Charlie LeDuff: "Black Like Me"
Powerful piece by Charlie LeDuff about Detroit and finding out his origins. From Fox/Detroit, an excerpt:
DETROIT -- My grandparents touched one another for the first time some evening in 1951, drinking and dancing and romancing.The exact date of their rendezvous is lost in time but it is quite certain they did not meet on a Monday night. Monday night was "colored" night at the Vanity Ballroom; the only night blacks were allowed in the joint.
And Roy LeDuff, my grandfather, was not black. Not anymore.
I had always been told that LeDuff was a Cajun name, with its roots in the swamps of Louisiana. But the truth is that LeDuff is a Creole name -- a culture of people with mixed blood, black and white. In the racial arithmetic of the America, that means black.
Imagine my surprise when, peeling through old government documents, I found the 1920 U.S. Census, in which my grandfather, Roy, is listed as an 8-year-old "M" -- mulatto.
I could hardly believe it. Here I was, a 44-year-old man wandering about in a city where just about every major narrative since the Civil War had been played out in black and white, only to find out what I'd been told about my grandfather's past was false.
I was told there may have been some mixing of the races in a distant wing of my family, and every LeDuff I had ever met was the color of caramel. But the fact that Grandpa himself was born black and died a white man blew me away. Not only did my blood track to the woodlands of the Great Lakes and the Celtic shores of France, but the Gold Coast of Africa, too. The African Diaspora could be traced through my own family, and it was written on paper.
I sat in my basement smoking cigarettes and looking at an old patina photograph of my great-grandmother I'd been given by a distant relative, wondering how the story of Detroit had come to this point, with General Motors bankrupt and my brother pulling out his sore tooth with a pair of pliers in a rental attic near I-275.
Imagine my surprise when, peeling through old government documents, I found the 1920 U.S. Census, in which my grandfather, Roy, is listed as an 8-year-old "M" -- mulatto
Ummm...the story of his ancestor, the restrictions and reasons he hid his racial identity is interesting and sad. But other than that - who gives a fuck whether his grandfather was black or white? Why does it matter?
Ltw at January 19, 2012 4:13 AM
"Who gives a fuck"
Why the gov't does.
" why does it matter?"
Well it means he will now be eligible for certain scholarships and minority only buisness contracts. Quotas and the like.
Joe J at January 19, 2012 1:43 PM
It just goes to show how arbitrary it is. I've heard stories over the years, though. A light skinned black person with 'good hair' moves to an area where no one knows them or their family and becomes white. They marry white have white kids and the kids might never know. Back in the day they called it 'passing.'
nonegiven at January 19, 2012 4:38 PM
Well, you're right Joe J and nonegiven. But what bothered me was the way the writer seemed genuinely stunned by his deep, dark (yes pun intended!) family secret. I find it a bit icky.
Ltw at January 19, 2012 7:59 PM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/01/black-like-me-1.html#comment-2924909">comment from LtwMaybe I don't see it that way because I know Charlie, who seems like a truly goodhearted person. Don't know him super-well, but I've probably hung out with him for, oh, 20 hours altogether, at a monthly dinner at Yamashiro that a bunch of LA writers used to go to.
Amy Alkon
at January 19, 2012 8:35 PM
I can relate. Not to the race aspect, but to stumbling onto something that was hidden, and feeling compelled to put the choices into the context of their history in order to better understand not just the choices, but the people to whom we are related and the times that shaped a family's course.
Michelle at January 19, 2012 9:28 PM
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