Fred Cassidy

[Wilson Gray]

Thank you for your long, thoughtful reply, Page.

You know, I've never quite known what to make of the that one-drop
rule, which appears to apply uniquely to us blacks and Jews. If, as
was the case in South Africa, there was, in the  United States, an
official category of "colored," so that there was a buffer "race"
between the fully white and the totally black, what would that have
meant for the civil-rights movement, considering that a very large
percentage of the leaders of even the Black Panthers and the Black
Muslims, including Huey Newton, the blue-eyed Eldridge Cleaver, Elijah
Muhammad, and Malcolm X Shabazz would have been "colored" and not
black, by South African standards? Would they have allied themselves
with, e.g. the Vernon Jordan, Michael Jordan, and Jackie Robinson
types? What about the Denzel Washington types, people like your humble
correspondent, who are neither fair nor black? What about Barack
Obama?

Thanks to the one-drop rule, of course, *all* of us are black, without
regard to skin tone, features, or hair type, so there was no problem.
But there could very well have been. And, if the "bi-racial" movement
should catch afire ("catch a fire", as in both the cd title and the
movie title, are Northernspeak misinterpretations), there still may
be.

-Wilson

On 11/3/06, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Fred Cassidy
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11/3/2006 07:30 AM, you wrote:
> >On the [+Jewish] feature--there are websites which identify people whom you
> >never thought Jewish: Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, David Beckham!
> >Salima Pasha!  See http://www.nndb.com/ancestry/481/000045346/  "Race" is a
> >sticky wicket.
>
> Ugh!  Christopher Hitchens?!  I'm going to declare myself non-Jewish
> ... On second thought, it's nice to feel some kinship with Bill Maher.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
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