One Blood

Throughout United States history, erroneous ideas and stereotypical attitudes toward multiethnic people have prevailed. Early on, the offspring of interethnic pairings received the disparaging label “half-breed,” [1] and detractors depicted them as unstable malcontents who were victims of their own conflicted natures. It is no coincidence that Mark Twain chose the so-called “murderin’ half-breed” Injun Joe as Tom Sawyer’s adversary in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . [2] People who despised the Emancipation Proclamation referred to it as the “Miscegenation Proclamation” [3] because they saw it as leading to the widespread mingling of African Americans and Anglos. [4] This prospect alarmed opponents of interethnic unions, and Congressman Samuel Sullivan Cox expressed their repulsion in a speech he delivered to Congress: “The physiologist will tell the gentleman that the mulatto does not live; he does not recreate his kind; he is a monster. Such hybrid races, by a law of Providence, ...

In the 1950s, reporter John Howard Griffin performed an interesting experiment. He was an Anglo who wished to understand the African American experience, so he took medicine that darkened his skin and made him appear to be African American. His disguise was so convincing that Anglos and African Americans alike took him to be an African American, and he learned many valuable lessons by figuratively stepping into another man’s shoes. One of Griffin’s most important—and saddest—discoveries was the lack of meaningful relationships between the two people groups. He noted, “Though we lived side by side throughout the South, communication between the two races had simply ceased to exist. Neither really knew what went on with those of the other race. The Southern Negro will not tell the white man the truth. (Griffin, Black Like Me , 1). Almost 60 years later, some things in the United States have changed drastically. For example, society no longer is just Black and White because large...

Last week in Memphis, Tennessee, the city began to remove the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis, two prominent men who supported the Confederate cause during the Civil War. In addition to serving as a general, Forrest also was one of the earliest members of the Ku Klux Klan, which organized soon after the Civil War ended. Davis was president of the Confederacy from 1862 until 1865, when the South admitted defeat and officially ceased fighting. The removal of the statues evoked strong reactions from supporters and detractors alike. On the one hand, those who praised the act cited the South’s support of slavery and expressed concern that the statues were celebratory reminders of this cause. As proof of their claim, they noted that this particular Davis statue did not appear in Memphis until the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement (and likely as a reaction to that movement). On the other hand, individuals who opposed the elimination of the statues wa...

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois remarked, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” [1] Roughly a century later, professors Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean asserted, “the question of the 21 st century could be one of multiple color lines .” [2] Given the sheer rapidity with which multiethnic people are increasing in numbers, [3] they appear to be more than justified in their statement.             In fact, progressively sophisticated genetic studies reveal the nation is more intermixed that anyone imagined. A full 75 to 90 percent of African Americans possess Anglo ancestry, [4] which has contributed between 20 and 25 percent of their genetic makeup. [5] This intermixture, however, is not limited to African Americans. A considerable number of Anglos also have African ancestry, unintentionally labeling branches in their family trees as Native American instead of realizing the truth of their heritage. [6]...