CSotD: It’s not easy being white
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Matt Bors, with a correction to a current news story.
I stopped off yesterday at Akwesasne, the Mohawk community that straddles the border they don't admit exists, as part of my book-promotion tour. One of the women at the cultural center had provided me with some guidance for a character, a Mohawk trapper, and I wanted to drop off a couple of copies for her.
In the story, which is set in Northern New York in 1812, the trapper comes to the trading post where our young lad lives to trade some furs, but in the course of things, witnesses the trader beating the boy. I knew that corporal punishment is not something that happens in most native communities but, there being as much diversity among nations of this continent as there are among nations in Europe, have learned to check.
She told me that, while it was very much against Mohawk culture, you have to realize that, by 1812, the Mohawk had had several hundred years of contact with Europeans and not only were they likely used to the notion but some had probably adopted the practice themselves. I made the character a good enough man to be disgusted and to take his furs elsewhere to trade, but less from culture shock than out of human decency.
The issue of intermarriage is relevant here because there seems to me a very large difference between the native peoples of the East and those who originated west of the Mississippi. There were significant disagreements over land issues in the East, but there was also a significant blending of cultures and of blood.
Both Cornplanter and Joseph Brant had Iroquois mothers and European fathers, which is significant because the Iroquois are both matriarchal and matrilinear, so that they very much had a foot in each camp. Brant in particular had a pair of very powerful parents. But their mixed heritage is not particularly remarkable — "Tarbell" is a very common name among the Mohawk and it derives from some white children seized in a 1707 raid and adopted into the community.
I don't know when the last longhouse came down, but the "Indian villages" of the Northeast by 1812 were apt to feature frame houses and picket fences, while the Five Civilized Tribes gained that name in the Southeast for the same reason, which makes their removal only that much more shameful a blot on our history.
So as I was driving around over the past few days, there was some chatter about this news story, and I was struck by how much they talked about immigration and about birth rates in minority communities, and how little they talked about intermarriage, or inter-non-marriage, since there's another demographic trend in that.
I remember conversations in the 1960s with contemporaries who said they wouldn't be against a mixed marriage in theory but felt it would be very hard on the children. Well, here we are two generations later and it doesn't seem anywhere near as remarkable now as we anticipated it would be.
There are AfroAsian and EurAsian and EurAfro young people coming of age and it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot to anyone who matters a whole lot. In fact, advertisers love biracial models these days; having crossover features is a marketing plus.
But note that the concept of blood quantum continues, and, while we don't use terms like "octaroon" and "quadroon" anymore, the requirement for being white holds steady at right about 100%. It's awful hard to qualify as a white person — you have to choose your ancestors very, very carefully if you don't want to be kicked out of the club.
Given that, it's not all that remarkable that a lot of kids are in the "other" category, and, while the coverage seems to have focused on farm workers and inner city people, this whole notion of "non-white" babies also includes a whole lot of suburban people, too. Maintaining the focus on the underclass, and treating this as an invasion of sorts, is ignorant.
As ignorant as saying that this is the first time in our history that more non-white than white babies were born here.
Although, let's be honest: Being white is really worth it, as this documentary shows:
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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