The Men Who Left Were White

[ismnotwasm]

There are three things you should know.

First: I'm not biracial.

"What are you?" people ask, and they expect me to say something thrilling and tribal. I answer, but still they press. "Where are your ancestors from?" people ask, and they want answers that aren't San Antonio and Wheeling, West Virginia. But that's all I got. My story is both simple and untold.

The bones of it, of me: I'm black, despite the skin that goes virtually translucent in the winter. Despite the thin unpredictable curls. My mom and dad are black, as are my grandparents. That's all she wrote. That's all there is, even as I write this sentence. My parents, usually liberal employers of nuance, have always been militant-clear about drawing that line. We aren't biracial.

When I tell people I'm black, they find it unsatisfying. "That's no fun," one girl joked to me recently. "I thought you were going to have a story."

Second: I'm 44% European, 49% African. Not exactly an equal split, but pretty damn close.

Let's go back.

They had land the size of which a city brain like mine can't fathom. Southern men with pale skin, the kind of men whose job it was to oversee the overseer.

These women – my ancestors – were the opposite. Not boss of a solitary fly. Exhausted from all the work they'd done and the years of work that laid ahead. Cleaned and cooked and picked, squinted and bent over and limping, working, working so hard for so long that they must have been sore in places they didn't know they could be sore— their bone marrow, their blood. Nothing to show for it but the injuries. Not a hint of a thing resembling victory.

The women must have known rape was coming. Dread has a taste, you know. It must have crawled up their throats. But by all accounts there was no fight. What would be the point? The sharp cut of a whip across your back? What a man like that wanted, he got. No one could save the women. If he wanted it, then eventually his pale hands would be forcing open her thighs. Eventually he'd force himself inside.

http://gawker.com/the-men-who-left-were-white-1562473547