The arch segregationist didn't want black people drinking from the same fountains or sitting in the same classrooms as white people, but he wasn't above getting into bed with a black woman and producing a child. He did take care of her all his life, though he denied she was his. The most interesting aspects of the story are not Thurmond's hypocrisy, but his daughter's having maintained her silence for so long, and the fact that he was originally a liberal Democrat, but changed for reasons of political expediency. It puts the hollowness of his hateful rhetoric into powerful perspective.

Washington Post: Thurmond's black daughter speaks out

[ December 13, 2003, 04:09 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

This story got incredibly little attention when Thurmond died, partially because Mrs. Williams-Washington denied that Strom was her father, despite the rather compelling evidence.

I think this is a FASCINATING story, one that speaks to the amazing binding power of racism and bigotry. By most accounts, Strom was less secretive about Miss Essa-Mae than many would expect. It amazes me...simply AMAZES me how dedicated he was to her, despite his segregationist politics.

THIS is the movie Mel Gibson should be making. I mean, does no one else think this is an incredibly interesting story?

It is a fascinating story. I doubt Thurmond is the only person who has these kinds of skeletons in his closet. But I'm only partly surprised by his private treatment of this daughter (whom I've called black, since she lived as an African-American, although nowadays she'd be called "biracial" or, to use the once defunct term, a "mulatto"). Thurmond was known to be quite chivalrous, and as a closer look at his political history shows, he originally was a political *progressive* in his state, which is what really shocks me. How could you go from one ideological position to its extreme opposite, which you knew not only harmed a sizable portion of your fellow citizens, but your OWN CHILD, and NOT be eaten inside out by your conscience? The same is true of someone like Jefferson; he articulated white supremacy and black inferiority, probably knowing that in addition to the black woman-child he was sleeping with, his statements and actions would harm millions of other people, including his own children. How do you reconcile that? And as for Essie-Mae's children, how do they deal now, as adults, with the truth of being Strom Thurmond's grandchildren?

[ December 14, 2003, 09:34 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

This is definately a movie in the making. Maybe I'll write it soon. Anyhow, this story will only grow rivher as more people speak out, including others in Stroms family that deny she was or could be the child of Strom Thurmond. It will be shown for sure that Mrs. Williams is his child and then the real story will be told. It's kind'a funny but I went to college with one of Strom's kids. She would be 36 now had she not been killed by a car while she was crossing the street. Mrs. Williams is no at least 75 years old. That's quite an age range difference for is kids. I would love to talk to Mrs. Williams and learn about the life she lead.

What a strange and oddly wonderful story. Fascinating how, on the one hand, he didn't completely deny her existence (as one would imagine he would) and yet didn't come clean either. And her mother was 16 when she had her? The part that needs to be told now is what his white family thinks about this/what they knew, etc. And you wonder if the people he confided in will ever reveal what he said about it.

She seems noble for not ratting out her dad years ago when should could have. She could have ruined his career, right? But, on the other hand, what a rat of a dad!

[ December 14, 2003, 04:15 PM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

I just heard that she will do her only interview with Dan Rather on 60 Minutes II. It will air on CBS this Wednesday night.

Hey Wade, a writer for Slate commented on the bitter irony of what you talked about:
The daughter that died in the car accident was a beauty queen, right?

I'm especially curious about her mother. Did she consent? Was she raped? Given the unequal social and racial positions, how valid was consent? Did she like or love Thurmond? (Was she the only black woman he showed interest in?) Was she bought off? How afraid (or not) was she of the Thurmonds, who were the most powerful people in that town and region, especially at a time of considerable terror against black people in the South (and elsewhere). What exactly did she tell Essie?

I'm not sure about nobility so much as a certain level of filial devotion--or respect--even though that respect also prevented her from derailing a career that helped to spur tremendous resistance to the civil rights and equality of black Americans. I wonder how much the financial aspects of this all--in addition to her filial honor towards her father--played a role. What will his white heirs do now?

Halle Berry would be perfect in the role of Strom Thurmond's daughter in the movie version. Actress Ruby Dee or even Della Reese, would be perfect as the mother. I can picture Sean Connery, John Lithgow or James Brolin in the role of Strom Thurmond. However, after all this hoopla over the Ronald Reagan tell-all movie, Brolin probably has learned his lesson to stay away from these types of movie roles.

[ December 15, 2003, 01:31 AM: Message edited by: Nascar007 ]

B-Man, I recall Nancy Jr. as being attractive but not a beauty queen. We were in a few classes together so I got to see her in class room attire. She might have dressed up well though.

The more I think about this the more I want to get my mother involved with doing research. She is a histroian who has published several books on South Carolina history. She and I are already planning on writing a story invovling Strom when he was young ( maybe about the same time)and was a court reporter for a very big murder trial in SC. Boy does this add some spice to the story.
Murder and forbidden love, saucy, saucy, saucy...

Wade, and any others interested, you might want to check out Diane McWhorter's article on Slate published this summer...

http://slate.msn.com//?id=2085087&

If the link doesn't work, just go to the Slate site and type Strom into the search.

Personally I would have been disappointed if Strom didn't have a black love-child. It makes sense in a topsy-turvy way.

Not everyone is pleased:

Memo to everyone quoted in Jim Allen's article: Ummm, riiiight.

I really wish she admitted her mother was a victim of sexual assault*...or, ummm, wait.

I really wish she uncovered the nasty habit of white men in the South learning about sex on the other side of the trac...or, ummm, wait.


(* yes, I said sexual assault; Strom sticking it to a maid during those times does not qualify as "consent" to me)

But you have no idea what their relationship was like. Because she was a 16 year old black maid, and because he was 22 and white, it had to be without her consent?

A lot of people who have maids (especially ones who are permanent members of the household) are very close to them. Maybe it was a one time thing. Maybe it wasn't.

Thanks B-man, love the article. gives one more things to think about.

TomFord is right!!! Lets not assume the maid was raped. Maybe she was just as curious as he was about sex on the other side of the fence. During that period in history, vanilla/chocolate(interracial) sex was considered a taboo. It is common knowledge these relations were going on between white slaveowners and black slave girls. Also, many black slave boys were sodomized by their white slaveowners, although historians are afraid to talk about this.

However, we assume that the slaveowners slept with slaves against their will. And some did. But have we ever thought that any of the slaves actually enjoyed it or even initiated it? That is something which must be looked at also.

[ December 15, 2003, 09:48 PM: Message edited by: Nascar007 ]

As the direct descendant of a Southern Black female servant raped by a White male, and also from a Creole courtesan bartered to White French settlers unnder the auspices of marriage (and yes this was all in the 20th Century!), I am outraged by the suggestion that their relationship during that time period was consensual.

Black servants "initiating" the sexual relationship with White men who wielding unlimited power and imposed unspoken fear of harm and retribution over them and their loved ones? Are you out of your mind, or do you just like to verbalize your fantasies on message boards?

Well, huff, as the direct descendant of nothing particularly glamorous, I am outraged that you are outraged...

Seriously, you know nothing about them to assume it wasn't consensual. The mother insisted that her daughter meet her father. The daughter seems to be enamoured enough of the old man to have kept quiet about it all this time. Where are you getting lack of consent out of this story? That all couplings of this kind were forced? That many were? And that therefore this one MUST be? That's a stretch. It's not outside the realm of human experience for a 16 year old maid to carry on an affair with the young man of the house. Happens all the time, in all races and places.

Once again, TomFord is right on the money! Yella Dawg doesn't know "didley squat" about the the dead mother, and yet he is accusing her of being raped. Of course it could have happened that way, but the "Dawg" has no proof to back up those statements.
In those times, slave girls who were mistresses of white slave owners were given special priviledges and fringe benefits that the other slave population did not get. Thomas Jefferson's black slave mistress, Sally Hemmings,was surely given preferential treatment over the rest of the slaves. Jefferson even took her to Paris where she lived for a while as a free woman of color. Is it possible that a black slave girl in those days, with a tad bit of ambition,and the knowledge of how white slave owners treat their black mistresses, would try to initiate such a relationship? Is it possible I ask? I think it is highly possible.

Missing at this point are the words of Carrie Butler. I would be far more interested in learning more about her story than any of the other actors right now, if only because so little has been said "by" her. None of us, or anyone else can speak for her as both "sides" in this debate seem to be doing. Unfortuantely that happens in the abscence of first-person testimony as is so often the case with slaves and servants (a distinction sometimes without a difference in former slave societies) but narratives and witnesses such as family and friends often exist.

Black women in the 1920's/30's didn't have the agency to say NO to their owners, oops, I mean, owners...wait, I'll get this right, _employers'_ advances. End of story.

But I'll go on...

We like to romanticize the rather systematic sexual subjugation of black women by white men that occured concurrently when black men were being beaten and lynched for even just looking at a white woman.

Yeah, to think there was a mutual attraction makes a good Hallmark movie of the week, for sure. And, yeah, the "allure of the other/the exotic" can be tantalizing.

But black women impregnated in such situations were severely scorned. As if it were their faults. We need to problematize the notion, then, that a woman - even at 16 years old - would willingly sign up for the shame and rebuke of her community.

Go back to the Slate article and look at how McWhorter writes about the incident. She talks about it being common knowledge that white youth went to the black part of town to get them some...to get laid for the first time. Not really Harlequin romance material, is it?

Imagine, then, being a black woman in the 19-whenevers. If you're a house slave - sorry, I meant servant - more likely than not, you're going to HAVE to deal with the sexual advances of the kids/owners. Even if you haven't experienced it yourself, you've no doubt be warned and you probably know other women who've experienced sexual coercsion or assault.

With people in your community telling you: don't mess with those white boys OR be careful round that white boy, how does one truly consent to having sex with her white employer?

In any event, looking at the reaction Essie-Mae is receiving NOW, should it surpise us why she's been silent so long? Surely there has been shame wrapped up in all of this, and part of that shame stems in part from the fact that she's the illegit child of a white man.

BMan, you are correct. And I am absolutely dumbfounded by the overglamourization on this board of what amounts to nothing more than extended slavery in America.

I find it very troubling that you would characterize a lineage that can be traced back to multiple rapes of indentured servants through power, fear and intimidation as early as the first half of the 20th Century as \"glamorous\".

"Accused her of being raped"? There is no accusation aimed at the victim of sexual coercion; the accusation and blame are placed solely at foot of the door of the perpetrator.

Again, this is not a story that African-Americans are surprised to hear at all. Certainly not the ones in my family, for it reads like the family tree that my elders chose never to discuss. Actually that argument "perhaps the lusty slave/servant initiated the sex" is an age-old perversion of the master-slave relationship between Whites and Blacks that was used to lynch Blacks from trees. Of course, it's possible that her mother's sexual relationship with Strom was completely consensual and initiated on her part, and that she only kept quiet about it for her undying, requited love for the rich, rising White politician. It's also possible that pigs can fly by using pig farts as fuel.

Riiiiiight, and you sound like you very well should be watching NASCAR races.

But it does sound glamorous, to me at least! Courtesans and all.

Maybe you should avoid throwing in bits about your life that have nothing to do with the point (except to add a touch of emotion, as though you have added insight because of your storied past--which we now know was not glamorous).

B Man makes the same point, but far more effectively. You don't need to dress up your argument with "as a so and so, I know blah blah." It's, well, slightly offensive. At least in this context. Now, if it were relevant...

[ December 16, 2003, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: TomFord ]

Christ, even in 2003, I think it's pretty dubious to talk about a fifteen-year-old house servant freely consenting to sex with her employer. Sorry, there's a huge disparity in power there, even without the racial climate of the early 20th century south. It may not have been rape (in the sense of physical force), but what choice would she really have had? Thurmond may have thought she was consenting, but that doesn't change the fact that he exploited her situation.

[quote]Nascar007:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by TomFord:
[qb]
In those times, slave girls who were mistresses of white slave owners were given special priviledges and fringe benefits that the other slave population did not get. Thomas Jefferson's black slave mistress, Sally Hemmings,was surely given preferential treatment over the rest of the slaves. Jefferson even took her to Paris where she lived for a while as a free woman of color. Is it possible that a black slave girl in those days, with a tad bit of ambition,and the knowledge of how white slave owners treat their black mistresses, would try to initiate such a relationship? Is it possible I ask? I think it is highly possible. [/quote]"In those times"? Thomas Jefferson lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Slavery was still in effect, and Jefferson was an ardent proponent of it. Strom Thurmond as we know lived nearly his entire life in the 20th century, when Jim Crow was in effect. In both cases, whites had utter legal and social power and domination over African-Americans, and men had total legal and social power over women. So Carrie Butler, whether she was consenting or not, was not in an equal relation with Thurmond. And given the power and social standing of his family, the relationship was especially asymmetrical.

Not all slave girls or women who were mistresses of slavemasters were given "special privileges." Many were treated like the chattel that the law defined them as. Also, we shouldn't ever forget that consent with coercion, whether societal, legal or otherwise, isn't really consent. The culture of fear, for slaves AND slaveowners, cannot be denied. There are numerous careful and throrough historical studies on this subject, so I would suggest checking a few out. Hollywood unfortunately has never gotten this bit right, and usually glamorizes what was a complex, but in any case horrible system of the subjugation of human beings by fellow human beings.

(Edward Ball wrote a fascinating book on his white South Carolina family's history and on the parallel trajectories of African-Americans who were his relatives because of the slave system.)

As for Sally Hemings, she went to Paris with Jefferson as a *child* (she was 14 and served as the maid and companion of his daughters) and when back in the US, remained a house slave, maid and nanny. Freedom I suppose is relative, but there was no way that her master, a proponent of black inferiority, allowed her that much "freedom," whether in France or anywhere else. He also didn't free his slaves--not even Sally, who was given her "time," a provisional freedom allowing her to stay in Virginia, by his daughter Martha Randolph, whom Sally had raised--either in his lifetime or on his deathbed.

Back to Essie-Mae Washington-Williams: the Thurmond family's lawyer swiftly issued a statement declaring their acknowledgement of her as a relative. How will the more retrograde elements in South Carolina react now to this added dimension of one of their heroes (J. Strom)?

In December 2002, Ray L. Wallace died. Who, you ask?

He was probably the most important person involved in one of
the great "paranormal" frauds. He was the man who produced
the film of "bigfoot" walking through a forest.

Why is this relevant? Because after Wallace died, many in his
family spoke out and said the film was a fraud and that Wallace
knew that from the beginning, but used it to fool people and
make money.

His family also revealed that Wallace used threats, sometimes
threats of violence, to silence anyone in his family who might
have dared reveal the facts.

Only after Wallace's death were his family no longer afraid to
speak out.


Bob Dog

Thanks Fantomas for your brilliant and informative rebuttal.

Now that there has been acknowledgement on both sides, as a lawyer, I'm curious if there may have been some legal documents involved that mandated silence both sides. Also, if Thurmond provided for his daughter during his lifetime, I wonder if he provided for her in his will. Although Essie Mae had said she has no interest in his estate, a lawyer could certainly make a good case on her behalf.

But all of this really doesn't matter any where near as much as Essie Mae finally being able to claim her identity. Hopefully once the 60 Minutes piece airs, she'll be able to present her mother honorably.

Yelladawg would have to come up with a new handle if he weren't decended from all those white rapes.

Yelladog, not all inter-racial children are born outof rape. I find your comments unfounded and without merrit. Strom would have never had a connection to Essie Mae if that were the case. The young mother in this case would have been sent off some where and not heard from again. I know of another case that happened very much like this around the same time.
A country Doctor who went to house calls was loved by all. He and his wife lived alone in a nice home until she died suddenly. The good doctor could not attend to his clients and his house as well so he hired a young lady to take care of his house and prepare him meals. It turned out that he fell in love with the woman, and they had a child. The child unfortunately was not accepted in the black community, nor was she accepted in the whited community. As a result she was sent to a boarding school in London. There she became a wonderful student and became enamoured (sp) with the stage and acting. She came back to the US and was determined to be a big success. Eventually she did break into television and made it big.
THis child is my cousin...

Eartha Kitt (Origionally Eartha Sturky, her Father was Dr.Kit Sturkey)

wade n atlanta, Mr. Dawg didn't raise the issue, I did. The anecdote you share is touching. And, there are many other stories, ones that don't end like yours.

I don't expect Essie-Mae to call what happened assault or coercion (I literally don't expect her to, ever). Theoretically/philosophically, however, there are those of us who have considered the historical context. We feel fairly strongly that the politics of the time suggest, by and large, most black women lacked the agency or power to truly consent to sexual relations with white men like Strom, nor, honestly, the desire (not "lust" desire, but rather the interest) to engage in such relationships.

Our analysis doesn't make your story any less real or true.

About the 60 Minutes segment...I wished they had done more! It felt like there was much more to tell. Essie Mae comes across like quite the spitfire, even at 70-something.

Supposedly he did not mention her in his will. Her lawyer has said she's not looking for money. Strom didn't leave a large will, though, and he'd already set up trusts for his younger children. I wonder if his son, J. Strom Jr., will try to do something for her.

I also wonder whether there was no father listed on her birth certificate. Certainly her mother was; did Strom's powerful father take care of this and send her mother off--she went, as was common, to a northern state--to raise her child?

Watching her appearance on "60 Minutes," I was impressed by Mrs. Washington-Williams' dignity; it must have been something to have to keep such knowledge to herself, and while I agree with my partner and mother that Essie Mae's speaking out might have torpedoed the evil that Strom caused, that was her father and she felt a special duty to him.

Her comments about him being a racist were interesting; she didn't want to say it, which I respect. But then, who wants to go around admitting, oh, my father was a hardcore racist? And what would that mean for his relationship with her? What I also found telling was the bit about the "cash" and the desire for there not to be a trail--at least when she was younger. Strom was taking care of his daughter, but I also felt that Dan was angling at the idea that he was buying her silence. But it's complex, and I give her credit for not taking this secret to her grave. As she said, "Now I'm free."

Such is the truth of our culture, where the complexities of people's lives so seldom are portrayed, least of all on film and TV.

Probably, SportsFan, but even without me descending from \"all those white rapes\", you'd still be a dick.

I was certainly not referring to most bi-racial children born in recent times. And your anecdote about Eartha Kitt is very charming, but most mulatto (what would now be referred to as bi-racial) children who were the products of such illicit unions did not benefit from having a Caucasian parent who could whisk them off to a boarding school somewhere, much less Europe.

Fantomas and BMan:

I found EssieMae to be dignified but highly guarded about the subject. She reminded me very much of those in my family like my grandparents and great-grandmother who chose not to discuss the issue at all, until the end of their days, and only in a very guarded, circumspect way ("Oh, yeah, he is your grandfather. Pass the gravy.") I also got the impression that she was quite content with what probably amounted to a huge total monetary payoff that she regularly received, and that it was a tacit -- dare I say somewhat sinister -- understanding between the two parties (three, if you count the mother). As much as I loathe everything that Strom Thurmoond stood for in his life, I can say that at least EssieMae's mother was taken advantage of by a man whose family had lots of money, something to lose by the disclosure, and either some modicum of shame, guilt, parental responsibility or a combination thereof. My folks were just raped by P.W.T.'s who laughed about it later and never felt any sense of accountability. Nothing glamorous, but a lot more typical story in the Deep South than the EssieMaes and Eartha Kitts.

LOL....

No surprise that you'd find that to be humorous. Indeed, you live up to the stereotypes of your own handle quite nicely.

Yella, PWT?

I sense a lot of bitterness on your part about how you came to be on this earth. If you refer to part of your makeup as poor white trash, do you refer to the other part as niggers? Is there a support group for you and your chip?

Several posters are conviced of the circumstances that surround this lovely woman's conception. The FACT is that the only two people who know are dead. We were not there. For me the facinating part of the story is how the senator reconciled his hypocritical behavior. It's not unlike another notorious hypocrite, J Edgar Hoover.

SportzFanPatrick, I thought your initial comment was unneccessary and rude. I should have posted something and I apologize to Mr. Dawg for not having done sone.

I understand that you feel attacked, SportzFanPatrick, but I feel your response here to Mr. Dawg lacks any attempt at understanding or empathy.

Comments made on this thread by both Nascar007 and SportzFanPatrick do indeed make me "bitter" - "bitter" that time and time again on these boards, men of color* have to
1) accomodate those here who are more privileged and
2) "prove ourselves" or "prove" our point, only to be told that we've "offended" people here, or that our comments are "irrelevant", or that we have a "chip" on our shoulders.


* fantomas, jaydeenyc, and JC have also made insightful contributions to the conversation - thank you! - Mr. Dawg, however, was the only person called out and directly attacked

B Man, you think my comment about Yella's handle is rude and unnecessary, but I see it as pointing out the irony....the irony of how he describes himself by a characteristic created by events he believes to be contemptuous. If he were so appalled by what happened to his ancestors, why does he promote one of it's side effects? I'm sorry you don't see the irony but it sure is there.

You feel you have to prove your point to others that are priviledged. You can make no judgements about level of privilege of other posters, and it is quite reasonable for anyone who is quoting facts about a particular event to have to prove it. Why shouldn't you?

The other posters made comments and proposed theories without calling people poor white trash. Do you think it is reasonable that Yella be called out for that? I do. It is a very bigoted remark.

You speak for B Man and B Man alone. You do not speak for all men of color. I don't even know or care what color you are.

I assume part of Mrs Washington-Williams's keeping quiet til now was that at least until the late '60s, her life would've been in danger had she come forth. Unless "harm" to Strom's career (of harm!!!) was really uppermost in her mind.

[ December 18, 2003, 08:23 AM: Message edited by: Bill W ]

B Man, I'm with you here. Yella has made some important points, and I don't think it's fair for people to slash at him like they've done. I'm glad you spoke up, and I apologize too for not coming to his defense sooner.

In terms of his handle, that refers to his skin color, like someone might call herself "Redhead65" or something. Yes, it results from that past mixture, but then again, there are golden-skinned Africans as well. At any rate, I see SportsfanPatrick's point about the irony, but I think he stated things a bit too harshly.

Most African-American people in this country are MIXED. Not as directly as Strom's daughter, but the majority have African, European and often Native American ancestry. There are very few of us who don't have some mixed ancestry--we're not Nigerians, Ethiopians, Senegalese, Dahomeyans--and haven't been for at least several hundred years. Yet we live, because of this society's ideology, as *black* people.

(And as Adrian Piper has noted, many white people running around the US (anywhere from 17%-30%) might have some direct African ancestry, especially given how many blacks passed to escape Jim Crow, and intermarried with Irish and Germans in the Midwest and West. Genetic tests will bear this out--a white scientist in California was shocked to learn he had DNA markers that were directly traceable to Western Africa. But then Africans were brought to Europe directly too, and Spain and Portugal, as well as France, Italy and even Britain had black and Arab residents going back to the Roman times....)

The painful history of slavery and its aftermath, and of the subjugation of black people (and black women sexually), doesn't get discussed enough, in part because many whites do not feel any need to broach matters that, for some of them, ended over 100 years ago--or with Jim Crow and racial segregation, 20-30 years ago. But many black people also don't want to discuss these issues--they are painful, they are troubling, and we as a society haven't resolved them. I can tell you that I have black and Latino students who know far more about the Holocaust than they do about the history of slavery in the US, or indeed in Europe, Africa and the Americas as a whole. Yella is highlighting his own family history and the parallels to Essie's story, and I hear where he's coming from. I hear the anger--and truthfully, most white people in the US now, as then, are poor or working class. (Sorry Hollywood and GOP, but yep, most white people are not upper middle class!)

"Trash" is over the top (I personally do not like to hear my white students, most of whom are middle and upper class, toss out this term, which they often do with contempt, and I always call them on it). But "trash" also doesn't have the same force as that "n-" word. I mean, we didn't have thousands of white people strung up and castrated to the cries of "trash"; or white people gunned down by racists and called "trash"; or whole organizations dedicated to and successful at killing off white people because they were "trash"; etc. Both are awful, and no human being is "trash"--not even that butcher of Baghdad or Idi Amin or Augusto Pinochet.

Back to what Yella is getting at: I don't romanticize the fact that one of my ancestors was a Scot who actually married a free(d) black woman from Maryland and took her to Illinois where they could live on a farm; both had to deal with all kinds of legal and social issues (the 1860s-1890s), but it certainly was tougher for her than for him. And as for my other ancestors, who come from the likes of Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, etc., I have no illusions about who had the power in those interracial relationships--that is, the ones that weren't between the African-Americans and the Indians.

[ December 18, 2003, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

From a Salon Premium story today:

NASCAR, stop while you're behind. I'm white and even *I* find that your handle is appropriate. B Man, Fantomas and YellaDawg are in "cahoots"? What is this, the 1920's? They're intelligent men who have points of agreement, I don't think that they e-mail each and make sure that their statements all agree so that they can diss the cracker on the Outsports board. And calling them "girls" is sexist and homophobic. What's the point?

For God's sake, read his actual posts. He explicitly says:

I assume you're not Strom Thurmond's age.
Unless you went to high school in the segregated south, and the girls involved were your employees, I don't see that he has cast any aspersions on your relations with them.

I am not going to apologize for calling someone I am a direct descendant of a "PWT". He was poor. He was White. He was an offensive public drunk and at worst, he was a rapist who belittled Black men and women in public and creeped out at night to assault pretty young Black women against their will. He participated in public lynchings of Black men whose only crime was looking at a White woman. Neither he nor his brother would acknowledge their biracial children. In drunken stupors, with a group of other ne'er-do-wells, he made public sexual advances and suggestions toward his own daughter. He died in the prime of his life in a public shootout in a saloon. He was not an honorable man by any means. He was trash. I have an absolute right to call him that, not only because that is exactly what he was, but also because biologically, I am his descendant.

SportsFan:

For you to even suggest that the "N" word is equivalent in derision and power to the term "PWT" shows a great lack of empathy, awareness and understanding of history on your part. I do, however, find your categorization of my awareness of my own racial background and genealogy as "bitterness" as quite interesting. My background is what it is, and I have no romantic illusions about it.

As for the "irony" of the term "yella" being "promoted" in my handle... it's not a "promotion", it is merely a physical characteristic of mine, and quite frankly, a fairly obvious one at that, one where there isn't really anything I can do to mask. In other message boards or chat rooms, I use other obvious physical descriptors like "lean muscle", "tall", "Black", "Bla-tino", etc. It says far more about your belief system that you would even suggest that I'm using the handle as some kind of carte blanche, prestigious calling card, when I simply use it for no more than what it really is (an obvious physical descriptor). If my skin were the color of, say, Djimon Hounsou's (the give us free" guy from "Amistad"... who I LOVE, BTW), I would call myself DarkDawg or BlackDawg in a heartbeat, and you would not DARE suggest the phrase as anything other than the physical descriptor that it is.

Secondly, in spite of the "white rapes" that I have revealed to be in my genealogy from and before the early 20th Century, both my parents and both sets of my grandparents are either Black and/or Black Latinos. My "yella" skin color was not created solely by the events discussed in my genealogy that you have described as contemptuous.

[ December 18, 2003, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: YellaDawg ]

B Man Yella and Fantomas.. what you have said on this subject is so eloquent.. it is a shame that others on this subject have equated the derogatory term white trash to the n-word....they are not equal... others have said that her mother may have been somehow excited about by having sex with a white man during that time..their ignorance about the plight of black women during that time comes thru.. black men during that time and until the early 1960s were being lynched for being interested in white women in any way so how could that be true? it seems obvious that his biracial daughter is the product of a rape.if she was not of age to have sex with mr thurmond it would be rape regardless of whether she consented or not Mr Thurmond paid for his daughter's silence with money. and he thought so much of his firstborn child that he left her out of his will and the rest of his family thought so little of her that she was not invited to his funeral.

Jim thanks for what you said about an earlier posting.. I just dont think NASCAR thinks of gay men of color as his equal so he would use any name to demean them

[quote]Originally posted by Yella Dawg


For you to even suggest that the \"N\" word is equivalent in derision and power to the term \"PWT\" shows a great lack of empathy, awareness and understanding of history on your part. [QUOTE] [/quote]Nigger and Poor White Trash are both deragatory. Yella Dawg, you don't have to be politically correct by using abbreviations.

Yella, you may have read my post, but you didn't understand it. You obviously saw (or wanted to see) words that simply were not there. I never said you don't have the right to call someone poor white trash. You certainly do as much as I think it is vulgur. I never said you use your handle for anything other than describing a physical attribute that probably wouldn't exist but for the events that YOU find contemptous. I really don't get your point about what I would dare not do, but I'm sure it makes sense to you if not to me.