<p>Man told `white lie’ discovered he was black at age 26
The Orlando Sentinel</p>
<p>*…Throughout his childhood, David Myers was told that his skin color was a disease called melanism. He was lucky, his mother said, because the skin discoloration was all over his body, instead of just splotches of brown like most people had. </p>
<p>So despite his dark skin, Myers grew up in white, middle-class neighborhoods in Ohio and New York believing he was white. *</p>
<p>This story really saddens me. I’m not sure how I can feel sympathetic for him or the family, especially the mother (who seems to be in huge denial). Why does the family disown him, when he cannot act as if everything is normal, especially when he discovers that his entire life has been a lie?</p>
<p>“When a young Dave Myers asked his mother why police in Alabama were spraying black civil-rights protesters with fire hoses, she told him it was because they were hot.”</p>
<p>I’m still shaking my head over that one… </p>
<p>This whole story is so sad, so heart-rending. Judy Meyers has set a whole new benchmark for the definition of denial, and the rest of the Meyers family does its utmost to maintain that mark. Where this ultimately leaves Dave is where he has been all his life—on the outside.</p>
<p>This doesn’t really go with the story, but it’s a funny to lighten the mood. When I was in graduate school I shared my office with an African American student who was about my age. She was my very best friend in my program and one day shared the following story with me. </p>
<p>She went to the registrar’s office to have a transcript printed out. As they were keying in the info to bring up her file, she noticed something on the monitor. Her race was listed as white. She said, “Um, I see that my race is listed as white and I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m black.” I would like to point out at this point that she is also not a light skinned black woman who could be mistaken for another race. </p>
<p>When the woman behind the desk looked at her confused, my friend asked, “Is there any way we could get that changed in the computer?” The woman thought for a second and said, “Well, we can definitely get that changed for you, but we’re going to need you to bring by your social security card, a birth certificate, and a photo id.” As I said, she is not light skinned at all. She and I still laugh about the fact that she was asked to bring in a birth certificate to “prove” that she’s black. </p>
<p>Like I said, a much lighter story than the one posted above, but one that makes me laugh each time I think about it!</p>
<p>More amazing, still! Yes indeed, he is clearly black. A “skin disorder” might possibly have served as a credible explaination if Dave had been straight-haired and blue-eyed, but not with all those other “negroid” features. It’s a wonder the poor man maintains any level of sanity whatsoever. Clearly, his so-called family doesn’t.</p>
<p>i think the reverse was true many thousands of times in our history. An African American woman gets pregnant by a white man…willingly or against her will and gives birth to a …white baby?..black baby? youd hope the child is raised in a loving family…not an atmosphere of shame. remember madeline albright who didn’t know she had Jewish heritage…</p>
<p>“An African American woman gets pregnant by a white man…willingly or against her will and gives birth to a …white baby?..black baby?”</p>
<p>Under the one drop of black blood rule, such babies in our country were considered black even if they had blond hair and blue eyes. That was because many of those babies’ moms were enslaved, and the greedy owners wanted to protect their “property” by making sure that their children were considered slaves.</p>
<p>NSM is right - there are cases where about 3% black blood would trigger African-American status. (I think the rule was 1 in 32 - five generations back.)</p>
<p>IMO, the child is of mixed race - which is fine (at least to my way of thinking). Mixed-race babies are becoming more common - and almost trendy - esp. the white/Asian mix. </p>
<p>So very very sad that anyone could be taught to dislike part of themselves. I am not surprised that the young man acted out - after a lifetime of subtle rejection by his parents, who wouldn’t? Kids are smart. They can pick up on that stuff better than most adults can. Am I too idealistic to suggest that you love your kid, even if he looks like Daddy, much in the same way that you would love a child who is not pretty or thin or tall? </p>
<p>Reminds me of Carol Channing – who learned as an adult that her father was “officially” African American – light enough skinned that she grew up believing herself to be 100% Caucasian. </p>
<p>Quotes from two different websites:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0151919/[/url]”>http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0151919/</a>
“Revealed in her autobiography “Just Lucky, I Guess” that her father was a light skinned African American who used one accent to help “pass” in the white world and another around the house, where he sang gospel music to entertain his daughter.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure how I can feel sympathetic for him or the family, especially the mother (who seems to be in huge denial).”</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to feel sympathetic to the mom (whom I also suspect is lying about the rape. Based on the article’s description of her husband, who seems quite the dim bulb, I assume that she engaged in consensual sex with the black man, accidentally got pregnant, and found a credulous white man to marry). </p>
<p>I do feel a lot of sympathy for the black man who was lied to all his life. Think about it: Every day, he looked in the mirror and saw a person who appeared to be African American: dark skin, curly hair. </p>
<p>And the man is certainly young enough to have seen plenty of African AMericans on TV, etc. if not in his hometown!</p>
<p>Every day, though, his mom lied to him about having a skin disease. She probably even said that he looked like his step father.</p>
<p>Having been raised being told lies about things so fundamental about his life, I can not imagine the paranoia and pain the man experiences. Who can he trust? Who is he? What a sad place to be in, and what a sad statement about what race means in US society.</p>
<p>You know…i’ve been thinking about this story for a few days now…and…it just doesn’t seem credible to me…It just sound too much like a supermarket tabloid story…how many human beings look into the mirror for years and believe a parent’s story not their own eyes…maybe a young child does, but this person was deluded for 26 years? does anyone else think this might be a hoax?</p>
<p>make no mistake about it, the mom IS lying about being raped. She’s obviously a pathological liar, and really the source of her son’s mental woes look at her stories, I mean, telling a kid Southern hosed and beaten blacks were simply hot is borderline criminal … If she’d just been honest and up front with the boy when he was a kid. …</p>
<p>This story is gut-wrenching (esp for the son whos borne this lie/burden throughout his adult life) , but it’s so much like the Philip Roth novel and later movie the “Human Stain”, my wife and I freaked when we read it truly, as the saying goes, “… Life imitates art.”</p>
<p>Let me be the one to grab some of you by the collar and yank you into the crucible of history, race and contemporary society values in America. The actions and circumstances described in this fellow’s story are nothing new. It bespeaks of why Thomas Jefferson’s decendants are horrified at the prospect of sharing their ‘heritage and legacy’ with the family of Sally Hemmings. It’s why Carol Channings’ father made the choices he did. It’s why the white students in Sociologist Andrew Hacker’s class answered his famous question the way they did.</p>