Usher: U Remind Me

Remarks:

In 2001 this song went to #1 on both the American pop and R&B charts, a common feat for Usher. It went to #3 in Britain. I generally do not like his songs because they play them too much, but this one is long-ago enough that now I like it.

The woman at the end is Chilli of TLC.  The one at the beginning I believe is Shakara Ledard, a fashion model from the Bahamas.

The music video most reminds me of Mya’s “My Love is Like … Wo” (2003).

Lyrics:

Yo, I ain’t seeing you in a minute, but I got something to tell ya, listen.

See the thing about you that caught my eye
Is the same thing that makes me change my mind
Kinda hard to explain, but girl, I’ll try,
You need to sit down this may take a while
See this girl, she sorta looks just like you
She even smiles just the way you do
So innocent she seemed but I was fooled
I’m reminded when I look at you.

You remind me of a girl, that I once knew.
See her face whenever I, I look at you.
You won’t believe all of the things she put me through.
This is why I just can’t get with you.

Thought that she was the one for me,
Til I found out she was on her creep,
Oh, she was sexing everyone, but me.
This is why we could never be.

You remind me of a girl, that I once knew.
See her face whenever I, I look at you.
You won’t believe all of the things she put me through.
This is why I just can’t get with you.

I know it’s so unfair to you,
That I relate her ignorance to you.
Wish I knew, wish I knew how to separate the two
You remind me, whoa…

You remind me of a girl, that I once knew.
See her face whenever I, I look at you.
You won’t believe all of the things she put me through.
This is why I just can’t get with you.

You remind me of a girl, that I once knew.
See her face whenever I, I look at you.
You won’t believe all of the things she put me through.
This is why I just can’t get with you.

 

ethnic contributions

Ethnic contributions are those things that a culture or ethnic group has contributed to “mankind”, aka white people.

A few examples:

• Chinese: compass, gunpowder, printing, paper, silk, etc.
• Arabs: algebra, Arabic numerals, “preserving” Greek learning, etc.
• Tainos: tobacco, maize, cassava, hammocks, etc.
• Iroquois: maple syrup, ideas of constitutional government, etc.

Meanwhile white people’s contributions are known as Inventions, Discoveries, Science, the Enlightenment.

As bad as this mindset is, it is way better than what came before:

North of Mexico, most of the people lived in wandering tribes and led a simple life. North American Indians were mainly hunters and gatherers of wild food. An exceptional few – in Arizona and New Mexico – settled in one place and became farmers.

That from a high school textbook on American history by Boorstin and Kelley, still in use in the 1990s.

Even Hollywood’s iconic Sioux were farmers before the Spanish brought horses to North America. Much of the world is fed by maize, potatoes and cassava, which Indians, like Squanto, taught white people how to plant.

Even hunter-gatherers are not “simple”. By age 40 they are walking encyclopedias of history, religion and biology, among other things.

While better than nothing, the “contributions” thing is still Eurocentric:

1. Ethnic contributions reconfigure others to the greater good of whiteness. Other cultures are valued only to the degree that they help white people. They do not have value in their own right. They appear as bit players in someone else’s history.
2. Ethnic contributions set up white people as the judge of what is important. For example, jazz and hip hop were seen as just “ghetto” music – until they got the White Stamp of Approval.
3. Ethnic contributions place white people at the centre of history and push everyone else to the edges. People at the edges (aka, most of the world) live, die and every now and then come up with a Contribution. That is all you need to know about them, pretty much.
4. Ethnic contributions favour what white people are good at – science and invention – over other fields of human achievement. Back when they were technologically backward, they made everything about – religion.
5. Ethnic contributions wind up favouring white countries and nearby regions since that is where most things come to the attention of white people. For example, it is “Arabic” numerals, even though zero was invented in India and Mexico. It is “Gutenberg invented the printing press” not “Koreans invented printing.” It is “Elvis invented rock and roll,” and “Miley Cyrus invented twerking.” It is “Columbus discovered America”.

Cool tricks:

• Cool trick #1: Make the people of nearby regions members of your “race”, honorary or otherwise. That way you can claim your race Invented Everything Important, even if your people were unlettered barbarians for most of history.
• Cool trick #2: By reducing people of other races to their contributions, you can put a smiling ethnic face over the ugly parts. Like make it about George Washington Carver, not Jim Crow. Or Squanto, not the Mystic massacre 16 years later.

See also:

• ethnic
• What “world” history has taught me
  • Spotlight History
  • technocentric history
• Eurocentric words
• The lies you were taught about Native Americans
• Tainos
• How white was Ancient Greece?
• white man’s burden
  • The white inventor argument
• Hunter-gatherers as not “simple”:
  • Seeing Melbourne, Day 2
  • Franz Boas

“Your blog is anti-white”

Some White American commenters say that this blog is anti-white. They seem to think the purpose of this blog is to make white people feel bad or look bad.

They say stuff like:

• It is anti-American and anti-Western.
• It is like the Nazis or Stormfront (the Klan website) or RTLM (the Rwandan radio station that called Tutsis cockroaches and called for their genocide).
• It is part of the “race grievance industry”, keeping racism alive.

I would like to say: “Of course I am anti-white! There is plenty about whites to be anti about!”

But it is messier than that:

1. I am not anti-white. I am anti-racist. I would like to think that there is a difference between the two, between the sin and the sinner, between being racist and being white. Whenever I say something bad about whites it almost always has to do with their racism. Calling out racism is not racist. Even when I mock them, I am mocking their racism, not their ethnicity:
   • I do not make fun of how they talk or dress or look.
   • I do not make fun of the food they eat or the names they give their children.
   • I do not hold up their poorest and most criminal elements as “what white people are like”.
   • I do not excuse violence against them saying that whites kill each other all the time.
   • I do not say their women are objectively ugly.
   • I do not make racist jokes about them.
   • I do not call them racial slurs or compare them to animals.
   • I do not call for their genocide or ethnic cleansing.
2. My blog is not meant for white people. Therefore it is not meant to make them think or feel a certain way. I discovered early on that most white people are beyond my powers of persuasion. Whites are not racist because they lack facts or proper reasoning. It goes deeper than that. It is way more irrational than that. I cannot make most of them see the light because they do not want to see the light. But by not writing for them that means:
3. Some whites read my blog through a heavy layer of white guilt or a Fragile White Ego and get upset. Like two-year-olds they make their feelings the Centre of the Universe. Like two-year-olds they cannot tell the difference between anger and hatred. “Mommy doesn’t hate you, sweetie. She just does not like the bad thing you did.”
4. The R-word: I think the main thing that upsets them is how I think most whites are racist. At least 80% of White Americans are racist to some degree. Not so much the Jim Crow racism of open hatred or scientific racism but the colour-blind racism that assumes whites are better than blacks, that American society is more or less fair and therefore blacks must be screwed up. The very kind of racism, in fact, that sees blacks as “whining”.

See also:

• Is this blog racist?
• The race baiter argument
• calling out racism
• white people
  • colour blind racism: the four frames
  • IAT: Implicit Association Test
  • The feelings of white people
  • Fragile White Ego Syndrome
  • The five walls of racism
  • the R-word
• I do not write this blog for white people
• the eight stages of genocide

Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore (1745m) is a mountain sacred to the Sioux called Six Grandfathers. Whites desecrated it with the faces of four white men carved into its side in the early 1900s.

Location: 43.878947,-103.459825, near the centre of North America, in the Black Hills of the American state of South Dakota. The Black Hills are sacred to the Sioux. The American government in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie said the Sioux would have the mountains forever. Forever lasted eight years: whites discovered gold and the government broke the treaty. Whites made billions. In 1980 the government offered the Sioux $105 million (17 million crowns). The Sioux say that as sacred land it is not for sale. The UN says that as sacred land Mount Rushmore should be returned.

Dates: When each face was completed:

• 1930: George Washington
• 1936: Thomas Jefferson
• 1937: Abraham Lincoln
• 1939: Theodore Roosevelt

Brainchild of: Doane Robinson, white man, South Dakota’s state historian. In the 1920s he wanted his state to cash in on the new car tourism, but needed a reason for people to drive to the state.

Artist: Gutzon Borglum, white man, Klan member and egomaniac, then best known for the Confederate soldiers carved into the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Why four American presidents: Robinson wanted huge statues of Lewis & Clarke, Buffalo Bill or Red Cloud. Borglum said they needed subjects with nationwide appeal. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln were no-brainers. Theodore Roosevelt was Borglum’s friend and hero. Historians might have chosen Woodrow Wilson instead. In 1937 some wanted Susan B. Anthony. There is no space for a fifth face.

Nickname:

• Shrine of Democracy (White version),
• Shrine of Hypocrisy (Native version)

Best viewed: in 300,000 years when wind and rain will have worn it down to what Borglum had in mind.

Meet the four white men:

Two were slave owners. All four were racist against Native Americans:

George Washington (president 1789-1797) – believed Indians to be inferior to Europeans. He bought and sold Indian lands without tribes’ permission. As commander of the Continental Army he ordered the “total destruction and devastation” of Iroquois towns. His men raped and killed women and children.

Thomas Jefferson (president 1801-1809) – bought the Louisiana Purchase, on which Mount Rushmore stands. He said of Natives: “this unfortunate race has justified its extermination.” In the Declaration of Independence he wrote of “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Abraham Lincoln (president 1861-1865) – ordered the largest mass execution in American history: 38 Sioux men, chosen at random, no trial, no hearing, in order to put down an uprising of starving Indians in Minnesota. Lincoln oversaw the takeover of Native lands in the western Plains and the Rockies.

Theodore Roosevelt (president 1901-1909) – took Native lands and called them “national parks” and “national forests”. He said Natives were “squalid savages”, “whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts”, that North America “had to be taken by the white race.”

Sources: Mostly Frontline, Teddy Roosevelt, Lakota Country Times, Huffington Post, Indian Land Cessions, “Mirrors” (2009) by Eduardo Galeano; “Where White Men Fear to Tread” (1995) by Russell Means and my post Notes towards a Native American history of George Washington.

See also:

• Washington
  • in Native history
  • in Black history
  • in White mythology
• Jefferson
  • Black people according to Thomas Jefferson
• Lincoln
• The Sioux today
• “Stereotypes have some truth to them”
• The whiteness of Laura Ingalls Wilder
• The Nadir of American race relations
• crowns

Black femininity

Guest post by commenter phoebeprunelle:

I am writing this post because an exchange over on the interracial relationship thread sparked a discussion on beauty. Anyone who knows me personally knows that a few years ago, I stopped buying Essence and Ebony magazine – basically any Black mainstream magazine. I also encouraged male family members to look beyond mainstream Black male magazines that featured Black women plastered half naked on the cover with what can usually be described as a scowl on their faces.

Here are the reasons I stopped buying mainstream Black magazines,  listed below in no particular order:

1. Perpetuating Black Female Inferiority: Both Ebony and Essence magazines have featured the most negative stories about Black women and Black people in the past five years. You would think we can’t or are incapable of doing anything right. It also doesn’t help that they rarely ever feature Black academics, writers, etc.

2. Reducing the Black Female to One Narrative: None of the mainstream Black magazines encourages Black women to be feminine or to embrace the different expressions of Blackness. They omit Black women who are into cosplay, soft rock, Afrocentrism, science fiction geeks, retro/vintage lifestyle etc. By the way, I am the last one  as most of my dresses and handbags were made pre-1950’s.

Black mainstream magazines would not dare go near this Sista for an interview:

Or this one below:

3. Keeping Black Females Silent: We all know that Black women receive a lot of flack because we are usually too something or not enough of something (*insert your complaint here*), but what is very interesting is that we are constantly berated for our supposed lack of femininity. The images above should highlight that there is nothing wrong or lacking in our femininity. Yet that discussion on the interracial relationship thread led to familiar territory with one of the commentators: anytime a Black woman questions the very things in our community that does not do our femininity any justice, it is met with accusatory statements such as, “You must be jealous,” or “You’re bitter.”

4. Mixed Messages from the BC: This leads to my last point about Black mainstream magazines. Here are two images of very beautiful and successful models in their own right:

This is Angelique Noir:

Although she is wearing a skirtini she seems playful, and looks like she is about to go and actually do something respectable; like swim or sunbathe.

This lovely young lady is Ashleeta Beauchamp. :

Both women are modern pin-ups who emphasize traditional feminine charm in all their photo shoots. They look approachable.

Now compare these images taken from mainstream Black male magazines:

 And,

It should come as no surprise why Black women are denied our right to be seen as vulnerable, virgins, girls-next-door, (feminine traits) when those of us in our community would rather reward the last two images.

See also:

• interracial relationships
• Black Men magazine

The whiteness of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder as portrayed by Melissa Gilbert on the American television show “Little House on the Prairie” (1974-1983)

Laura Ingalls Wilder in “Little House in the Prairie” (1935) wrote about her White American girlhood on Native American land – Indian Territory. In the 1970s it became an American television series that ran for nine years (pictured). The book is widely regarded as “wholesome”, even educational, one that teaches history and the value of courage.

Yet it is pretty racist stuff:

• Her family of white land thieves takes Indian (Osage) land without permission, yet whites are seen as Basically Good while Indians are seen as bad, wild and threatening.
• Two characters say, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
• Later in the book there is a good, still-living Indian: one who is willing to fight his own people to protect white settlers.
• Ma hates Indians. So does Jack, the family dog.
• Descriptions of Indians:
  • “wild” (18 times)
  • “savages”
  • “screeching dev-“
  • “Their eyes were black and still glittering, like snake’s eyes.”
  • “The wild, fast yipping yells were worse than wolves.”
• “There were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.”
• “Laura thought [Pa] would show her a papoose [baby Indian] some day, just as he had shown her fawns, and little bears, and wolves.”
• Laura: “Pa, get me that little Indian baby … Oh, I want it! I want it! … Please, Pa, please!”
• Ma: “Dear me, Laura, must you yell like an Indian? I declare, if you girls aren’t getting to look like Indians! Can I never teach you to keep your sunbonnets on?”
• “Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that’ll farm it. That’s only common sense and justice.”
• Laura cries when the American government forces Osages off the land. Ma feels bad too. But not bad enough to change their land-thieving ways.
• The book supports the racist idea of Manifest Destiny throughout.

In 1998 when this book was read at a grade school in Minnesota, one eight-year-old Indian girl came home in tears, having learned from this Beloved Classic that, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Another girl did not cry. When asked why, she said, “I just pretend I’m not Indian.”

Waziyatawin, the Dakota writer, was the mother of the crying child. After she showed the school board how racist the book was, they agreed to stop using it. But when the news got out it was turned into a censorship issue of banning books and the school, backed by the ACLU, changed its mind.

Waziyatawin was told she has a “chip on her shoulder”. Linda Ellerbee on Nickelodeon’s “Nick News” told children across America that all books are offensive to someone. The school defended the book as “history” – yet her daughter’s teacher was not taking apart its racist messages, which has the effect of normalizing them. That, no less, at a white-run school that stands on land stolen from the Dakotas.

The Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Germany are “part of history” too, yet no one thinks of reading their youth literature to schoolchildren without examining their racism. Why is “Little House on the Prairie” any different?

– Abagond, 2013.

Update (2018): The US Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) has removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from one of its awards. The “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work” and “expressions of stereotypical attitudes” were “inconsistent with ALSC’s core values” – BBC.

Update (June 27th 2018): One of my examples: “There were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.” I now find out that before 1953 it did not say “settlers”. It said “people”.

Source: This post is mainly based on Waziyatawin in “Unlearning the Language of Conquest” (2006), edited by Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs).

See also:

• Notes towards a Native American history of George Washington
• Books banned from Tucson classrooms
• History in Texas schoolbooks
• James W. Loewen: Lies My Teacher Told Me
• Basically Good
• Manifest Destiny
• Tintin in the Congo – yet more Beloved Racism

Notes towards a Native American history of George Washington

Note: The following is based completely on statements and works by Native Americans. Most of it is cut and pasted from the words of Russell Means, Jack D. Forbes, Devon A. Mihesuah, James Collins and Iroquois leaders. John Mohawk was also an important source.

George Washington (1700s), also known as Hanadaguyus, had become famous as an Indian killer during the French and Indian War. He had risen quickly through the militia ranks by butchering Indian communities and burning their homes. The father of his country massacred men, women and children. It had taken dozens of such My Lai massacres for George Washington to become a hero.

My Lai massacre, 1968

When his army entered the country of the Six Nations (Iroquois), the Seneca called him Hanadaguyus (“Town Destroyer”). Even years later when that name was heard, women looked behind them and turned pale, and children clinged close to the necks of their mothers.

When his army came to the Onondaga Town they put to death all the women and children, excepting some of the young women that they carried away for the use of their soldiers, and were put to death in a more shameful and scandalous manner. Yet these rebels call themselves Christians.

When Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776, an Indian woman was in the bow of his boat to guide him across – but not all the way, apparently, according the famous painting by Thomas Sully.

Washington owned hundreds of black slaves. Black labourers were captured, shipped, sold and resold in order to provide cheap labour for the George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons of North America.

Proclamation Line of 1763

George Washington believed Indians to be inferior to Europeans. He bought and sold Indian lands without tribes’ permission, fought and killed Indians without mercy.

The revolt against Britain, while cast in a language of universal rights and freedoms, was also a blow against royal protection of Indian lands; and the revolt was led by those, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Patrick Henry, with considerable financial stake in the acquisition of such lands. British American colonials had been outraged by the Proclamation of 1763, properly seeing this as a royal restriction on their right to settle on, seize, purchase, or otherwise acquire west-lying Indian lands, and in 1776 they rebelled against the crown.

After the rebellion Washington became president and waged war on Indians in the land now called Ohio. After a disastrous loss of an army under General St Clair in 1791, Washington sent a new army in 1794 under “Mad Anthony” Wayne. Wayne won the war at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

The Canandaigua Treaty (1794) that soon followed put the American government, not the states, in charge of Indian affairs. The American government was to uphold their rights, approve all land transactions and deal with Indian nations as independent governments. In practice, though, it pretty much turned a blind eye to what states did, like allowing whites to steal Indian land. It was not till the 1970s that Indian nations had a way to contest land claims.

The Black Hills are hallowed ground of the Sioux, and Rushmore was a sacred mountain before the sculptor Gutzon Borglum desecrated it with four white men’s faces – one of them being George Washington’s.

Sources:

• Russell Means, “Where White Men Fear to Tread” (1995)
• Jack D. Forbes, “Columbus and Other Cannibals” (2008)
• Devon A. Mihesuah, “American Indians” (2009)
• James Collins, “Understanding Tolowa Histories” (1997)

See also:

• Notes towards a black history of George Washington
• The white mythology of George Washington
• Six Nations (Iroquois)
• Indian
• white people
• Martin Luther King, Jr: Riverside speech against the Vietnam War

Notes towards a black history of George Washington

Detail from “The Apotheosis of Washington” (1865), which is on the inside of the dome of the Capitol Building. In the larger painting it says “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many, one”), but everyone in the painting is – white.

Note: The following is based completely on statements and works by Black Americans. Some of it is cut and pasted straight from Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Assata Shakur and Randall Robinson. Other important sources: Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Annette Gordon-Reed, Kai Wright and Washington descendant Linda Allen Bryant.

George Washington (1700s) was an American president, the leader of the Continental Army during the so-called American Revolution and a Southern slave owner.

He was famed for his valour but his virtues more, first in peace and honours. He was engaged in a great cause. Yet he also defrauded the labourer of his hire.

Washington did not give a damn about black people. He was fighting for the freedom of “whites only”. Rich whites, at that. After the so-called Revolution, you could not vote unless you were a white man and you owned a plot of land. The Revolutionary War was led by some rich white boys who got tired of paying heavy taxes to the king. It didn’t have anything at all to do with freedom, justice, and equality for all.

Timeline:

1775: Washington opposes blacks joining the Continental Army, but is forced by Congress and circumstance to admit them. At least 3,000 black soldiers help to make him Father of the Country. They mainly fight in racially integrated New England regiments. Some were at Valley Forge. But blacks also fight for the British, who promise freedom to all who join their ranks. Some black soldiers on the British side have “Liberty to Slaves” emblazoned on their uniforms. Some of Washington’s own slaves run away to fight with the British.

1781: Washington blocks the beaches with soldiers to prevent runaway slaves who had fought with the British from leaving America with the redcoats. At least 30,000 try to leave with the British as they pull out after the war. Some succeed and are resettled in Nova Scotia.

1784/5: Washington sleeps with a black woman named Venus, his brother’s slave. She gives birth to his only son, West Ford.

1786: Washington writes to Robert Morris saying he would be for the abolition of slavery if it ever came to a vote, but says what the Quakers are doing (the Underground Railroad) is inhumane. It is an act of “oppression” against slave owners. It makes slaves discontented and unhappy and “seduces” them to run away.

1787: Washington presides over the writing of the Constitution. Remains silent on the subject of slavery.

1790: Washington sides with Southern slave owners when Ben Franklin, in his last public act, asks Congress to end the slave trade.

1799: Washington owns 277 slaves with his wife. In his will he frees them after her death, providing for the care of the old and the education of the young (in reading, writing and “some useful occupation”). This sort of thing was common in New England but not in the South.

1800s: His monument is built like that of an Egyptian sun god. It is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men, shout – “We have Washington to our father.”

Washington owned slaves like his father did before him and his father’s father before that. He gave them his castoff plates and cups. He buried them in unmarked graves behind an outbuilding.

See also:

• The white mythology of George Washington – what I was taught at school
  • Vine Deloria, Jr on the whitenesss of American history
  • Malcolm X: On Afro-American History
  • The history of black history
• West Ford
• American slavery
• sources
  • Phillis Wheatley
  • Assata Shakur
  • American abolitionists – Frederick Douglass among them
• darkies
• drapetomania
• Haiti: a brief history
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Eleven Nations of North America
• Black people according to Thomas Jefferson (1787) – his views at the time the Constitution was being written

The white mythology of George Washington

Disclaimer: As mythology, no fact checking is allowed! Just repeating what I was taught at school in America:

George Washington (1700s) was:

• the first American president,
• the Father of the Country.
• a Founding Father, so he was, of course, extremely wise.
• Commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, winning the country’s independence from Britain.
• one of the three greatest men in history, along with Columbus and Lincoln.

He was honest, brave and wise. He loved freedom and loved his country.

He is from Virginia. His estate is called Mount Vernon. It is unknown how he got it or what he grew there. He owned slaves.

When he was a boy he got an axe for his birthday and cut down a cherry tree. Later when his father found one of his trees cut down, George said he did it – “For I cannot tell a lie.” The story is probably made up, but shows the kind of person he was.

As a young man he was a surveyor. He fought in the French and Indian War, making a name for himself. When America declared its independence in 1776, he became the clear choice to lead the army against the British.

Washington at Valley Forge

The army had little money. While British generals were enjoying the high life in Philadelphia and New York, he was at Valley Forge freezing in the snow and wind. His (all-white) army did not have proper shoes. Many wore rags. Men were deserting – sunshine patriots! But he kept enough of them together through the winter to hold out against the British.

Washington crossing the Delaware

One Christmas Eve he crossed the Delaware River to take the partying Hessian soldiers by surprise.

He was not able to defeat the British on his own, but he was able to hold out, year after year, till help arrived from the French. They sent their navy and General Lafayette. Washington won the war in 1783 when General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.

When asked to be king, he said no.

He was voted the first president by a landslide (by the 20% or so who could vote). He took the oath of office on Wall Street in New York.

As president, Washington put down the Whisky Rebellion.

He did not live at the White House – it was still being built (by white people).

He did not believe in political parties or fighting in European wars.

He got the country off to a good start, making him one of the greatest presidents ever.

He was faithful to his wife Martha Washington. He had no children of his own – which probably saved the country from (de facto) monarchy. He had wooden teeth. Unlike Ben Franklin, he wore a white wig, the custom of the day.

He freed his slaves when he died.

His views on slavery, genocide, blacks and Native Americans are unknown.

Washington’s birthday is February 22nd. He was born on the 11th, but they changed the calendar from Old Style.

 See also:

• West Ford – his black son?
• 12 American presidential elections
• Why American history gets whitewashed
• Malcolm X: On Afro-American History
• Columbus
• Lincoln
• Jefferson

West Ford

Ford in 1859 in his seventies

West Ford (c. 1784-1863), American farmer and founder of Gum Spring, Virginia, is said by some to be the black son of George Washington. By 1860 he was the second richest free black person in Fairfax County.

There are three separate family stories about Ford among his descendants:

• Two stories say he is the son of George Washington;
• One story says he is the son of Bushrod Washington, nephew of George.

The two stories about him being the son of George Washington, because they are so alike and come from branches of the family that had been out of touch for over a hundred years, can be dated to when Ford was still alive. The stories sound like the memories of a son whose father denied him – they talk about how George Washington used to take him hunting, take him to church, take him riding.

Bushrod, on the other hand, had greater opportunity to be the father since Ford’s mother, Venus, was a slave of John Augustine Washington – his father, George’s brother.

Although John and George lived 150 km apart – a day and a half of travel in those days – they did visit each other during the time when Ford was conceived.

The black oral history says that Venus met George several times, was asked to “comfort” him, that he stopped having sex with her once she got pregnant, that she said, “The Ole General be the father, mistress.”

White scholars say that Washington would never do such a thing – despite several (unproved) sex scandals with both black and white women. They said the same about Jefferson too, also in the face of black oral history and reports of scandal – and were shown to be bad judges of character by DNA tests.

DNA testing has not yet been done in this case. Partly because the Mount Vernon Ladies Association has blocked it. A DNA test could rule out George Washington, but otherwise might not be able to tell whether George or Bushrod was the father.

Ford was freed and given 160 acres of land (65 hectares). Ford was the only slave that Bushrod’s mother freed. Since she gave no reason, like faithful service, it is almost certainly because he was a blood relation. That means either George, Bushrod or Corbin, her other son, was the father – but probably not her husband, since in his case Ford would have been a child of infidelity.

How George Washington and West Ford looked in their twenties:

There is no written record of who Ford’s father was, which is not surprising since he was born to a slave woman.

White scholars are quick to point out there is “no proof” that Ford was Washington’s son. But “no proof” in this case is not the same as “unlikely” since whites kept the records back then and since whites have prevented DNA testing. Given what we do know at this point – the black oral histories – it is more likely to be true than not.

Source: “An Imperfect God” (2003) by Henry Wienceck; westfordlegacy.com; Chicago Tribune (2004).

 See also:

• Jefferson
• Sally Hemings
• Linda Tuhiwai Smith on history – on how white written records count as history, but oral traditions do not

Teena Marie: Portuguese Love

Remarks:

I first knew about Teena Marie through this song. Not one of her hits – it only went to #54 on the American R&B charts in 1981 – but one of my favourites of hers ever since. I also like “Out on a Limb” (1985).

Lyrics:

Hey, baby, how you doin’

Wow, huh, it’s really been a long time
You know
Remember that night
You remember

On a starry winter night in Portugal
Where the ocean kissed the southern shore
There a dream I never thought would come to pass
Came and went like time spent through and hourglass

You made love to me like fire and rain
Ooh, you know you’ve got to be a hurricane
Killing me with kisses, oh, so subtly
You make love forever, baby
You make love forever

I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
You’ve got to say you love me too
I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
I’m gonna give it all to you

Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese

Harbor nights, we made love till the morning star
Then you crooned a song to me on your guitar
Was it so familiar calling soft my name (Teena)
Sunlight dancing slowly through loves window panes

And you made love to me like sugar and spice
Hush my broken heart, this must be paradise
Killing me with kisses, oh, so tenderly
You make love forever, baby
You make love forever

I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
You’ve got to say you love me too
I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
I’m gonna give it all to you

Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese

Amore Portuguese
Say you love me, baby
Amore Portuguese
Say you love me, baby

Yo quiero a la ser amor
A feeling too hard to ignore
Say amore Portuguese
You’ve got to say you love me

You knew that you felt good to me, oh, baby, oh
From the first kiss to the last I’m trembling
You made love to me like no other man
And if you please I’d like to go back there again
Killing me with kisses, oh, so tenderly
You make love like, wee
You make love forever

I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
You’ve got to say you love me too
I ain’t gonna let you go that easy
I’m gonna give it all to you

Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love
Won’t you say it to me, say it to me, say you love me, baby
Portuguese love

Amore, amore Portuguese
Aye, say you love me (Portuguese love)
Amore, amore Portuguese
Aye, baby, aye, aye Portuguese love

Amore, amore Portuguese
Say, say, baby, aye, aye, hey, hey (Portuguese love)
Portuguese amore, amore Portuguese
Say, say, say aye, say aye, aye, aye, hee

Portuguese love
Portuguese love
Portuguese love
Portuguese love
Portuguese love
Portuguese love
Portuguese love

Love me
Say you love me
Love, love me (I love you)
Portuguese amore
Say you love me, say, say
Say you love me, baby

You know what I’m sayin’, baby
Maybe that will express what I’ve been going through (I love you)

interracial relationships

The Lovings – their Supreme Court case in 1967 overturned laws against interracial marriage in America.

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An interracial relationship (IRR) is a dating or married relationship between people from different races. This post is about the ones in America. It is an overview post – click on links to go deeper into a particular topic.

The numbers:

In 2010, 4.1% of all marriages in America were interracial. The rate was 2.1% for white women, 4.6% for black women and 17.5% for Asian women.

Interracial marriages, from most common to least:

• 21.3% Asian woman, white man
• 19.7% other woman, white man
• 19.7% white woman, other man
• 15.7% white woman, black man
• 8.8% white woman, Asian man
• 6.8% black woman, white man
• 2.7% other woman, black man
• 1.6% Asian woman, black man
• 1.5% Asian woman, other man
• 1.1% other woman, Asian man
• 0.7% black woman, other man
• 0.4% black woman, Asian man

Notes:

• Hispanic – not a race.
• Asian – everyone from Pakistan to Japan, from Mongolia to Papua New Guinea is one “race”.
• other – presumably Native Americans, mixed-race people, etc.

Myths:

1. “I am not racist. My girlfriend is black.” Right, and I am not sexist because my wife is a woman.
2. “Mixed-race marriages will help end racism. In 500 years we will all look Brazilian!” The people in Brazil already look Brazilian – and they are still racist. Racism comes not from differences but how people think about those differences.
3. “Mixed-race children are better-looking.” Is that because being part white puts them closer to white ideas of beauty?
4. “All black men secretly want to marry white women.” Supposedly most black men who make over $100,000 a year marry white. That could well be true, but not necessarily because of any secret desire: as Michelle Obama found out, most highly successful blacks live in an all-white world and become cut off from other blacks.

Issues:

• Beauty is objective – a racist trope that comes up in these discussions. Pushed by Steve Sailer, Satoshi Kanazawa, Heartiste, majorityrights.com and their godfather, J.F. “Caucasian” Blumenbach. It is all beside the point because:
• Men are dogs – when it comes to race, it is women who do the choosing. Or so says the Columbia speed dating study.
• sexual selection and race – a study of Chinese American women found that those who grew up in white neighbourhoods tend to marry white while those who grew up in Chinese neighbourhoods tend to marry Chinese.
• Asian fetish – while there are probably white men with creepy desires for Asian women, the high number of Asian women married to white men mainly comes from the fact that Asian women are far less likely to grow up in same-race neighbourhoods than other women.
• Red flags:
  • Exoticization – this makes the other person into some kind of racist fantasy, not a flesh-and-blood person. No one is exotic.
  • Internalized racism – this shows up as badmouthing one’s own race, particularly the opposite sex. Examples:
    • BWE Movement – thinks that black men are DBR (Damaged Beyond Repair), that the answer is to marry white men.
    • Tommy Sotomayor – the black male counterpart to BWE.
• mixed-race identity – what the children of these unions will have to deal with at some point.

See also:

• Black women, loyalty and Black men
• My views on relationships between black women and white men
• OkCupid and race and dating – a dating website with a half million people runs the numbers
• Famous interracial couples
• Adrian Tomine: Shortcomings – internalized racism and interracial relationships
• growing up biracial

12 American presidential elections

An  American presidential election every 20 years, with 2012 thrown in for comparison:

year: 1800
winner: Thomas Jefferson, elected by 0.7% of Americans
resume: Founding Father, slave owner
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (unaffiliated)
party: Democratic-Republican
state (region): Virginia (central, in terms of the country’s demographics)
demographic centre: Maryland
voting rights: white Protestant men of property can vote. Property requirements in effect limit voting to the top 10% or so. Catholics and Jews cannot vote in all states.

year: 1820
winner: James Monroe, re-elected by 0.9% of Americans
resume: Founding Father, slave owner
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Episcopalian)
party: Democratic-Republican
state (region): Virginia (central)
demographic centre: Virginia
voting rights: Jews and Catholics can now vote in all states.

year: 1840
winner: William Henry Harrison, elected by 7.5% of Americans
resume: Tippecanoe (war hero)
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Episcopalian)
party: Whig
state (region): Ohio (central)
demographic centre: Virginia
voting rights: property requirement dropped in many states. Most white men can now vote.

year: 1860
winner: Abraham Lincoln, elected by 5.9% of Americans
resume: Congressman, Lincoln-Douglas debates, log cabin
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (unaffiliated)
party: Republican
state (region): Illinois (north-western)
demographic centre: Ohio
voting rights: property requirement dropped in all states. Literacy tests in some states to suppress the Irish Catholic vote.

year: 1880
winner: James A. Garfield, elected by 8.9% of Americans
resume: Congressman, log cabin
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Disciples of Christ)
party: Republican
state (region): Ohio (central)
demographic centre: Kentucky
voting rights: men of colour can now vote.

year: 1900
winner: William McKinley, re-elected by 9.5% of Americans
resume: governor
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Methodist)
party: Republican
state (region): Ohio (central)
demographic centre: Indiana
voting rights: poll taxes, literacy tests suppress black vote in many states

year: 1920
winner: William G. Harding, elected by 15.2% of Americans
resume: senator
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Baptist)
party: Republican
state (region): Ohio (central)
demographic centre: Indiana
voting rights: women can now vote

year: 1940
winner: Franklin Roosevelt, re-elected by 20.7% of Americans
resume: president
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Episcopalian)
party: Democrat
state (region): New York (north-eastern)
demographic centre: Indiana
voting rights: Native Americans can now vote.

year: 1960
winner: John F. Kennedy, elected by 19.1% of Americans
resume: senator
race: white
gender: male
religion: Catholic
party: Democrat
state (region): Massachusetts (north-eastern)
demographic centre: Illinois
voting rights:

year: 1980
winner: Ronald Reagan, elected by 19.4% of Americans
resume: governor, Hollywood actor
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Presbyterian)
party: Republican
state (region): California (south-western)
demographic centre: Missouri
voting rights: poll taxes and literacy tests outlawed – now all people of colour can vote. Voting age dropped from 21 to 18.

year: 2000
winner: George W. Bush, elected by 17.9% of Americans
resume: governor, president’s son
race: white
gender: male
religion: Protestant (Methodist)
party: Republican
state (region): Texas (south-western)
demographic centre: Missouri
voting rights: mass incarceration of black men starts to affect the black vote.

year: 2012
winner: Barack Obama, re-elected by 21.0% of Americans
resume: senator
race: black
gender: male
religion: Protestant (unaffiliated)
party: Democrat
state (region): Illinois (central)
demographic centre: Missouri
voting rights: voter turnout suppression laws

See also:

• Southern strategy
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• mass incarceration of black men
• Irish Americans
• presidents:
  • Jefferson
  • Lincoln
  • McKinley
    • Philippine-American War
    • How President McKinley was killed
  • Reagan
  • Bush
  • Obama
    • Romney 2012
    • Is Obama a Rented Negro?

New Testament canon

Luke 11:2, the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, from the world’s oldest known New Testament (Codex Sinaiticus, c. 350)

The New Testament canon is the list of books that belong to the New Testament, the Christian part of the Bible. The Catholic canon of 27 books, now accepted by most Christian churches, took shape between the years 140 and 367.

By the late 100s there were four main Christian sects:

• Marcionites – said only Paul understood Jesus, that his other Apostles were too Jewish in their thinking. Over a hundred years after Jesus, c. 140, they made the first New Testament: an edited gospel of Luke and ten letters of Paul.
• Gnostics – said Jesus had a secret message for the chosen few – and had “secret” gospels to match.
• Montanists – followed the prophet Montanus of Phrygia, who was receiving new messages from God!
• Catholics – said its churches were founded by the Apostles, that it was universal.

The Catholic Church:

• To fight the Marcionites it created its own New Testament, one that featured several Apostles.
• To fight the Gnostics it said Catholic teachings and writings were public, claimed the Gnostic gospels were made up, forgeries!
• To fight the Montanists it claimed that revelation from God ended with the Apostles.

This led to a New Testament made up of writings that were:

• ancient – no new revelations!
• apostolic – written by Apostles and their hangers-on, like Peter’s Mark or Paul’s Timothy.
• universal – widely accepted by its churches.
• orthodox – supported Catholic teaching and practice.

In practice “orthodox” mattered most.

For example, if a writing did not fit Catholic teaching, it was suspected as a forgery – surely no Apostle would write such stuff! Goodbye Gnostic gospels! On the other hand, it may have accepted the letters of Titus and Timothy too readily because they beautifully supported Catholic teaching. Scholars now say they are forgeries.

By 200 these 19 books were pretty much accepted in Catholic circles:

• 4 gospels:
  • Matthew
  • Mark
  • Luke
  • John
• Acts of the Apostles
• 13 letters of Paul:
  • Romans
  • 1 Corinthians
  • 2 Corinthians
  • Galatians
  • Ephesians
  • Philippians
  • Colossians
  • 1 Thessalonians
  • 2 Thessalonians
  • 1 Timothy
  • 2 Timothy
  • Titus
  • Philemon
• 1 John

In the 200s and 300s the following books appeared in some but not all Catholic New Testaments (the eight in bold now appear in all):

• Epistle of Barnabas
• 1 Clement
• 2 Clement
• Didache
• Book of Hebrews
• Shepherd of Hermas
• Epistle of James
• 2 John
• 3 John
• Apocalypse of John (Revelation)
• Epistle of Jude
• Acts of Paul
• 1 Peter
• 2 Peter
• Apocalypse of Peter
• Wisdom of Solomon

The most hotly disputed books were Revelation and Hebrews. Revelation was championed by churches in the west but was suspected to be a forgery in the east. Hebrews was the other way round. In time both were accepted, east and west. As it turns out, both were forgeries!

In 367 the list of the 27 books appears for the first time, in the Easter letter of Athanasius. It became generally accepted.

But it was not the last word:

• Churches in Syria in the 400s still did not accept Revelation, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.
• Luther in the 1500s did not accept Revelation, Hebrews, James and Jude.
• Churches in Ethiopia added:
  • Sirate Tsion
  • Tizaz
  • Gitsew
  • Abtilis
  • 1 Dominos
  • 2 Dominos
  • Clement
  • Didascalia

Source: Mainly Bart D. Ehrman, “Lost Christianities” (2003), Henry Chadwick in “The Oxford History of Christianity” (1990) and ethiopianorthodox.org.

– Abagond, 2013.

See also:

• ANT: Abagond New Testament
• Bible
• Christianity
  • Catholic
  • Gnosticism
• Luther

ANT: Abagond New Testament

Page 1: Jesus betrayed by a kiss.

The Abagond New Testament (ANT) is made up of all known Christian writings that were written by the year 100 –  during the time of Christ’s first followers. Writings are arranged in the order in which they were written.

Why ANT:

The New Testament has two drawbacks:

1. Books are not put in the order in which they were written. Books form a conversation. They talk about a set of ideas that changes and grows over time. That conversation is hard to understand if put in the wrong order.
2. Books were chosen by the Catholic Church in the 300s. There were at least 22 gospels, for example, not just four. It is bad enough that the Church burned books – we do not need to add yet another Catholic filter onto our view of early Christianity.

Dating: When scholars disagree or are unsure about the date when something was written, the latest date is used. For example, the Gospel of Thomas was written sometime between 50 and 140. So Thomas is dated as 140 –  too late for ANT. ANT errs on the side of caution.

For dates I will go by earlychristianwritings.com, which has all the known early Christian writings along with some scholarly discussion of them.

Here are the books of ANT in order (date ranges included):

30-60 Passion Narrative* (Mark 14:32 to 15:47)
50-60 1 Thessalonians
50-60 Galatians
50-60 1 Corinthians
50-60 Philemon
50-60 Philippians
50-60 2 Corinthians
50-60 Romans

40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q*
50-80 Colossians
65-80 Gospel of Mark

50-90 Signs Gospel*

50-95 Book of Hebrews
90-95 Apocalypse of John (Revelation)

70-100 Epistle of James
80-100 2 Thessalonians
80-100 Ephesians
80-100 Gospel of Matthew

* Those marked with a star are scholarly reconstructions of writings that the gospels used: a book of Jesus’s sayings (Q), a book of his miracles (Signs) and a book about his crucifixion (Passion Narrative).

If you want a good history of that time and place written by someone who was there, read Josephus, particularly books 18 to 20 of his “Antiquities”, written in the 90s. He was Jewish, not Christian.

ANT, as it turns out, is in effect the older half of the New Testament. It has no material that does not appear in the New Testament while throwing out much that does: the books of Titus, Timothy, Peter, Jude, Luke (including Acts) and all but one of John’s. It is pretty much the Jesus of Paul, Mark and Matthew, in that order.

The main thing ANT is missing are the gospels of Luke and John. To add them I would have to go up to AD 130. That would mean adding all these books (the New Testament ones are in bold):

80-110 1 Peter
105-115 Ignatius of Antioch

50-120 Didache
70-120 Egerton Gospel
80-120 Epistle of Barnabas
90-120 Gospel of John
90-120 1 John
90-120 2 John
90-120 3 John
90-120 Epistle of Jude

80-130 Gospel of Luke
80-130 Acts of the Apostles
120-130 Quadratus of Athens
120-130 Apology of Aristides

By this time all the Apostles were dead – and the Catholic Church is clearly picking and choosing what counts as Scripture.

That is not to say the Church is wrong in its judgement – just that you are now moving beyond the idea that “the earliest writings are the most trustworthy” to trusting a church.

See also:

• earlychristianwritings.com – Christian writings up to about AD 200
• Bible
  • New Testament canon – how the New Testament was created
• Nag Hammadi Library – Christian writings that were hidden when the Catholic Church was burning books
• Catholicism
  • Origen
• Gnosticism
  • Plotinus
  • Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels: a post rewrite