Our Peculiar History of Becoming Human

In reflecting on "Who is the Human Being?" and Professor Thistlethwaite's lecture on God and the Human, I began to think about my family's peculiar history. There is an American story that is unknown and is almost never told and rarely acknowledged by this culture.

As Professor Thistlethwaite pointed out race is a cultural construct and integral to our culture's definitions of who is human and even to the extent of what percentage of you is more human than another. In my family, we were told some portions of our genes were more human than others. You see, there were the masters and the slaves and often the slaves bore the master's children. That is why I look the way I do. That is why I have cousins with long tight little curls, what we call kinky, and big blue or green eyes. Some have fine caramel colored skin with bone straight hair, and others pale, milky skin with lovely broad features. My grandmother's siblings had fine features and light colored hair and they, in order to become more human, "passed" as white. Out of ten children in her family only a couple chose not to "cross over". The ones that did pass as white moved to various parts of the country only to reconnect with the ones who "stayed" black on occasion and always in private. Incredibly, we still have family today who will not acknowledge us publicly as family because they live as "white" (again, thus more human) and don't want the shame of their African heritage to be exposed to the world. Why?

I believe that as a result of the slave society and enduring racist ideology the development of the notion of what is human came to be something other than a person with "black blood", engendering the creation of the One-Drop rule. It amazes and saddens me that one minute some of my ancestors were invisible, sub-human in the eyes of the majority and then in a single moment, or perhaps after a slower more deliberate transformation in becoming white, they were no longer tainted or insignificant to the world. They became "fully human" by crossing that line of race. I imagine they lived better material lives. They were able to live in finer neighborhoods, eat in any restaurant, sit in any seat on a train or bus or in a theatre without shame or humiliation. I want so much to disapprove of their choices but I know why they did it. Who doesn't want to be considered more human, more worthy of love and respect and freedom? Becoming human required their sacrifice and courage. Or maybe they simply believed that the racial categorization of Negro (or black) for people with fair skin and light hair was preposterous and they chose to defy our racist culture. Either way, they crossed over into being and into a "legitimate" existence in the face of arbitrary and oppressive laws. They became the agents of their own liberation.
May we all be liberated into full humanity.

Amen.