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buggeryIt's Blog Against Racism Week.
I'm not sure I would be posting anything in relation to it, if it wasn't also a convenient impetus to get me posting something again. But it is, and I really ought to, so I am.
The first post I saw about BARW (as opposed to the icons, I started seeing those days earlier) instructed me that one thing I should do if I was going to participate was change my default icon to a race-related one, if it wasn't one already... and hey look, my default icon is still my Katrina icon, like it has been pretty much since the levees broke. You bet I'm still angry.
But that's kind of misleading, because this post isn't about the black/white racial divide in America, or anywhere else.
It's about me.
*
One day, almost fifteen years ago now, I had the opportunity to meet Wilma Mankiller, who at the time was War Chief of the Western Cherokee Nation. I had gone to hear her speak, and she was gracious enough to attend a reception afterwards and speak further with attendees in a more conversational setting.
And she called me an Anglo.
That was the first experience I had with racist language directed *at* me. I was an adult at the time.
Now, let me back up a bit and explain why it was racist, and why it was more hurtful than the average reader might expect.
First of all, I look white or almost-entirely-white to most people. (Some people think I look Jewish; others can't see where anyone would get that; I'm not in fact Jewish.) I was raised white, partly because my family is all-white on one side (or they are now that Italians and Italian-Americans are considered white by most people) and partly because the other side of my family is so ashamed of where they came from that I didn't know about it until I was in college and discovered what a lot of little things about that side of the family that no one ever put together for me actually meant, and then got hold of the genealogy one of my great-uncles had had researched when I was a kid.
As it turned out, there were a good number of intermarriages in that genealogy between the families my French-Canadian ancestors descend from, and First Nations tribal members. (First Nations, Native Canadians, Indigenous North Americans... I'm not actually a Native American, and I'm certainly not Indian.) Most or all of the latter were Micmaq -- the genealogical records frustratingly often leave out tribes of origin and even names especially of women, but going on geography, the Micmaq lived in the area and were likeliest to intermarry with their European neighbours -- and in fact there were frequent enough such intermarriages, among my actual ancestors and others in their communities, that there was often a hybrid French Catholic / Native culture in effect. People from such cultural origins are called Metis.
I mentioned that the geography means that most or all of my non-white ancestors were probably Micmaq. For the 98% of you reading this who aren't familiar with past tribal political boundaries as they relate to modern national political boundaries, that means that my French-Canadian/Micmaq/Metis ancestors didn't live in Quebec. They lived in Acadia, in a part of that colony which is now known as Nova Scotia. It's now known as Nova Scotia because France ceded control of the territory to England in a treaty, and England later decided they didn't want all those half-savage French Catholics in their new colony, and forcibly deported the vast majority of Acadiens.
My ancestors happened, mostly, to be sent to what is now Maine (part of Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time). I can't actually tell from the records whether any of my direct ancestors were sold by the captain of the deportation ship they were on into indentured servitude, as was often the case when Acadiens were put off into New England colonies. It doesn't matter much, because Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law soon after the Acadiens began arriving that left them with almost no options other than indentured servitude or institutionalisation. I can be pretty sure that families were broken up, husbands separated from wives and parents from children, because that was standard practice during the Expulsion (or, as it's called en francais, le Grand Dérangement).
All of this upheaval -- the deported Acadiens were not allowed to keep many (if any) possessions other than what they wore in most cases, family members separated during deportation often never managed to reunite, and younger members of multi-generational families are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to reconstructing lost family histories -- means that the genealogical record is heartbreakingly spotty for this period. What I do know is that most of my immediate ancestors were in Maine or Quebec (where some Acadiens were deported to right off, and where others found their way to later, and were in either case treated as second-class citoyens there) right up until the time of my great-grandparents.
Even today, in much of Maine, someone who speaks French as their first language is most likely from a family poorer and more disadvantaged than your average working-class Maine family, and not unlikely to be treated like a second-class citizen, if not some sort of cancer on society. My grandparents both speak French fluently, speak it with their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and siblings (or did when they were alive).
They used to speak it with their children, too; my biological father spoke only French until he was five years old. Then, since it was time for him to begin attending school, the family prepared him by switching to speaking only English with him. I now know more French than he does, and it's not as much as one might suppose from the French words sprinkled through this post. The only French I actually learned from my own family is fermer le bouche.
Oh, and by the way? There isn't a drop of "Anglo" British Isles blood on either side of my family, unless there was a child-of-rape in there somewhere. The "Anglos" are the ones who sold my ancestors into what amounted to slavery, while stealing or destroying everything they had created and worked all their lives to maintain, not to mention as much of their culture as the English could stamp out.
So... yeah. Here was a well-known and respected tribal leader -- albeit of a tribe pretty much completely unrelated to mine, though there are certain similarities of history (yes, a fair number of Acadiens, Metis and otherwise, did die during the weeks- or months-long sea voyages, and while they mostly weren't my direct ancestors for the obvious reason, neither could many of Ms Mankiller's direct ancestors have died on the Trail of Tears, for the same reason) -- lumped me in with the ethnic group historically responsible for repressing almost all of my ancestors on this continent.
(On the white side, too: my mother is half Italian, one quarter Czech and one quarter Finnish, second generation American on her father's side and third on her mother's. The Depression and the post-war era weren't as difficult for white immigrants as they were for non-whites, but neither was my mother's family welcomed by the Daughters of the American Revolution or Mayflower descendants.)
As I said above, some people think I look Jewish; many Europeans can see the Native features in my face; because I often wear a headcovering people not infrequently ask if I'm Muslim; and once I was even taken for Egyptian. I do not, however, look Anglo by any stretch of the imagination.
*
There's a Bureau of Indian Affairs -- that's the archaically-styled US government agency that regulates which First Nations within the borders of the United States get to be self-governing and to what degree -- guideline for tribal recognition that says, in order for a tribe to be recognised, it has to have maintained a continuous, distinct and authentic culture since pre-colonial times. This doesn't actually piss me off in regards to myself, since my people aren't from what's now the US of A, but it damned sure pisses me off on behalf of all the children of all the tribes who were torn away from their parents early in the 20th century to be locked up in church-run reformatory schools where they were beaten if they spoke their own language, and it pisses me off on principle, because it *would* exclude me from federal recognition if the borders were a little different and Nova Scotia was part of New England.
*
I am not going to answer any questions that would involve me speaking for all Indigenous North Americans, or all Native Canadians, or all Metis, or all mixed-race people, or all people who are mistaken for white, or any other group that's comprised of individuals who may share similarities of history and/or experience but have each lived only their own experience, and thus, in the end, can speak only to, for, and from their own experience. I state this explicitly because a distinctly less-white mixed friend of mine recently explained to me that she wasn't going to be posting anything for Blog Against Racism Week because so much of her audience would take her to be speaking as A Representative of Her Race, as opposed to one non-representative member of her race.
Like it says at the top of the post, this is about me.
*
I've actually been mulling a ranty-ish post about this -- about my family history and racial/ethnic identity -- for a long while now, and just never got around to it. If nothing else, BARW gave me that impetus to get it out. Which means that it did accomplish something... for me. Who's the only person I'm qualified to speak for.
I'm not sure I would be posting anything in relation to it, if it wasn't also a convenient impetus to get me posting something again. But it is, and I really ought to, so I am.
The first post I saw about BARW (as opposed to the icons, I started seeing those days earlier) instructed me that one thing I should do if I was going to participate was change my default icon to a race-related one, if it wasn't one already... and hey look, my default icon is still my Katrina icon, like it has been pretty much since the levees broke. You bet I'm still angry.
But that's kind of misleading, because this post isn't about the black/white racial divide in America, or anywhere else.
It's about me.
*
One day, almost fifteen years ago now, I had the opportunity to meet Wilma Mankiller, who at the time was War Chief of the Western Cherokee Nation. I had gone to hear her speak, and she was gracious enough to attend a reception afterwards and speak further with attendees in a more conversational setting.
And she called me an Anglo.
That was the first experience I had with racist language directed *at* me. I was an adult at the time.
Now, let me back up a bit and explain why it was racist, and why it was more hurtful than the average reader might expect.
First of all, I look white or almost-entirely-white to most people. (Some people think I look Jewish; others can't see where anyone would get that; I'm not in fact Jewish.) I was raised white, partly because my family is all-white on one side (or they are now that Italians and Italian-Americans are considered white by most people) and partly because the other side of my family is so ashamed of where they came from that I didn't know about it until I was in college and discovered what a lot of little things about that side of the family that no one ever put together for me actually meant, and then got hold of the genealogy one of my great-uncles had had researched when I was a kid.
As it turned out, there were a good number of intermarriages in that genealogy between the families my French-Canadian ancestors descend from, and First Nations tribal members. (First Nations, Native Canadians, Indigenous North Americans... I'm not actually a Native American, and I'm certainly not Indian.) Most or all of the latter were Micmaq -- the genealogical records frustratingly often leave out tribes of origin and even names especially of women, but going on geography, the Micmaq lived in the area and were likeliest to intermarry with their European neighbours -- and in fact there were frequent enough such intermarriages, among my actual ancestors and others in their communities, that there was often a hybrid French Catholic / Native culture in effect. People from such cultural origins are called Metis.
I mentioned that the geography means that most or all of my non-white ancestors were probably Micmaq. For the 98% of you reading this who aren't familiar with past tribal political boundaries as they relate to modern national political boundaries, that means that my French-Canadian/Micmaq/Metis ancestors didn't live in Quebec. They lived in Acadia, in a part of that colony which is now known as Nova Scotia. It's now known as Nova Scotia because France ceded control of the territory to England in a treaty, and England later decided they didn't want all those half-savage French Catholics in their new colony, and forcibly deported the vast majority of Acadiens.
My ancestors happened, mostly, to be sent to what is now Maine (part of Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time). I can't actually tell from the records whether any of my direct ancestors were sold by the captain of the deportation ship they were on into indentured servitude, as was often the case when Acadiens were put off into New England colonies. It doesn't matter much, because Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law soon after the Acadiens began arriving that left them with almost no options other than indentured servitude or institutionalisation. I can be pretty sure that families were broken up, husbands separated from wives and parents from children, because that was standard practice during the Expulsion (or, as it's called en francais, le Grand Dérangement).
All of this upheaval -- the deported Acadiens were not allowed to keep many (if any) possessions other than what they wore in most cases, family members separated during deportation often never managed to reunite, and younger members of multi-generational families are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to reconstructing lost family histories -- means that the genealogical record is heartbreakingly spotty for this period. What I do know is that most of my immediate ancestors were in Maine or Quebec (where some Acadiens were deported to right off, and where others found their way to later, and were in either case treated as second-class citoyens there) right up until the time of my great-grandparents.
Even today, in much of Maine, someone who speaks French as their first language is most likely from a family poorer and more disadvantaged than your average working-class Maine family, and not unlikely to be treated like a second-class citizen, if not some sort of cancer on society. My grandparents both speak French fluently, speak it with their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and siblings (or did when they were alive).
They used to speak it with their children, too; my biological father spoke only French until he was five years old. Then, since it was time for him to begin attending school, the family prepared him by switching to speaking only English with him. I now know more French than he does, and it's not as much as one might suppose from the French words sprinkled through this post. The only French I actually learned from my own family is fermer le bouche.
Oh, and by the way? There isn't a drop of "Anglo" British Isles blood on either side of my family, unless there was a child-of-rape in there somewhere. The "Anglos" are the ones who sold my ancestors into what amounted to slavery, while stealing or destroying everything they had created and worked all their lives to maintain, not to mention as much of their culture as the English could stamp out.
So... yeah. Here was a well-known and respected tribal leader -- albeit of a tribe pretty much completely unrelated to mine, though there are certain similarities of history (yes, a fair number of Acadiens, Metis and otherwise, did die during the weeks- or months-long sea voyages, and while they mostly weren't my direct ancestors for the obvious reason, neither could many of Ms Mankiller's direct ancestors have died on the Trail of Tears, for the same reason) -- lumped me in with the ethnic group historically responsible for repressing almost all of my ancestors on this continent.
(On the white side, too: my mother is half Italian, one quarter Czech and one quarter Finnish, second generation American on her father's side and third on her mother's. The Depression and the post-war era weren't as difficult for white immigrants as they were for non-whites, but neither was my mother's family welcomed by the Daughters of the American Revolution or Mayflower descendants.)
As I said above, some people think I look Jewish; many Europeans can see the Native features in my face; because I often wear a headcovering people not infrequently ask if I'm Muslim; and once I was even taken for Egyptian. I do not, however, look Anglo by any stretch of the imagination.
*
There's a Bureau of Indian Affairs -- that's the archaically-styled US government agency that regulates which First Nations within the borders of the United States get to be self-governing and to what degree -- guideline for tribal recognition that says, in order for a tribe to be recognised, it has to have maintained a continuous, distinct and authentic culture since pre-colonial times. This doesn't actually piss me off in regards to myself, since my people aren't from what's now the US of A, but it damned sure pisses me off on behalf of all the children of all the tribes who were torn away from their parents early in the 20th century to be locked up in church-run reformatory schools where they were beaten if they spoke their own language, and it pisses me off on principle, because it *would* exclude me from federal recognition if the borders were a little different and Nova Scotia was part of New England.
*
I am not going to answer any questions that would involve me speaking for all Indigenous North Americans, or all Native Canadians, or all Metis, or all mixed-race people, or all people who are mistaken for white, or any other group that's comprised of individuals who may share similarities of history and/or experience but have each lived only their own experience, and thus, in the end, can speak only to, for, and from their own experience. I state this explicitly because a distinctly less-white mixed friend of mine recently explained to me that she wasn't going to be posting anything for Blog Against Racism Week because so much of her audience would take her to be speaking as A Representative of Her Race, as opposed to one non-representative member of her race.
Like it says at the top of the post, this is about me.
*
I've actually been mulling a ranty-ish post about this -- about my family history and racial/ethnic identity -- for a long while now, and just never got around to it. If nothing else, BARW gave me that impetus to get it out. Which means that it did accomplish something... for me. Who's the only person I'm qualified to speak for.
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Re: Part 2!
Date: 2006-07-21 12:14 am (UTC)Re: Part 2!
Date: 2006-07-21 12:21 am (UTC)