What's White About It?

The polarization of this country along racial lines, or how it's usually stated--along the color-line--not only points our the insanity of racism, but how this nation over its long history chose to compete with the rest of the world by virtue of tying one hand behind its back, the result of not fully utilizing the black talent within its midst.

Blacks and whites alike decry the supposed lack of black youth involvement in this society. Is what we're seeing a rebelling against a social norm--a norm that has a white vs. black element to it?

A recent study supports that conclusion. It states that violence among young people, blacks in particular, is a direct result of their feeling alienated from the larger society--seen as outcasts.

In our past, blacks have had to resort to extreme measures to become contributing members of this society, and to maximize their potential (some passing as white, if they could). Black Voices featured one such black, and detailed his travails. In fact, he was this nation's first black doctor.

His story is interesting on several levels: One, it points to the necessity of recording family history (Granny's passion), and not allowing family members to fall out of the family tree (regardless of color) lest they remain lost; and, two, it points to the need for any country to appreciate its talent (regardless of race or ethnicity), if it wishes to remain a strong, vibrant, and competitive force among the world communities.

Recently, the country's first black doctor was properly memorialized.

Relatives of the doctor were unaware that they were related to a man who had been the subjects of several books. Consequently, the doctor lay in an unmarked Brooklyn grave for 145 years.

White descendants of James McCune Smith gathered Sunday to unveil the new tombstone on his grave site. The scourge of racism is largely responsible for Smith going unnoticed for so long.

If you're white, and you find out that you're related to someone black, it's a damn sight better to discover that he's a doctor than a horse thief. But the story doesn't end there.

The AP writes:

The story of why Smith was nearly overlooked by history and buried in an unmarked grave is in part due to the centuries-old practice of light-skinned blacks passing as white to escape racial prejudice. Smith's mother had been a slave; his father was white. Three of his children lived to adulthood, and they all apparently passed as white, scholars say.

Greta Blau, Smith's great-great-great-granddaughter, made the connection after she took a course at Hunter College on the history of blacks in New York. She did some research and realized that James McCune Smith, the trailblazing black doctor, was the same James McCune Smith whose name was inscribed in a family Bible belonging to ... her grandmother.

Her first response was, "But he was black. I'm white."

This story can probably be retold thousands of times in this country. How many white families have a member of the black race somewhere among the branches in their family tree, either long forgotten, or long ignored?

Smith was denied entry to medical schools in the United States and earned his medical degree in Glasgow, Scotland.

He returned to New York to practice and also became an anti-slavery advocate through his writings:

"As early as 1859, Dr. McCune Smith said that race was not biological but was a social category," Dr. Vanessa Northington Gamble, a medical doctor and historian at George Washington University told the AP. "I feel that I am standing on the shoulders of Dr. James McCune Smith."

Blau theorizes that all of Smith's descendants began passing for white after his death -- and for good reason. More here.

My mother resides in an unmarked grave. It's on private property, but the marker, if there ever was one, has long disappeared, covered over by the ravages of time, and neglect. She was buried in a place--on a few acres of land--that whites owned and set aside for slaves. She wasn't a slave, herself, but this place was, during her time, the only place where blacks were allowed to bury their own. It wasn't a cemetery, as we often think of the word, but more of a final resting place, because blacks didn't have their own cemeteries at the time of her death in the place where she died.

At least Dr. James McCune Smith is, at long last, recognized, claimed, and properly honored by his long-lost family members. There are other blacks waiting, too, who haven't been lost all these many long years, to be welcomed into the family of this nation, and to be recognized, claimed, and properly honored.

Actually, the time is long overdue.