TheLoop21.com

By: Crystal P. Smith (Add to your loop)
Fri, 10/09/2009 - 00:00

Michelle Obama is part white, just like most Black Americans.

First lady Michelle Obama's genealogy has been traced back to a slave girl and an unidentified white male, who is her great-great-great-grandfather.

Several scholars hope these findings will bring to light what many of us already knew, but what the mainstream doesn't like to acknowledge — most African Americans are the products of interracial rape that occurred during slavery. The sex couldn't be consensual, because the slave was property and had no rights. According to research by geneticist Mark Shriver at Morehouse College, 58 percent of African Americans possess at least 12.5 percent European ancestry or the equivalent of Michelle Obama's one great-grandparent. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has said most of that lineage can be traced back to a white male who impregnated a black female, most likely a slave.

All of this highlights what even a lot of adults don't know: laws created during slavery in order to keep slavery alive continue to affect the social order. They were made to benefit white men, making sure they had overwhelming access to everything and could create wealth. Interestingly enough, white men today are still at the very top of the social order. The "changing of the rules" we see happening today with President Obama isn't different from the strategies used during slavery when someone or something jeopardized that control.

For instance, interracial marriages and unions were legal in the colonies until 1691, and it only became illegal when white women began marrying free black men. According to research conducted by my uncle, Wake Forest professor Dr. Anthony Parent for his book, Foul Means, many free Black men chose to marry white women because they didn't have to pay for them like they did to marry Black female slaves. But white men didn't want to compete with black men for white women, so interracial marriages were made illegal.

Laws were also made to ensure the product of a white man and his Black slave remained a slave, after a mulatto, Elizabeth Kay, sued and won her freedom in 1655 due to her white paternity. By 1662, it became law that "children were bound or free only according to the condition of the mother." This law gave white men further incentive to rape their slaves; now they could breed slaves instead of buying them.

So, while it's interesting most Black Americans have European lineage, it's even more striking that large numbers of white Americans have to have Black relatives. Not to mention the number of mulattos who were light enough to pass and integrate themselves into the white world, like the late New York Times critic Anatole Broyard. How many more "white" people like that have been lurking around in our midst?

In his book, Parent also explores relationships between white women and Black female slaves and the many white women accused of killing their slaves over miniscule issues.