My background!

Me and my son!

My daughter and my older nephew

My Mom and younger nephew

I alluded in my rambling description to the fact that I am 50% African. I must explain this so that anyone who stumbles upon my writing will understand what that actually means.

I am not 50% African in the same way that our future president is. I do not have a parent from a country in Africa (I really bothers me that Africa's many nations are lumped together as if they are homogeneous.) Anyway, both of my parents are 50% African. My mother is 48 % European, and 2% Asian, and my dad is 50% European.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this is how it happened. Both of my parents are "mixed", and both of their parents were mixed, and their grand parents were mixed, and their great-grand parents were mixed...

I have a cousin on my mother's side of my family who has worked to find out about the family. He has found census records back to the mid 19th century. We were mulatto that far back. On my mother's father's side, the family lived in Philadelphia, and there is no evidence that there was ever a slave in the family. My mother's mother's side of the family, as well as both sides of my father's family are from South Carolina. We don't know the name of a family member who was a slave, but I assume there probably were slaves. My mom likes to think that her family was one of the few free black families in the South. I don't see why it matters. Besides, even if we did find family evidence of a free person living in the South Carolina that would suggest a couple of things: that person or their parent had been emancipated at some point - slave, and/or that person might not have been particularly smart. Of course family is a great motivator when decision making, but I think I would have gotten the h%*% out of there!

So, I come from a long line of light skinned black people. They worked hard to retain the privilege of their lighter skin by marrying only people with similar skin tone and European features.

That is enough for now. I will add a picture later. I have a great one of my immediate family, but I need to scan it!