ is an affront to compassionate people who understand the unremitting continuum of racial injustice.

Data from the Multnomah County Health Department gives longitudinal evidence of racial disparities in health outcomes. “How can this be?” I wondered, at first disbelieving. “Doctors are among the most caring people in my community.” But it is true; for a variety of reasons, care providers demonstrate racial bias. Our brothers and sisters suffer needlessly.

I am in a dilemma. I know empathy would be a highly effective tool, to motivate those in the dominant culture to end such injustice. I am pretty sure contributors to The Empathy Blog see themselves as do most Portlanders: as just and compassionate ... progressing toward an ever more equitable future. Time and time again, however, I get the sense that well-meaning members of the dominant culture want to leap past truth and embrace reconciliation. It is difficult for them to countenance that the most fortunate among us pay to perpetuate police, courts, county health providers (not to mention schools, the housing authority, employment opportunities and training initiatives) that perpetuate racially unequal outcomes.

White people’s advantages are often invisible to them. It requires some study, and a society bent on documenting them, before disparities can be made obvious in a structured way. 

For me, a sense of moral indignation was a prerequisite to becoming sufficiently motivated to make apparent what had been invisible to me. White people who have not achieved intimacy with the victims of racism are, I fear, less likely to so engage. When those in the dominant culture dismiss as 'old' and 'familiar' fears and pain that resonate in the here and now, I suspect they are unlikely to achieve empathy that will lead to dismantling racism. This reinforcing behavior leaves most of my fellows distant and uniformed of serious, ongoing social ills. 

Seeing how pervasive it is, I struggle now with the idea that structured racism is not inadvertent. Racial disadvantages do not remain simply due to entropy. I had thought empathy would be a vital component in spurring well-meaning folks to move from denial and into remedial action ... to press against all that reinforces racism. When I find myself in a center of advocacy for empathy, however, and infer that victims or their survivors should ‘get over it,’ I find myself discouraged. Contemporary attitudes and polices both have straight line connections from America’s one-time embrace of slavery. I don’t think everyone has to untangle those lines with historical accuracy, but I join in the demands of the Coalition of Communities of Color in their well-researched Unsettling Profile:

We seek for those in the White community to end a prideful perception that Multnomah County is an enclave of progressivity. Communities of color face tremendous inequities and a significant narrowing of opportunity and advantage. This must become unacceptable for everyone.

We in the dominant must learn to stop waving away the hurt. We must learn to care.

2003 Memorial for Kendra James, I-5 Overpass, NE Skidmore St., Portland, OR

Fiddling with Cato

"What about the women?" asked my wife, after being subjected to a long, drawn out depiction of ancestral exploits. Subsequently sensitive to the fact that the dominant culture - keepers of the record - leaves many persons' histories unrecorded, I find it particularly rewarding when I encounter documentation left by people of color.

Reading 'The Negro In Kentucky,' written by G. W. Jackson and published in 1940 by the Negro Educational Association Journal, I assumed I'd discovered a non-white voice declaiming the merits of my subject, Monk Estill.

"In accounts of Indian raids, slaves are reported as loyal and daring. In the battle of Little Mountain, when pioneers fought with the Wyandotte Indians in 1782, the bravery of Colonel William [Captain James - RDH] Estill's slave Monk, inspired the pioneer warriors as nothing else in the battle did. He was an expert in making gunpowder and such an interesting preacher that the whites and blacks from Shelby and surrounding counties flocked to his meetings."

I leave aside reference to loyalty, and the author's statistics demonstrating that, "The Kentucky Negro has done his bit in the wars of the nation," while America prepared to enter World War II. It's true, but historical timing seems to drive this emphasis on fighting and preaching for the Lord.

I'll also leave aside the frustrations of Ted Franklin Belue, who contributed the entry concerning Monk in the 1992 Kentucky Encyclopedia, and who wrote me that editors reported Monk being a Baptist preacher ... despite his objection as a subject matter expert, and absent any proof on the editors' part.

Jackson's article referenced one of Monk's contemporaries, and my interest was piqued:

"The first Christmas party in Kentucky would have ended in dismal failure but for the fiddling of Cato Watts, a Negro servant who had come to Louisville with one of the families in the George Rogers Clark expedition."

Interesting, the term 'servant:' Cato was a slave. It also seemed odd that - when describing African American 'contributions' to Kentucky history - Jackson would leap past the sacrifice of Twetty's slave, killed by native warriors before Boone's party ever cut their way to Boonesborough.

Nevertheless, since false (or at least unsupported) accounts abound ... of Monk in possession of musical talent ... I was keen to research Cato Watts.

From Reuben Thomas Durrett, attributed to his 1894 work, The Romance of the Origin of Louisville, I draw the version I call 'Uncle Cato,' where we are encouraged to see slaves as indolent, and gentle in their acceptance of forced subservience.

"A source of pleasure to the islanders was a fiddle in the hands of Cato Watts, a slave who belonged to Captain John Donne. Cato would play for hours in the shade of the trees while young and old joined in the Virginia Reel, the Irish Jig, and the Highland Fling. When Sunday came, however, the fiddle was silent and all joined in the singing of hymns."

Again with the emphasis on Christianity: this historian wants us to know the value the group placed on religion. It is true, that slaves worshiped with whites. Thirty-one years later, in 1809, Giles preceded by four years my 3x-gr-grandfather, Capt. Whitfield Early (1777-1865) into a Baptist congregation in Boone County, Kentucky. Giles, slave to Early, transferred his membership from a Virginia church.

Mildred J. Hill, in her History of Music in Louisville, gives an 1896 depiction of the Christmas party (on Corn Island, a crude settlement at the Falls of the Ohio, as Louisville was not yet in existence):

"This is the first mention of music of any kind in Louisville; and, as it is a story of happiness, contentment and good-fellowship, it makes a pleasant starting point for a pleasant subject."

The most recent account of 'Cato Watts - the first Slave in Louisville,' shocked me. In observation of Black History Month, 2013, examiner.com posted this account of Cato's life:

... he was hanged.

The article - calling us to mind our history - runs but two paragraphs. Basically, "Little was known about Watts ... he was hanged." No fiddle playing. No birth or death dates, but their reporting does hyperlink Cato Watts to the illustrious slave-owner George Rogers Clark.

At family history sites, presumably-white descendants of Capt. John Donne have preserved an historical record of their ancestor's demise (that makes no mention of fiddle playing). They report that "Cato claimed the death was an accident." It might seem reasonable for descendants to then declare, "Cato was charged in the murder of John Donne and hung for the offence," except that Virginia law (then in effect in what is now known as Kentucky) prevented people of color - free or not - from testifying against whites. Or testifying at all in such cases.

J. Blaine Hudson, in a 1999 paper for the august, Louisville-based Filson Club Historical Quarterly, looked further into the historical record than examiner.com or Donne descendants. In his pre-trial hearing, "The above named Cato Watts was led to the Bar, and upon Examination says that he knocked the said Donne down but that it was not with the intention to kill him."

Uniquely, Hudson combined histories of Cato's status as first black resident, his fiddle playing, and the subsequent homicide. Though 'first slave in Louisville' accounts are often linked to his execution, my assessment is that Cato Watts is best remembered for saving Christmas ... with a particularly sentimental, fictionalized 2003 account here.

In a 1976 article by Robert A. Burnett, in another issue of the Filson Club Historical Quarterly, something poignant comes to light about that festive occasion in primitive conditions on Corn Island:

"Jean Nickle, a Frenchman ... entertained the party with his fiddle, playing dances then the rage in Paris, but these were too sophisticated [described as too 'scientific' in an 1893 account] for pioneers unaccustomed to the music of a Paris salon. The evening was saved when Nickle gave the slave, Cato Watts, some strings to replace the worn ones on his fiddle and Watts enlivened the party with popular tunes of the frontier."

Folklore depicting the first celebration of the birth of Christ in Kentucky could be used to indicate that pioneers lacked sophistication. In this story line, the rough justice subsequently handed out to Cato Watts would be reinforced for its barbarism.

In a sentence following how the Frenchman Nickle yielded fiddle playing to Cato "who soon had himself and the dancers in a paroxysm of joy," Durrett's 1893 account declares Monk's contemporary was, in addition to being the first slave in what is now Louisville ... in addition to being the man who saved the first Christmas in those environs ... Cato Watts, property of John Donne, was also the first man ever hung in Louisville.

"He killed his owner as he claimed by accident, but was tried and hung for the crime. He was hanged to the limb of a large oak tree which stood on ... the public square on which the court house now stands. The hanging was in 1787, and much to the sorrow of the young people who enjoyed his music at their dances."

Monsieur Nickle graced Louisville with a dancing school in 1786. In 2012, an Electronica/Worldbeat/Jamba band was performing in Louisville under the name of Cato Watts.

Cato Watts, from Stories of Old Kentucky, 
by Martha C. Grassham Purcell, pg 114; c1915

When Authority Speaks

When I first heard the term, I thought 'post-racialism' was a straw man: I saw no way Americans could take the position, that by simply electing a mixed-race President, that racial injustice had been swept away. There is too much evidence to the contrary. 

Out here in Portland, Oregon, we're still refining the collection of 'stop data,' and the work continues to demonstrate our police bureau engages in racial profiling. Racial injustice did not conclude with the election of Barack Hussein Obama. Though it's been a century and a half since Oregon was created as a white homeland, disparities in policing, housing, and health and educational outcomes are still very much in evidence in the nation's fifth-whitest city.

For quite a while, regressive policymakers have have called affirmative action into question, changing the frame from attempts to remedy centuries of racial discrimination to look at issues of fairness in the here and now. Quotas circumscribing opportunity are unfair in a democracy, particularly when viewed in the lens of immediacy. Set-asides in hiring and educational opportunity for historically deprived constituencies seem fairer when seen on a landscape of centuries of denied opportunity, however.  

I'm troubled by a recent surge of academics beckoning post-racial society. This conversation may arise from desires that the US Supreme Court strike down provisions of the 1968 Voting Rights Act ... protections against a full-fledged return to the racist vote suppression that characterized much of this country for a century. Rather than look to data to inform us whether parties with histories of inhibiting voters have reformed themselves, spin doctors simply change the frame of reference. Justice Antonin Scalia tells us the continuation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act represents the "perpetuation of racial entitlement," hinting that 'time is up:' there is no need to 'perpetuate' this new disparity. Scalia is blatantly undemocratic in describing anyone's right to the ballot as an entitlement.* If counter-revolutionary forces can change the discussion from our history of repression to appreciate immediate effects of chosen remedies, the idea of what is 'fair' will change as well.

It's become important to place civil rights victories in the past, to frame the abandonment of affirmative action goals as 'mission accomplished.' Dr. Audrey Kobayashi will lend her status as Past President of the Association of American Geographers to call attention to Race: An idea past its time in the discipline of geography? at the AAG's national convention this summer.

In Foreign Affairs magazine this month, titled Capitalism and Inequality, Jerry Z. Muller does not mention race by name when he says the cure may be worse than the disease to use "... government policy to close the gaps between individuals and groups by offering preferential treatment to underperformers ..." The Catholic University Professor repeats the 'injustice among the rest of the population' refrain. He condemns 'mandated rewards:' "More grave is their cost in terms of economic efficiency, since by definition, they promote less-qualified individuals to positions they would not attain on the basis of merit alone." 

"Face it folks," Muller seems to say, "these are less qualified individuals, not an under-caste who've been systemically denied educational opportunity, growing up in households who, because of their color, have been systemically denied economic opportunity."  

Muller does continue: "Similarly, policies banning the use of meritocratic criteria in education, hiring, and credit simply because they have a 'differential impact' on the fortunes of various communal groups or because they contribute to unequal social outcomes will inevitably impede the quality of the educational system, the work force, and the economy." I read 'unequal social outcomes' as 'social injustice:' Instead of employing education to improve the merit of a people historically discriminated against - who remain deprived of equal opportunity in classroom size, environment and quality of tools - we should turn a colorblind eye. We should look for resident merit in applicants.

And I thought about these voices of authority, steering the conversation on racial aptitude. It is not the first time that scientists and academicians have helped frame perceptions about race-based capacities in the dominant culture.  

I am researching an historical moment in 1849, when radical emancipationist Cassius Marcellus Clay disemboweled Cyrus Squire Turner (1819-1849, my first cousin 3 times removed) during a debate Clay was having with Turner's father Squire Turner (1793-1871, my great-grandmother's paternal uncle). Certified smart people were framing the merits of people of color in that period as well.

When publishing his diagnostic term 'Drapetomania' in De Bow's Review, Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright reached into ancient Greek to remind readers that the concept of 'runaway slave' has been with us since ancient times. 

Like the jurist and and academics above, Cartwright  lends an authoritative voice to help readers pursue the most effective policies, or measures, suggesting, "It may not be unworthy a great statesman to inquire, if what is true in Medicine may not be true in Government, and to investigate the question whether the laws and free institutions, so beneficial to the white man, may not be detrimental and deteriorating to the negro?"

In her book on mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, Michelle Alexander shows how white supremacist policy makers no longer need cite race; we've criminalized so much of the Black Experience, we can discriminate by means of criminal 'justice' systems. In a new era of Jim Crow laws, the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits is now denied on the basis of criminal history. The needs of white supremacists are met at the expense of national consensus. 

It seems a continuation of generations-old attempts to regulate the behavior of people of color.

*Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act pertains to districts with histories of discrimination (like Texas where, since 1980, every initial attempt to gerrymander voting districts has been rejected as discriminatory).

Seeking Liberation as the Rights of Man are Advocated

Having recently seen Spielberg's Lincoln, and realizing not all in the North wanted to free slaves, even as the War Between the States drew to a close, I was startled to find a theme from the movie - framing emancipation as a blow to an enemy's ability to wage war - percolating in an earlier American conflict.

My 6x-great grand uncle, Thomas Berry (1757-1839) was brother to the direct ancestor James Berry (c1752-1822), who has been the subject of several of these blog entries. In the Spring of 1779, Thomas Berry was drafted from his home in Mecklenberg County into the Virginia militia. (It was Berry's second enlistment: in 1776 he'd signed on to serve revolutionary forces for six months.) This time under the direct command of Capt. Charles Gray, Berry was placed in Col. Lewis Burrell/Burril's regiment of foot soldiers.
As summer matured, Gray's men were marched 350 miles south to oppose, with force of arms, a British intention to seize Charles Town. They were part of perhaps 1200 patriots ordered to attack Stono Ferry, held at that time by loyalists, German mercenaries, and regular troops under the command of British Lt. Col. John Maitland.

Continental Army opposes British infiltration in South Carolina, 1779



That these Virginia men found themselves west of what is now Charleston, South Carolina, toward the end of open hostilities, seemed surprising. To join American Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, in his attempts to drive the British out of the plantation-rich lowcountry of coastal plains, indicated to me a greater amount of continent-wide military co-operation than I'd imagined. As in the timeframe of the movie, there must have been much fatigue with a war effort at this point in the conflict.

Trying to familiarize myself with Berry's exploits, I discovered another similarity between the two episodes: it was envisioned that the liberation of slaves would disadvantage the enemy.

On June 24, having accomplished his mission of protecting Brigadier-General Augustine Prévost's movement to Savannah, Maitland evacuated his post at Stono Ferry. The subsequent British plunder of some of the richest areas in South Carolina was "significant and disturbing," according to Russell in his circa 2000 work: American Revolution in Southern Colonies. "Some 3000 black slaves were believed to have been taken by the British leaving South Carolina. Many slaves were shipped off to the West Indies and sold. Thousands of other slaves who were left behind suffered terribly under the British. During the retreat of the British Army, many blacks would cling to the sides of the boats. In attempts to prevent danger to their boats, British soldiers were posted with cutlasses and bayonets to keep them at bay. Many blacks had their hands cut off in this way. Hundreds died of disease."

I had already learned, when researching direct ancestor Rev. William Hardesty (1776-1846), that blacks who'd joined the Ethiopian Regmient - formed by Colonial Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunsmore - had been betrayed after giving service in 1775. (Those who had not died from sickness or in the Battle of Great Bridge were left to fend for themselves in New York when Dunsmore fled for England.) Yet discovery of this carnage, four years later, once again drew into stark relief what I thought about revolutionaries' values for the Rights of Man.

Patriots who were willing to sacrifice much for their personal liberty were apparently willing to kill men held in bondage to them ... and seeking that same liberation.

Continues Russel (citing McCrady): "Sadly, other blacks died in the woods and marshes, being unable to return home for fear of a certain death, with disease all around them in a condition of being destiture without food or shelter, under the horrid heat and humidity of the Carolina summer." 

It is likely that Berry was granted land in Kentucky for military service that brought inordinate political and economic opportunity to armed revolutionaries. By 1810, Berry and his father, Thomas Berry, Jr. (1727-1824) had moved their families to Clark County, Kentucky. Each household contained at least five slaves.


22 March 1780 - Thomas Berry obtains warrant for 1000 acres in what is now Kentucky



These Negroes Reveal A Curious Superiority

I'm coming to grips with the idea that my 3x-great-grandfather, Thomas Turner (1764-1847) or his son Squire Turner (1793-1871) fathered children by his slaves. I've been encouraged in becoming reconciled to this possibility by the caring relationship I've developed with a great-granddaughter of that union. I like my new cousin.

I've begun to wonder whether her ancestor looked like our shared ancestors. I wonder to what degree others in my family regarded Jeremiah Turner (1840-1917) as unmistakable kin. In an earlier post, I found modern acknowledgement that larger numbers of mixed-race children were appearing among the property of rich, white, Madison County, Kentuckians than were recorded by family units holding only one or two slaves in captive servitude.

I suspect his musings were far from politically correct even in his own time, but the following account expresses cultural effects that might have resulted when 'well bred' white men had offspring by African American women.

~

From a collection of writings by Baltimore critic H. L. Menken titled Prejudices, c 1920. In this tract, Menken decries the absence of arts & culture in the south.
Page 77 of The Sahara of the Bozart - [A desert of the Beaux Arts - RDH]

“… in the south, the men of the upper classes sought their mistresses among the blacks, and after a few generations there was so much white blood in the black women that they were considerably more attractive than the unhealthy and bedraggled women of the poor whites. This preference continues into our own time. A southerner of good family once told me in all seriousness that he had reached his majority before it ever occurred to him that a white woman might make quite as agreeable a mistress as the octoroons of his jejune fancy. If the thing has changed as late, it is not the fault of the southern white man, but of the southern mulatto woman. The more slightly yellow girls of the region, with improving economic opportunities, have gained self-respect, and so they are no longer as willing to enter into concubinage as their grand-dams were.

As a result of this preference of the southern gentry for mulatto mistresses there was created a series of mixed strains containing the best white blood of the south, and perhaps of the whole country. As another result the poor whites went unfertilized from above, and so missed the improvement that so constantly shows itself in the peasant stocks of other countries. It is a commonplace that nearly all negroes who rise above the general are of mixed blood, usually with the white predominating. I know a great many negroes, and it would be hard for me to think of an exception. What is too often forgotten is that this white blood is not the blood of the poor whites but that of the old gentry. The mulatto girls of the early days despised the poor whites, creatures distinctly inferior to negroes, and it was thus almost unheard of for such a girl to enter into relations with a man of that submerged class. This aversion was based on sound instinct. The southern mulatto of today (1920) is proof of it. Like all other half-breeds he is an unhappy man, with disquieting tendencies toward anti-social habits of thought, but he is intrinsically a better animal than the pure-blooded descendant of the old poor whites, and he not infrequently demonstrates it. It is not by accident that negroes of the south are making faster progress, economically and culturally, than the masses of the whites. It is not by accident that the only visible æsthetic activity in the south is wholly in their hands. No southern composer has ever written music so good as that of half a dozen white-black composers who might be named. Even in politics, the negro reveals a curious superiority. Despite the fact that the race question has been the main political concern of the southern whites for two generations, to the practical exclusion of anything else, they have contributed nothing to its discussion that has impressed the rest of the world so deeply and so favorably as three or four books by southern negroes.”

These are themes that Edward Ball addresses in his 2001 book, The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the South.  He too met a cousin descended from his people's slaves. Ball describes distinctions (and economic advantages) allocated by skin color and class, even among people of color. Harleston children, though deprived of the inheritance left by their upper-crust, slave-owning father, held higher rank than darker blacks after the Civil War in Charleston, SC. Perhaps Menken (above) in his accolades, is crediting Harleston offspring; such as the talented black photographer Teddy Harleston, or childrens' choirs his sister Ella (Harleston) Jenkins made popular as America entered the Jazz Age.

Half-white Slaves of Aristocratic Masters

This blog began, initially, to describe a search for descendants of 'Uncle' Monk, slave name Estill, the man who saved the life of my 4x-great-grandfather in 1782 and subsequently became the first slave freed in what is now Kentucky. I want to know more about the brave fellow who carried James Berry (1752-1822) 25 miles to safety, following the Battle of Small Mountain, or Estill's Defeat.

During my investigation, I came upon a family history researcher who had valuable data on a half-brother of Berry's grandson and namesake, James Berry Turner (c1820-1867, my 2x-great-grandfather). I was stunned to discover my new correspondent is African American by appearance and identification. Born where I was born; nearly my age, my new source is trying to prove she descends from a union between the half-brother (Major Squire Turner, 1793-1871) and one of his slaves.

From Madison County: 200 Years in Retrospect, by William Elliott Ellis, H. E. Everman & Richard D. Sears; Madison County Historical Society, 1985, page 216:

“We can only speculate about the white families of most of these people [former slaves graduating from Berea schools], but there is a great deal of evidence that many blacks of Madison County, including those who attended Berea, were descendants of very distinguished white families.”

The corresponding footnote reports:

“In 1860 Madison County had a population of 6,118 slaves, 980 of whom were mulattoes (16%). The Slave Census listed 881 slaveholders – 357 of whom owned sets of slaves including at least one mulatto (but sometimes as many as ten): about 40 percent of slave sets were ‘mixed’ (so that partly-white slaves were very widespread without being particularly numerous). But of the 110 elite slaveholders in Madison County (those owning 15 slaves or more), 70 owned at least one mulatto (most owned many more, of course …). The large-scale slaveholders, the wealthy and prosperous, were much more apt to have mulattoes among their slaves then [sic] were their poorer neighbors. Whether or not the half-white slaves of aristocratic masters were also their children is, of course, another (and usually unanswerable) question.”

The 1860 Slave Schedule for Madison County, Kentucky, (below) reports Squire Turner in possession of 27 souls. Seven are listed as Mulatto: nearly one in four. An 18-year-old male qualifies to be Jeremiah Turner (c1840-1917) my new cousin's direct ancestor. If our suspicions are correct; we both descend from 'Trading Tom' Turner (1764-1847), father of both Squire and James Berry Turner.

Puzzling over the realization that I share DNA with folks who look so obviously different, it was suggested I investigate a fellowship (Coming to the Table), where descendants of slaves are in dialogue about race with descendants of slave-owners. I have traveled to meet my new cousin and my harvest includes the fruits of warm companionship and a shared appreciation for researching family history.

It has proved difficult to describe the almost unfathomable relationship between between the white supremacist, pro-slavery, strict constitutionalist, Squire Turner and an enslaved woman who may have born his child. The Madison County text employs terms such as 'slavewife' and  'slavefamily.'  Ball, in The Sweet Hell Inside, uses 'concubine,' once a long-term relationship has been established. Referring to today's standards, I initially referred to offspring of a 'slave rape.'

Descendants of slaves, shrugging off the idea that a single drop of Negro blood put one in the race of African Americans, are identifying themselves as Irish, or Scots, or whatever they discover in their family history. I explore coming to grips with pigmentation here.

Squire Turner may have wanted to contribute accurately to slave schedules; the record documents him as in the propertied the elite of a county in which the lawyer had grown wealthy. The nameless records, however, are far from definitive. The only earlier slave schedule (1850) lists a mulatto boy of 9, which may be a younger Jeremiah. I've found no record of Turner's human possessions, circa 1840, but 2 women in 1850 (ages 38 & 35) qualify. Unless she has become 60 years old, ten years later, neither candidate for Jeremiah's mother remain in the record as Turner's property.

Two Cases for High-Tech, Racial Identity

Hypodescent is the societal practice of assigning children of mixed union to the ethnic group which is perceived by the dominant group as being 'subordinate.'

Appearances can be pretty deceiving, I figure. I was raised on Nazi stories, describing how white supremacists hunted down anyone with A SINGLE DROP of Jewish blood. As a kid I heard that a Negro was any person who had a single drop of black blood. One drop and, no matter what you looked like, you were in that other race. Well, not just ‘another’ race: you were in a race that wasn’t as good as people who were all white.

And what is 'all white,' anyway? I got to thinking how best to categorize people, based on race.

An African-American cousin and I were discussing 'octaroons' and 'mulatto,' and the whole idea of race sorta collapsed on me. I was trying to figure out how pigmentation will be handled after racism has faded from our consciousness: I had this vision where we’d each be rated by a specific, pertinent number; no longer categorized 'Non-Hispanic White' or 'Caucasoid' or whatever. I figured science would give us a number (or a code, for those embracing complexity). I thought that number or code might come from DNA research, but maybe it will be a number generated by a densitometer.

The Reflective Qualities of Melanin

But then I realized I change pigmentation throughout the year (Before my honeymoon I no idea that blacks darkened after a couple weeks in Hawaii.), so we’d each have to be a range numbers. Then, I realize I have moles and sometimes scabs like what I got from scratching chigger bites while down in Kentucky … heck I’m a vast array of skin tones!

Lighting Directors and Color Corrections Specialists, when producing close-ups for television, know that each face – from the blackest African to the yellowest Asian and the pinkest Anglo – reflect essentially the same range of colors. The pigmentation we reflect is more similar than we realize.



Amelia (Turner) Leer c1872



My whole concept of white superiority took a hit when I helped produce a radio program about skin tone. Not only does my coloration change, the rules for being the 'best' color have also been in play. Heard the term ‘blue blood?’ It meant the subject came from a fine family (wealthy, and in some way related to someone in power). Blue blood referred to the veins in a white person’s arms. The French introduced powders, even hideous looking, lead-based ointment, to make themselves whiter than humanly possible. My great-grandmother (left) employed a parasol to ward off the sun, presumably because she did not want melanin granules to expand among her skin cells.

Then, swept in by the Industrial Revolution, most workers left the fields and took jobs indoors … laboring in factories. They got pale. Wealthy whites responded by sporting sun tans. The rate of skin cancer shot up in their class, but at least you could tell by looking at their handsome, bronze skin, that they were wealthier than most of the rest of us.

While analyzing racial profiling data, a new concept of pigmentation dawned on me. Portland, Oregon police had ascribed racial categories to drivers they had stopped. We were breaking down statistics by racial categories. African Americans were stopped more frequently than Hispanics and both were stopped about twice as often as Anglos. I realized that, if we had been supplied densitometer readings, the frequency by which these people were subsequently searched would fall out on a line: the blacker the driver they have stopped, the more likely it is that Portland police officers will search them. (Plot spoiler: African Americans were half as likely to be carrying contraband, even though they were stopped twice as often, and then searched twice as often as those that police identified as white.)

Coal black folks get worse deals than ‘high yaller’ ones, I suspect.

What a weird world. Like pigmentation has anything to do with anything else: criminality, intelligence, ability to love.

Hapalogroups Unite!

It came to me that geneticists can give us a number ... or some sort of solid, identifying code that will evoke racial heritage. I'll admit that I'm not sure how informed we are when we speak of the Hispanic or Jewish race. And I'm not sure what advantage that knowledge supplies, but where our genes came from seems  important to classifiers.

And then I heard that DNA research has confirmed that all human genetic material originated in Africa. No matter how white you are, your people were at one time black.

And what of the term 'caucasian male?' Instead of a point of origin, categorizing in this way makes it important that our genes parked for a time in a certain geographical location (like the Caucus Mountains).

Like the vector scope analysis (top), my haplogroup data set becomes meaningless when we understand that most people's genetic material, over the expanse of human history, has largely traversed a mesh of similar circuits. Imagine the vast web that would connect all the places your ancestors inhabited as they led up to your parents. Would a code describing this web actually distinguish you any more accurately than the label 'Scots-Irish?' Besides, if your DNA tests don't take you back to the Yoruba or a neighboring tribe in Africa, then I would hold those results as suspect. They may be shielding you from your true humanity.

I am not the only American to be intrigued by the categorization of people by skin color. Certainly moreso than, say, eye color. I know my countrymen have put a lot of energy into discriminating epidermal hues , cranial constructions, nose flanges, etc., and mostly so one pigmented group can declare itself superior to another. So that one group can dominate (take advantage) of another. I can't see what racial analysis based on, though.

I can see that, while the original, race-based cause for such degradation is probably meaningless, the history of racial oppression is all too real.

Our history of slavery … I think that DOES have an impact on things, even today. I know from my work among Native Americans that deep, psychic pain courses through communities who identify in this way. I cannot imagine the ache that still reverberates, knowing one’s ancestors felt either the repression of repeated attempts at genocide, or endured four centuries of enslavement. To me, the horrors at Abu Ghraib are immense … and they only lasted a few years. I cannot imagine, generation after generation, suffering this kind of torment. I cannot imagine thinking that there is no way out ... even for your children's children.

Some ambitous peoples wanted to be in a group that dominated others. I guess it was easier than doing all the work yourself. Those with an enduring history of success chose not to define themselves by height, or eye color, or muscle tone ... but by skin color. And they assigned subordinate roles to children who were not precisely in their dominant parents' color range.

Some folks say that Thomas Jefferson's red-haired, African American son was quite intelligent. Yet Jefferson held hypodescent practices. Slave Tom was prevented from living his life to the fullest. Why would a man do that to his son? Martha Washington never freed her half-sister. Ann Dandridge Costin and all of Martha's nieces and nephews were treated as property, to be divided up according to Martha's 19th century will.

Yes, this race thing is tricky. The true racial identity of my olive-skinned grandmother was likely shielded from me. Maybe I'm a quintroon, but pass as high yellow. My wife is as black as a Queen of Spades ... but guess what? With the vagaries of genetics, her heavy pigmentation might deceive you into thinking she's closer to her African roots. For all I know, of the millions of our ancestors who have not yet made it into paper-trail databanks at ancestry.com ... more of mine may have been recently African than hers.

And I guarantee you: we are all of African descent. The amount of melanin we bear has as much to do with deservedness as nostril hairs. We have simply chosen a methodology of valuing one another. Our methodology of assigning values has no useful or meaningful measure. It fails any test of reason. Racism derives its authority from mere convention.

I assume it will not be a Herculean task to simply develop new conventions and put an end to race-based attempts at domination.