http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_Bastard

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/golliwog/

http://tinyurl.com/6dd79z (Germany, early 20th century)

http://tinyurl.com/5hlun2 (Germany, early 20th century)

A brief history lesson:

In Germany in the 30’s and 40’s, the Nazis banned jazz music because it was invented by blacks. They thought that the “Black race” was inferior. In their eyes the “Aryan” race was superior.

In 1933 around 5,000 Black people, mainly men, lived in Germany. Most of them came from German colonies in Africa. The Nazis were unsure of how to treat their Black subjects. Although they were considered inferior, they only formed a small group who did not represent a threat to Germany. The Nazis also wanted to show that blacks were treated better in Germany than in the USA. For a time young black men were even allowed to join the Hitler Youth. Eventually more than three thousand Black Germans were put into concentration camps.

After WW1, France occupied the German Rhineland. The French army of occupation included Black soldiers from the French colonies. Some of them had children with German women. These children were known as the “Rhineland Bastards.” The Nazis thought it was a scandal that White German woman had children with Black soldiers from an enemy army. In 1937, 385 of these children were rounded up and sterilized in clinics. They would never be able to have children of their own.

Here’s a Wikipedia article on ‘Rhineland Bastards’.

So the idea that Germany is somehow more evolved in regards to it’s view of blacks, and that the artist of the doll doesn’t have any racial caricatures or general German prejudice against blacks is completely absurd and historically inaccurate. Because since the mid 1800’s, blacks have been treated as second class citizens in Germany. The Nazi’s were just up front about their racism and blacks KNEW that wasn’t a place they wanted to move to.

That is where the anger comes from. This nonsense has roots over 150 years ago. This man should have known better.

Referring to Native languages as “languages” is preferable to “dialects,” which demeans them.

/sarcasm off

I’m so enraged by this nonsense. Has common sense gone the way of the Dodo in this country?

@everyone - Thanks soooooo much for all the love. Sometimes blogging can feel kind of thankless. I’ll address all the comments more specifically in the next Letter from the Editrix.

@all the delurkers - Thank you. I appreciate your voices.

@the regulars - And I love y’all the most. Tis a dark day when y’all don’t come through.

@red -

When I first started posting here, one of my earliest posts got a comment that was like “sigh - yet another post on (whatever it was) without a discussion of Eugenics.”

And I was literally like “wtf is eugenics?” I knew the concept, but not the word. So, it makes me happy to hear so many people think that our content is accessible.

@Anonymous (who I think is Kali) - Iron fist in a velvet glove modding? I love it.

@Kirk - Yes, I have been thinking on a racism from PoCs thread for a while now. Maybe after I finish the interracial dating ones.

@Myles - J is gone, hon. Gregory A. Butler, I haven’t seen in a while. But I am thinking a lot about how to make sure mixed race perspectives are not marginalized on this site.

“We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us!”

The point being that all the land from Texas to California was originally part of Mexico and was stolen by the USA during the Mexican-American War.

But really, if you want to learn the language of America: just choose from one of the over 700 Native dialects. Seems quite simple. One has options.

“I feel that you’re saying mixed people don’t have the right to identify as they choose. ”

No you’ve got me wrong; that isn’t my message(or at least not the tone). I said before that this debate should be happening on a larger scale. Friend’s shouldn’t have to do this; society should through tv, film etc.

I don’t know what’s so difficult about calling oneself bi-racial. To me it just makes sense; its self-evident. I was friends with a mixed dude who grew up surrounded mostly by whites, when i saw his mother and thought about the fact that he’d lived with her most of his life, it just seemed absurd of me to call him black.

My problem is that by calling mixed people black were delaying a more sensible way of thinking.
What about mixed raced men and women who’ve grown up surrounded solely by whites. Society would encourage them to tackle their blackness, and absorb it,
when this pressure shouldn’t be there in the first place; i mean ultimately it shouldn’t be there for even black people.

Why must black people alone claim mixed raced people. I can’t help but think of the one drop rule here.
But then when I see ad after ad in the uk; where there’s a white guy and a very fair mixed woman I then think of colonialism, and Brazil. There’s this perverse fetishization of mixed raced girls that needs to be highlighted in this discussion. Kanye’s comments on “mutts” and the aforementioned ads present us a really ugly issue we need to face.
You talk about “black people” being a fluid category, and i agree, but i think that this loose classification opens doors for some, and closes doors for others.
MTV along with hollywood mutes dark skinned beauty, but favours mixed girls.
This kinda thinking got into my head when i’d go out with friends in my mid teens. The guys in my group would scan a house party or club (terminator style) for a fair skinned girl or white girl. preferably the mixed ones.
A black girl couldn’t look average, she’d have to look amazing to get any attention.
I felt this stupid shame in admitting i liked girls who were as dark as me. When i got older and my group diversified this kinda thinking left me.

Watching the afro punk documentary made me think of how troublesome and suffocating race can be. When people say “identify” as black, I’ve realised that they’re talking about more than just skin colour. A lot of the kids in the afro punk documentary felt suffocated by blackness and couldn’t find a sense of individuality that blacks could accept.
I don’t think that mixed raced kids should have to go through this, and i’m tired of seeing black women being pass over again and again, or being demonised as loud and obnoxious (see big brother 9 UK alexandra).

“Go back to where you came from!”

What they’re leaving out is this:

“so I don’t have to deal with you because having you around forces me to think more than I’m able.”

I am not responsible for their actions.

thank you for being so open and honest with us, on this website.

I think that’s one thing that we all need to realize, is that our race or ethnicity or whatever you want to call it, cannot be controlled.

The one thing we can control is how we act. If we are surrounded by racist ideas, words, and actions, it is our duty to ignore them and move past them. Or like you did, find an outlet and understand, and attempt to understand.

It really, really, really upsets me with what you wrote, how you were basically taught to mistrust white people. I know there are a lot of racist sons of bitches out there, and a lot of them are white, but it really makes my stomach hurts that that kind of judgement is passed onto me simply because of my skin color. However, it isn’t your fault.

I really don’t think that many people stop and think about what it’s like for white people. To assume that all white people are racist is a racist belief. We are not all racists. We do not all think alike. I do not appreciate being compared with people who are.

How do you think it makes me feel, knowing that people hate me, simply because of what I am, what I look like? They don’t know me, you don’t know my family. My grandfather was a German Czech Jew who had to leave everything behind and escape his life because Hitler declared that Jews were subhuman. And he exterminated six million of them. How many of those were family members, I will never know. All I know, is that when I was taking a Holocaust literature class, I finally began to understand what my grandfather went through. I was reading “Maus” (a graphic novel), and it just hit me that when my grandfather went back and liberated Dachau with the US Army, to see his people suffering and piles of dead bodies, of people he could have known….. I could go on.

I might not have experience racism like he did, but I know it.

People who are anti-white are no better than the people who were anti-Jew, anti-black, etc. Carmen is right, it is a form of racism that needs to be recognized by everyone. I am not responsible for the things that happened in the past.

Once again, thank you for this post. Thank you for acknowledging what you did, and so eloquently. Hopefully more people will take your lead.

BTW, many white people are afraid to express their opinions on race because they’re afraid of being called a racist, because there are a lot of people who are anti-white. Just throwing that out there.

I refer to people as Cherokee or Lumbee or whatever they actually are. I think First Nations is an apt term I’d like to see the U.S. adopt because it’s the only one I know of that acknowledges that there were nations here first and they weren’t all one group.

So a revamp of my blog list and now I read this (and several other anti-racist blogs) everyday. Like others, I appreciate how inclusive this blog is and I find the conversations that take place in the comments are often as much of an education as the posts themselves.

So thank all of you for writing and discussing your experiences. I’m still not the ally I want to yet, but I feel that I am much better than I was a few months ago.

That whole perception doesn’t equal reality thing I guess.

And did he ever state how he chooses to identify himself in his biography or interview? Anyone know?