Conversation with Rev. Dr. Frederick J. StreetsPosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Religion, Slavery, Social Science, United States on 2009-11-12 02:19Z by Steven |
Conversation with Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Streets
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition
Yale University
1990-02-02
Frederick J. Streets, University Chaplain and Senior Pastor
Church of Christ, Yale University
A conversation with Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Streets, University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ, Yale University.
Dr. Streets spoke about race in America. He discussed the resistance to thinking about shared history that black and white Americans might feel. He suggested several reasons for the resistance…
…On mixed racial heritage:
(Dr. Streets is an African American of mixed heritage.)
I grew up identifying with African Americans by color while learning the Polish traditions of my maternal grandmother.
I think that acknowledging one’s mixed heritage is a rebuttal to two ideas about race. One is the linking of mixed heritage to slavery. The second is the idea of racial purity.
African Americans reject their white heritage as the story of slavery. White Americans believe that their heritage carries no genes of color. The great divide between black and white Americans is mythical and destructive.
Neither groups wants to acknowledge their mixed ancestry because a mixed racial heritage furthers the destruction of separate racial identity. As blacks begin to examine their roots, they find a confusion of identity…
Read the entire article here.