Wild Indigenous Cab Ride, KevinAThompson: Recent Comments

Comment on American Lives--PBS and DNA Trickery

Philip Rushe — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:41:15 GMT

Regarding Stephen Colbert's remark that the first thing his ancestors learned was to not fight for the rights of black people, it is sad but true that Irish people, who were oppressed for centuries by the English on grounds of religion and language, were only too happy when they reached the "New World" to side with the oppressors and benefit at the expense of the natives. Had the Irish been dark skinned their fate would have been that of the Native American or the African American but being fair skinned they were allowed to join in the rape of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, etc. You really would have expected the Irish to support the Native Americans with whom they had so much in common, yet sadly this never happened. People in Ireland are often shocked by the racism of Irish Americans.

Comment on Blackfoot Confusion

larryhinkston — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:17:53 GMT

If you are Blackfoot pls contact me. I am reaching out to meet & greet. My fathers family is blackfoot from the south. I'm looking for more info. email me: larryhinkston@yahoo.com

Comment on Nicole Richie Allowed to Have the (Non-black) Simple Life

Classical Music — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:20:42 GMT

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Classical Music

Comment on Blackfoot Confusion

kevin thompson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:54:03 GMT

The eastern Blackfoot, and other Siouan people are probably the most invisible of eastern Indian peoples in the current historical imagination. For example, all the tribes of New England are Algonquian, so they can't be ignored. The Six Nations of the Iroquois of New York are federally recognized, and make themselves heard from time to time. The so-called Five Civilized Tribes (Creek Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole) are also well-known and federally recognized.
    The only eastern Sioux that I know with federal recognition are the Tunica-Biloxi of Louisiana and the Catawba of South Carolina.   The Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbees, and other North Carolina peoples have state recognition only.
    I believe this can be traced to the American Revolution, in part. Nations that were still able to field a military for either the U.S. or the British were able to demand treaties and get at least some land and recognition. Most of the eastern Sioux had already been reduced in numbers in the colonial period, and by the Revolution, were scattered in small groups, often hosted by larger Indian nations.
    Without the Blackfoot being part of any "official" tribe, there was no reason for state and federal governments to document them as Indians, and that may be part of the difficulty in finding paper trail now.
    But don't be discouraged. Research is increasing.

Comment on The Irene Cara Factor and Latina/o Casting

kevin thompson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:40:23 GMT

Just read the Miami Herald article, and found it consistent with my observations in the northeast USA. In New York the Dominican beauty parlors do a booming business straightening the hair of English-speaking African Americans (and of Domincans, too), and I'm told some pioneering Dominicans are pushing into North Carolina in search of more African hair to straighten.       Some of the U.S.-raised Domincans have started to accept their commonality with U.S. Africans, and don't mind that they are mistaken for black Americans, as long as they aren't being insulted. But they still maintain their Dominican identity, as they should be able to do.
    One complaint from African Americans is that Dominicans, and other dark immigrants, should just accept their "blackness." But they miss a point, assuming that U.S.-black culture is the definitive "African" culture, completely ignoring that black American culture is just one of hundreds of variations in the African diaspora. In fact, Dominican culture was the first American culture formed by European, African and Native elements. Thanks to ChristopherColumbus, there were Spanish-speaking Africans in Santo Domingo (1490s) one hundred and thirty years before there were English-speaking Africans at Jamestown, Virginia (1619). So why should Dominicans, who were dealing with slavery, race mixing and all that five generations longer than North American blacks, necessarily look to us (I am of U.S. African-Native origins) for their model?
    Seriously, I know its not that simple. Many Dominicans do learn pride in their blackness from the African Americans, but African Americans could also learn a lot from other diaspora cultures, which we seem loathe to do.
    Unfortunately, the Miami Herald article repeated the misleading myth that the Natives of the Caribbean are extinct, which would surprise some of my relatives! I handily took apart this myth in another article in my blog " Taino Survival in the Islands, March 30, 2007" . There is strong resistance to the idea that Africans and Natives still form communities and families together, and that we number in the hundreds of thousands, at least, in the U.S., Caribbean and Latin America.

Comment on The Irene Cara Factor and Latina/o Casting

kiki — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:40:28 GMT

thanks for the explanation. i agree. i think i got sidetracked by your comment that Irene Cara didn't share a common ancestry with US blacks. There was fluid slave trade and migrant/rented labor between the carribbean and the US and much of US was Spanish and or French. but I think we are both believe something similar... Have you read this series on afro-latin america? http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/part2/index.html

Comment on Blackfoot Confusion

Barbara — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:22:19 GMT

All of my ancestors came as a group from the Carolinas into Alabama and then either stayed there or moved on to Indian Territory in Ok and Tx. My Grandmother and my parents told me we were Blackfoot but we could never tell anyone or we would be sent away. Now, decades later, I find that my Grandfather on the other side of the family was Blackfoot also. The families moved and married together, a group of about 10-15. I need paper proof now and it is almost impossible. I have found my Surnames in Saponi research but cannot pin particulars down. More research needs to be done on this group of people.

Comment on The Irene Cara Factor and Latina/o Casting

kevin thompson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:55:17 GMT

My point is that Hollywood, and a lot of regular people, still ask the question if someone like Irene Cara or Zoe Saldana is "black" or "Hispanic,", when both of these actresses have admitted to being both. I am in agreement with their claim because its the only one that makes sense. No one asks me if I'm "black" or "English-speaking", as if I could not be both, because I am both black and an English-speaking American at the same time. But take a look at Spanish-language television and dark-skinned people are a rare sight. I see more black faces in the commercials on country music video channels. There is a both a US-based and Latin-Americna based propoganda machine that clearly minimizes the presence of African descendants in Latin American societies. And as for the real world, a number of my Spanish-speaking co-workers frequently encounter other Latinos who speak about them in Spanish as if they don't understand--in the most racist terms--and are then surprised when this black person confronts them in fluent Spanish. You would think a Puerto Rican would know of Afro-Latinos and watch themselves, but a number of them have fooled themselves that blacks cannot be Spanish also.

Comment on The Irene Cara Factor and Latina/o Casting

kiki — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:00:26 GMT

What is your point?

US is not the only place that is part of the Americas. I find no contradiction in calling Irene Cara black or African-American. Blacks in Latin America got there the same way as Blacks in the US, through slavery. We share a common heritage only difference is whether the colonizing country was controlled by the English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. People call Black in the US with ancestry from Trindad, Haiti or even 1st generation Africans African Americans and no one bats and eye. Yet if they are Dominican or Cuban or Puerto Rican it is a problem being called Black??

Comment on Bliss Broyard, Creoles and Native Americans

kevin thompson — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:43:11 GMT

It still astounds me when self-identified African Americans are surprised when they are "mistaken" for some other ethnicity. Its as if they have swallowed Walter Plecker's line (which he himself could not have believed) that there are only two races in the whole world--one white, one black--and that they were separated by a gulf as wide as they Grand Canyon. Biracial (black-white) musical prodigy Philipa Duke Schuyler used to roam the world as a reporter for a John Birch Society magazine, and with a change of clothes could pass herself off as a Vietnamese, fooling white US soldiers with ease. More recently I read of a black American reporter who was in Afghanistan and angered people because she looked so much like other individual Afghans they knew personally and wondered why she did not respond to them. Both Viet nam and Afghanistan are countries that have not had any significant infusion of African immigration in recent centuries yet human resemblances can defy our official categories. Even here in the US, immigrants have started talking to me in languages as diverse as Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Haitian Kreol, and Albanian, having believed me to by one of their own.
This blind spot means many black Americans don't really look at people, not their own race, or any other, or they would notice the actual continuum of human physical appearance, and easily place themselves on it. This blind spot also means they have mentally never "left the plantation" of US racial categories, even when they have money and means to travel the globe!!!