[ADS-L] Race/racism a nd the late Prof. Frederic G. Cassidy

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

The story recounted below sounds familiar enough that I'm wondering if I was
actually in the audience for the panel in question. At any rate, somewhere
along the way I got the impression that Fred had ancestors of both races. My
thought was that it could well have been true, though he was not particularly dark
skinned. I believed he was from Jamaica, and he certainly did not look like a
stereotypical Jamaican, but that didn't rule out an ancestry more varied and
interesting than mine. At any rate, I'm quite sure that he knew more about
Caribbean English that anyone else in that audience, white or black, and it is of
course knowledge that counts, not skin color or the condition of servitude of
one's ancestors.

I knew Fred quite well and liked him and admired him. We were professional
friends, but he was the generation of my father and I didn't know him well
enough to ask a lot of personal questions, and in any case the particular several
origins of his ancestors did not seem important to me one way or another. His
credentials were his mind and great learning, and he was a man of boundless
energy well into his 80s and 90s. He was a warm and outgoing man, and as far as I
know he had few personal enemies. He was highly respected by the members of
the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, of whom there were and still are many
blacks as well as whites.

The last time I saw him (if memory serves me correctly) was in Madison at a
meeting of DSNA. As I recall, a few months before he had been struck by an
automobile while crossing the street and so banged up that the doctors said he
would not live. He was in his 90s then, I think. At the meeting music following
the picnic, however, he was dancing. He definitely liked the ladies. What a
life!




In a message dated 11/1/06 5:13:40 PM, hwgray at GMAIL.COM writes:


> Somewhen, somewhere, I was reading the published papers from a round
> table on BE. The included commentary contained a brief discussion
> between the moderator and a black, female member of the audience.
>
> The black woman asked something to the following effect: "How is it
> that you white people dare convene this round table on the language of
> Black America and include not even a single black participant on the
> panel?"
>
> The moderator responded somewhat as follows: "You are laboring under a
> misapprehension. Indeed, the most eminent member of our panel, Prof.
> Cassidy, is black."
>
> I'm fairly certain that I was familiar with Prof. Cassidy's name, but,
> beyond that, I knew nothing personal about him. This being the United
> States of America, I had made the default assumption that a full
> professor of linguistics at a major American university [OT brag: the
> father of your humble correspondent received his law degree from the
> University of Wisconsin in 1936, later becoming the first black person
> to be admitted to the Texas bar] must be white. So, I was quite
> surprised to read this assertion, so much so that I found it hard to
> believe, though there was nothing to indicate that Prof. Cassidy
> denied the assertion.
>
> As fate would have it, some time later, in the early 'Seventies, I
> became acquainted with M, who had once been a teacher (rank unknoown
> to me) of linguistics at Wisconsin. We became, I thought, close
> friends. So, I eventually felt free to ask her The Question: "Is it
> true that Prof. Frederic Cassidy is black?"
>
> M went up in smoke, virtually exploding with righteous indignation,
> replying somewhat as follows: "How in the HELL did you ever get the
> impression that Prof. Cassidy is not white?! Where did you get that
> shit from?! That is absolutely a damned lie! He is as purely white as
> the driven snow! He is NOT black!"
>
> Given that a simple "No" would have sufficed, I felt forced to make an
> agonizing reappraisal of what I had surmised to be M's attitude toward
> black people in general, as opposed to her attitude toward your humble
> correspondent in particular, which was revealed to be nothing more
> than a variation of the old apartheid move of designating non-white
> VIP's as honorary whites as necessary.
>
> But, IAC, was he black or was he white?
>
> -Wilson
>
> --
> Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
> complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
> a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
> race. He brought death into the world.
>
> --Sam Clemens
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>

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