[lbo-talk] Anthro/ethnography query

Grant Lee grantlee at iinet.net.au
Sat Oct 4 18:13:03 PDT 2003


The mail below was just forwarded to me and has some relevance to this topic. (Edited by me for length and typos.) The Melungeons (sic) are possibly another example of a state created, blended colonial ethnicity. Like many peoples who originated in pre-literate times, they have virtually forgotten their origins.

(By way of background, recent DNA surveys have identified -- among present day Melungeons -- an unusually high number of genes associated with the Mediterranean, the Middle East and South/Central Asia. One intriguing theory is that their origins were in "mixed race" people from Spanish/Portuguese colonies, on what is now the south east coast of the US. The name is said to have the same roots as "melange". CF http://www.discover.com/may_03/featfrom.html DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5 (May 2003) Where do we really come from? By Kathleen McGowan.)


> From: "Curtis Christy"[email address deleted]
> To: <AUS-CONVICTS-L at rootsweb.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 8:20 PM

* * * *


> I have no Australian ancestry at all. BUT I think there is a certain kind
> of relationship to be found between those of us who are descended from the
> people I come from (in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern North
> America)
> and those of you who are descended from British and Irish ancestors who
> were
> taken to Australia to serve sentences as transported convicts . . .

* * * *


> My people are the Melungeons. We are referred to as "tri-racial
> isolates" -- the ostensibly white descendants of probably at least one
> African [...] some Indian of the Southeast part of what is now the United
> States, and [generations] of whites marrying into those lines, making us
> virtually indistinguishable from most other white people . . . except for
> some characteristics that may pop up and demand explanation every
> generation
> or two. I, for example, have a kind of Sarcoidosis that is usually
> "reserved" for people of Mediterranean or African descent. I have no
> ancestry from anywhere near the Mediterranean since before the 1600's.
> But
> I do come from Melungeon lines, and although Melungeons have been very
> effective at hiding their heritage (through the use of the "family secret"
> no longer passed down), we know that one line in particular were still
> being
> referred to as "mulattos" in the mid 1800's.

* * * *


> Many Melungeon families have relied on the story
> that great-great-great grandpa was a "Portugee" as the
> easy "Caucasian" explanation for mixed heritage physical
> features of some family members. When recent genealogical and historical
> context
> work . . . and now even DNA studies . . . have revealed
> an African presence in our blood that is difficult to
> continue denying, some Melungeon descendants' denial goes WAY beyond the
> old
> "river in Africa" adage (i.e., "denial" ain't just a river in Africa!) .
> . . in fact, ANYWHERE but Africa seems to be the battle-cry of some
> detractors of the truth behind the well-accepted problem of the Melungeon
> family secret, why it has been so endemic in our lines, what drove it in
> case after case, and why the secret IN EVERY CASE ceased to be passed on
> the
> next generation [...] the same reason that found it
> necessary to live in the most remote, inaccessible areas of the
> Appalachians
> instead of remaining in North and South Carolina and Virginia as the laws
> affecting people of color began to change in the tide of development of
> chattel slavery in those colonies and then states.

* * * *


> So what's all this got to do with your Convict ancestors?
> >
> I suspect that the family secret was treated in much the same way:
> FORGOTTEN and failed to be passed down. Those ancestors did not
> anticipate
> YOU and your curiosity OR that there might ever be a
> great-great-grandchild
> who might actually be PROUD of the ancestor who was transported for
> essentially being of a somewhat different social or political
> point-of-view
> than those who ran Old Bailey and who meted out "justice" in a way now
> understood to be more criminal than those it punished.

* * * *


> I fully believe that some of the worst bigotry in the South is a
> reflection of self-loathing by those who feared the secret getting out so
> much that they became the most vehement race-haters in their respective
> regions . . . always the first to rally the cry against people of darker
> complexion moving their belongings through the valleys and down the
> hollows:
> "We don't want your kind around here Git!" . . . thus driving others less
> far removed from their African further into the brambles and brush, deeper
> into the obscurity of American mythology, making us less trusting of
> outsiders...

* * * *


> Curtis



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