Identity or Biology?

The re-appearance in the news of Elizabeth Warren as a possible Presidential candidate has led me to uncover an old message that I sent to colleagues. It was written on May 26, 2012.


After reading today's Journal and Courier story about Liz Warren's struggle with her identity or biology (she just discovered she was 1/36 American Indian) I was reminded of a long-standing question from my youth. I had a observed as a young ethno-demographer that almost all the Italians I knew had much darker skin than anyone else except neighborhood Negroes (the term used in my youth). In fact, I had darker skin than one of my Negro friends, Junior Emerson. As I matured and read more widely (the New York Daily News not the NYT) I discovered that almost all Southern Italians were darker than those from the Florence area. How could that be? Was Sicily closer to the sun? Were Sicilians or Barese (that's my family, from Bari) too poor to afford sun screen
and sun hats? No, the question required a deeper understanding.


It wasn't until my college days and my first course in biology when I learned of Mendel and theories of plant genetics and its link to human genetics. The plot thickened when I took a medieval history course and learned about the Mameluke people from North Africa. Yipes! In my neighborhood we called kids we thought were dummies "mamelukes." How can that be? Later in the history course I read about a Sultan named Mingooch. Holy cow! May father's nickname was Mingooch. What the hell is going on?


If Liz Warren has identity with out biology, I have biology without identity, and I am totally confused. Am I really African American (1/36)? Could I have gone to Harvard instead of Cortland State? Has my career at Purdue been limited by the missed opportunities enjoyed by Warren? Should I tell my kids that they may be descendants of Sultan Mingooch? Would that do them any good?


I am also saddened by the fact that I may have unintentionally misled my friends, who have white identity and may start to think of me in a new way. I think that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Liz Warren for coming out and telling the world that she was the first Native American at Harvard. Who knows, Purdue may have to acknowledge that I was the first African American to get a PhD in sociology from Purdue, and my life will be used to counteract the bad publicity from the Higginbotham years.