When I was 5 years old, my father angrily said, “When we get home, you’re getting a spanking.” My mother intervened, saying I had likely heard “that word” on the school bus and didn’t know it was wrong.
She was right. It was 1971 in Augusta, Ga. I’m fairly sure the school bus probably was where I first heard the n-word. In lieu of a spanking, I got an explanation that left me despising that n-word and all that had been done by fellow humans to fellow humans.
Brad Bull
Later, in high school, during a youth Bible study, an adult chaperone spoke ill of a white female friend for dating a Black man. Our pastor — who had moved to Tennessee from New York — asked, “So?” He then stunned the room by saying he had performed an interracial marriage. He explained how 2 Corinthians 6:14 says not to be “unequally yoked” to nonbelievers. The Apostle Paul believed Christians marrying non-Christians would impede the spiritual flourishing of the Christian.
Years later, I was with a retired man, standing at a fence surveying his neighbor’s collection of exotic animals. He said: “I’ve been watching this field for years. I’ve noticed that animals keep to their kind. The horses with horses and cows with cows. You can look at nature and see we are supposed to stay with our own kind rather than mixing races.” It was one of those times when I was so taken aback, I failed to speak up before we got interrupted. Later, I wished I had said, “I see black horses and white horses. Where do those speckled horses come from?”
Where do people get off asserting that people of different skin colors are unequal?
When I was in college in the 1980s, I traveled with students from various universities around the region — whether to speech team or Baptist Campus Ministry events. One of the friendships I formed was with a white female. During a group discussion, this young woman got particularly incensed about the issue of interracial marriage. She could not believe the rest of us thought it was OK for white people and Black people to intermarry.
“I’m very embarrassed about some of my own beliefs and attitudes that stretched well past the 1980s.”
Now, I’m very embarrassed about some of my own beliefs and attitudes that stretched well past the 1980s. In a high school Sunday school class in 1984, I said I believed AIDS was God’s wrath on gay people. The disgust I feel remembering that is cleansed in the grace of having been delivered from that deplorable belief. Multiple friends, though, clung tenaciously to their disdain of white people and Black people touching each other and making babies together.
At one 1980s intercollegiate event, the parents of one of the participants got involved in the debate. They said interracial marriage was wrong because it makes it hard on the children born of the relationship because society is so hard on them. I said: “Well, I’m very skinny. My fiancée is very skinny. Society has been hard on me. We likely will produce children who are very skinny. Is it wrong for us to marry?” They laughed and made faces like “that’s different” but couldn’t rebut the argument.
Along the way, one of my acquaintances started dating a young man who was on our same circuit. He would grin as he boasted of his olive-skinned Melungeon ancestry. Like the word “Christian,’ the word “Melungeon” started out as an epithet before being embraced. I grew up in East Tennessee where we were taught our Melungeon neighbors were descendants of Portuguese explorers who intermarried with native Americans. By the 1980s, that was a cool and acceptable combination.
My female acquaintance — virulently opposed to interracial marriage, at least between Blacks and whites — eventually wed her Melungeon love. They got married. They had children together.
By now you likely know what poetic justice has been cooked up by karma.
The majestic DNA helix has been discovered to have a golden ratio structure that can fill us with awe. However, discoveries of helix components in some individuals have reminded what happens when we … assume.
“Yes, it’s cool to know our ancestry, but what gets us so uptight about race?”
A few years ago, DNA research revealed that Melungeon are not the descendants of Portuguese explorers and Native Americans. Instead, Melungeon were shown to be the descendants of European settlers and Africans. The Portuguese story and others like it apparently were concocted to avoid financial disadvantages for having “one drop” of Black heredity. The article I’ve linked describes one Melungeon who had his DNA tested by one of those companies that does this commercially. Those tests aren’t cheap. But the man so disbelieved his African heritage he ordered a second test.
Yes, it’s cool to know our ancestry, but what gets us so uptight about race? The Human Genome Project has found that we all — from darkest to lightest — share 99.9% of our DNA. That’s right. Comparing yourself to someone of the same sex, every variation you see is determined by one tenth of 1% of your respective DNA.
When I stumbled on the findings regarding the African portion of Melungeon DNA, I laughed with sadistic delight. I called a feisty Black friend of mine in another state, where I thought he might wind up at an event with my old anti-interracial-marriage female acquaintance and her husband. I told him the story and said I would give him $100 if he would go up to them and, in thick dialect, greet the husband as his Black brother.
Ha! My DNA shows I come from a long line of smart alecks.
So, whether it’s Black History Month or just a Tuesday in September, let’s resolve to live by the Golden Ratio Rule: Do unto others and their DNA as you would have done to you if it turns out you share DNA. Because you do.
Brad Bull has served as chaplain, pastor, university professor and private-practice family therapist. His counseling and retreat services can be reached through his website DrBradBull.com.
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