March 15, 2007--100 Percent of Nothing

My father had a short list of axioms that he believed expressed the truth about the world’s major problems and what was necessary to do to solve them. He was not reluctant to share them with us, or anyone within earshot, over and over and over again.

At the time, I resisted being influenced by anything he had to say about such weighty matters, feeling that things were much more nuanced than how he summed them up; and of course I was attempting to escape his influence so that I could become an independent person with my own view of the world. Sound familiar?

But now that he is gone and I have had about as much independence as I can handle, I am coming around to seeing things in remarkably similar ways.

For example, he saw religion, not money, to lie at the root of many of our most intractable disputes. That belief systems and the closely-guarded nationalisms that religions foster are responsible for most of the world’s hatred, violence, and barbaric behavior.

He argued that the only hope for human survival would be through inter-religious, inter-ethnic, and inter-racial marriage, where future generations of children would have blended identities. Thus, it is sad that he did not get a chance to see the article in yesterday’s NY Times about a remarkable family reunion in New York City where seemingly-Black and seemingly-White folks, who did not know either existed, discovered that they are all members of the same family. (Linked below.)

This came about through the increasing-popular ethno-ancestry testing where individuals’ DNA can be analyzed to discover their racial history. African-American Vy Higginsen, searching for her “roots,” discovered that in spite of the way she appears, her “blood” is 28 percent European and 8 percent Asian. At about the same time that Ms. Higginsen was being tested, out in Missouri, Marion West, a White cattle rancher, whose family owned slaves, found out that he was in fact partly Black. Furthermore, when he submitted his DNA test results to the West Family DNA Project, he learned that the same Vy Higginsen, who has an uncle named James West, is a genetic cousin. He also found out that she is “Black” and lives in Harlem.

At the tearful reunion in Harlem, the Times quotes rancher West as saying, in his heavy drawl, “Dear God, thank you for this beautiful night and this great family we got here.” During her visit to his ranch in Missouri, he took Cousin Vy out to where he prays each day. They knelt together under a pine tree and thanked God for each other.

We now know, as well, that family members of the Rev. Al Sharpton were slaves who were once owned by ancestors of segregationist Senator Strom Thurman, and that members of Barack Obama’s White mother’s family were also slave owners. So as Ms. Higginsen said, “There are no thoroughbreds among us, and nobody’s 100 percent of anything.”

I suspect that the worst fights in this newly-reunited West-Higginsen family are likely to be about where to have next year’s Thanksgiving dinner. And wouldn’t my father feel good about that!