While some of you may not think of Halle as black, I’m guessing she might have had a bit of trouble attempting to use a white-only water fountain back in the not so good ol’ days.
The worse–I think–is being privy to racist/prejudiced arguments coming from one or both sides of the color line. Especially if you look like one “race” more than the other.
My father was a teacher back in the 70s. Picture the teacher guy on “Welcome Back Kotter” except with a puffier 'fro. He was in the teacher’s lounge one day and overheard some of the worse racist comments that he’d ever heard in his whole life coming from a group of colleagues and the principal. They were speaking so loudly, so openly, that he realized they didn’t know he was black.
A few weeks later, after this relevation came to othe surface, the principal came up to him and said “You know we were just kidding that time in the lounge, right?” My father could only shake his head and walk away. I can’t even imagine the type of rage he felt.
Actually, no I don’t see any difference. I placed the word “undesirable” in quotes. This indicates my intent to be ironic, ie, that I would not consider such people undesirable, especially since I happen to be one of them.
To clarify my position: I do not object to saying that all black people, as the word is used in the US, have a mixed heritage. This is demostrably true. It does not then follow that all people of mixed heritage, no matter what their degree of sub-saharan African descent, are black (basic logic: if p then q does not equal if q then p). Such people are whatever they choose to call themselves. It is the attempt to apply a single convenient label, in this case black, to all people who fit into this category that I find offensive. Note that it is not the term itself that I find offensive, it is the usage of this term when applied to all people of mixed heritage, regardless of their actual degree of African descent and how they choose to identify themselves.
We called our kids finnafros [my husband is african american and my ethnic/cultural background is finnish a la finland but i’m sure that there’s a sneaky swede or ribald russian or two in there as well…]. most folks just looked a bit cockeyed… what’s a finnafro?
then we decided to let the kids define themselves. the boys called themselves brown and their sister white while we lived in africa. after arriving in ne florida, the boys decided black because that is what everyone else said they were. their sister has been labeled puerto rican a la j lo…
personally, i give up. i hate mulatto and, while i can take metisse, most folks don’t know what that means. i’ve learned that i can only insist that my kids define themselves as honest, caring, involved citizens of the world. they can add on all the other “definitions” be they muslim, democrat, hip, environmentalist, feminist whatever… defining yourself is what life is all about. how others pigeonhole you depends upon their own hangups and not yours.