(Imported From My Impure Bastards Blog)
She would tell me that I was her favorite grandson. I concluded she thought that of me because of the old school notion of me being her oldest great grandson. I loved her and she loved me.
She was a combination of Choctaw Native American, African and Caucasian. And, she was beautiful… like a painting of what you might imagine a tan skinned, soft featured face, straight black hair Native American woman would look like. And her favorite thing to do for me was to make sure I always had Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. To this day that is my favorite memory!
She would tell me things about her past. Being born in the 1800’s, she saw a hell of a lot of life. And her parents, and their parents, linked directly to their slave roots… being sold at the Slave Market in Fayetteville.
She used to tell me stories about her past. I loved her stories. All I wanted to do was be near my beautiful great grandmother… and look at her and listen to her talk.
As I grew older and began to research the many twisting branches of my family roots, I began to dig up many stories and pictures of the past life of the beautiful women in my family. And I began to wonder about just what it was like for beautiful black women back in the 1700’s and the 1800’s and the early 1900’s in racist, white male dominated, harsh as hell Coastal North Carolina back in those days. How did black women survive in a time when white men could take them, and do with them as they pleased! And, when they were finished… kill them, if they pleased. What kind of stories of violence and sexual assault and pregnancy and shame did those women take with them to their graves!
You look at regional Africans! They are brown skinned people who all basically look like each other… like regional white people from around the world look like each other… like regional Asian people all basically look like each other. But, the African-American… born from the early rape destruction of their gene pool… we are a people whose colors range from Caucasian white to ink black! And, from two African-American parents, a family of ten children can have ten completely different colored children. That is just how fucked-up the gene pool of the African-American is.
There was a time, and maybe it still exists, when Africans declared black American as IMPURE BASTARDS! I have always believed that as fact of myself!
America needs to hear these visceral stories of the Black American past… especially white men, young and old, should know the pain their ancestral men rained down on the black people who are, in fact, their next door neighbors. And the young white people, who have mostly grown up side by side with a black person, or two, in their midst should take their fellow white people who are being racist and stupid and shake them by their shoulders and make them see the light… that is, Black People Are Not Your Enemy!
And, more young black people need to use the power of art to show the world that they are aware of what the American past did to their families… and the fact that they are ready now to express that knowledge!
Do not allow ANYONE to force you to back away from your convictions, young black people! You are your own future! Do you want your crazy, racist Congress making decisions about you and your art and your life? No! You do not want that. You want to invent, paint, write, draw and teach what you know about you and yours… TODAY!
So, Artist Kara Walker, you go to the head of the social class! You stick up for yourself and your art. Always remember, white artist have created blasphemous artwork over the decades that have been allowed, with a fight, to be displayed for the public to peruse. You have the right to show your work… but, as all black people in America know, you have to fight for your piece of bread in your own America… the land of the brave and the free… if you have creamy white skin!
Remember your female black roots, beautiful black woman… you might have to represent them all one day… including the memory of my great grandmother.
RLJ
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