Stuck on the 2010 Census race question

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by kchristieh in my life

Filling out the 2010 Census was as easy as promised until I got to Question 9: What is Person 1′s race? Mark one or more boxes.

Person #1, aka my husband, is Mexican-American, so Question 8: Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin? was easy. From what we know of his heritage, he’s part-Spanish, part-Italian, part-Persian and like so many Mexicans, part-Native American. In fact, when he swabbed the inside of his cheek a few years ago and sent the cells off to a company that National Geographic worked with to perform a DNA test, it came back saying that his ancestors crossed the Bering Strait and traveled to South America.

Unfortunately, the choices for Question 9 discouraged us from picking American Indian, since it asks the name of the enrolled or principal tribe. Who knows how many eons ago his ancestors were part of an American Indian tribe? They were probably Aztecs or Mayans more recently, but that wasn’t a choice.

If he’d been Chinese, it would have been much easier. Question 9 separates out Asian Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese as different races. I consider them all to be Asian, though I appreciate that they have distinct cultures. On the other hand, if they’re looking to track distinct cultures, why don’t they track Arabs? I’m not the first to notice that omission.

I heard on the radio the other day that it wasn’t until Medieval times that people even really cared about race. (Although I’d bet some slaves would argue with that.) It’s sad that humans are hung up on the color of one’s skin. Perhaps the more that people get to know people of different races and intermarry, they’ll not only better appreciate what’s inside a person and not what’s on the outside, but it’ll be harder and harder to determine what race someone is. (Click here to see The Onion’s take on this.) Since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, maybe it would be easier if we were all Irish. Just kidding – it would be easy for me, but others might object.

By the way, he told me to mark White on the form. I will, but it only tells part of his story. At least Question 8 tells another part.

Did my ancestor need to apologize to the Indians?

Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by kchristieh in history, religion

If my kids were to construct a physical family tree to reflect what we know of their ancestors, it would be incredibly lopsided. My husband can barely trace his ancestors back to his great grandparents, whereas I can trace at least one branch of my family tree back to the late 1500′s. One of my more famous ancestors was Everardus Bogardus, who was the second minister of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam, which we now know as New York.

So it was with great interest that I read that Rev. Robert Chase from Collegiate Church, which is the current incarnation of the Reformed Dutch Church, recently apologized to descendants of the Lenape Indians for the church’s role in their massacre and displacement. (see the AP photo to the right)

“We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. “With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.”

As a center of the new colony, it’s not surprising that the church would have played a role in persecuting the Indians. Still, it was disappointing to envision an ancestor of mine playing such a big role in it. Fortunately, I found an article about Everardus Bogardus that says that he actually was kind to the Indians.

Before arriving in New Amsterdam in 1633, The Dutch minister had served as a ‘ziekentrooster’ (comforter of the sick) on the Guinea coast. While there, he developed a concern for the spiritual condition of Africans that carried over into his dealings with New Amsterdam’s West Africans. In 1636, Bogardus pleaded for a schoolmaster to be sent from Holland. As New Amsterdam’s minister, he routinely married African men and women and baptized their children, and made a great effort to welcome Africans into New Amsterdam’s Reformed Protestant Church.

…

Everardus Bogardus was a controversial figure in more than one way. He was at odds with one of the settlement’s first leaders, Willem Kieft. Bogardus denounced Kieft from his pulpit due to Kieft’s decisions to initiate wars with the local Indians.

I wish I could meet my ancestors. It’d be amazing to see firsthand what their lives were like and why they made the decisions they did.

I found a website dedicated to tracing descendancy to Everardus Bogardus and his wife Anneke. It says there are probably a million people who can claim them as ancestors. I wonder if this is true. If so, it shows that many of us are more related than we ever imagined. The website also puts to rest rumors that Anneke was descended from King William the Silent in Holland. I always wondered how I could descend from someone who was silent. Instead, it turns out she was born in Norway. That adds yet another country to my list of Northern European countries I descend from, so that’s cool.