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A Touch of Black In Me for Black History Month
My Blood is Not Boiling, Just Mixed
This black history month I get to celebrate by reviewing how I’m black. I had planned to mean spiritually or mentally tinged “black,” since I’ve been doing a lot of research and writing on structural racist American history.
I’ve seen how the systemic tensions only deepened between pro- and anti-civil rights “sides” in the U.S. from the beginning of the American Revolutionary period until George Floyd. There is an unending river of back and forth always fighting for freedom in all years between the forces of democracy struggling up from the grassroots against the forces of autocracy, pushing down from the autocratic top — which in America means white supremacy at the very top and black slavery at the very bottom.
It was all very fascinating and intellectually challenging, to explore what equality should mean and how it should be in the absence of struggle. Until it became no longer an idea, but very physically real for me. I didn’t think these two opposing forces were merged in my blood stream. I just got my genetics test back from a company whose kit I bought on — yes, how symbolic — Black Friday. It turned out I’m a small part black as much as a small part Scandinavian, with a majority of Irish thrown in.
