The NPR article linked in post #57 estimates there are between 15,000 and 20,000 descendants of those slaves alive today. In a population that big I bet you can find a few college-age kids every year who have stats good enough to get into Georgetown, especially if they get a URM boost and a Legacy boost combined.
They potentially may end up with non-black descendants of those slaves. This will be funny.
and another descendant mentioned upthread:
Thanks for sharing these stories @alh - In the Ford family, I was struck by the fact the family remained Catholic and Catholic educated …passing it down generations even after their enslavement and in spite of segregation. As I read this paragraph-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/opinion/my-familys-story-in-georgetowns-slave-past.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
“The Catholicism that the Jesuits and the Catholic Church taught my enslaved forefathers was rooted in discrimination. When I was a little girl, it was just a fact of life that Catholic schools and churches were segregated. It never dawned on me that my church was complicit in the slave trade; that’s part of the painful process of discovery.”
also the part about about compartmentalizing the past as something that is never mentioned …
I was struck by the thought that maybe descendants won’t necessarily want to attend Georgetown after everything…??
But I guess “reclaiming and making it yours” can be a powerful tool ??
The stories are important to hear- both women are inspiring- gives me lots of feels.
This I would like explained to me, @CCDD14 : both how it would occur and why it would be funny.
There could be white descents. Some white people have black ancestors. Louisiana has one of the highest percentages in the country, as it happens. 12 percent of “white” people here have some black ancestry.
Oh come on postmodern - you couldn’t figure out that there might be descendants of the 272 who are either predominantly white or “look white”? You don’t think white masters ever slept with black slaves (likely unwillingly on the part of the slave)?
^^You completely missed the point of post #85.
Some of the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings appear to be Caucasian. Others appear to be African American. It’s reasonable to think some of the descendants of the Georgetown families could appear to be Caucasian too.
Should descendants who can mark Caucasian on their apps, who may not even know they have African American roots until the Jesuits contact them, get as much of a boost as those who appear African American? I think they should. I’m glad Georgetown is reaching out to them.
Interestingly, many of my ancestors lived all over Maryland at and prior to that time. Some were slave owners, so it is entirely possible that they were involved in the transactions of slaves within Maryland and that some of these descendants are actually related to us. As has been pointed out, many of the descendants had white ancestors as well.
My take on what postmodern wrote was that s/he knew exactly how it could happen, but was asking a rhetorical question to make the (obvious) point while at the same time asking why that (white masters ‘sleeping’ with their slaves unwillingly) would be “funny”.
I do not remember writing that black slaves unwillingly sleeping with white masters was funny but if you say so…
All social engineering policies in US colleges usually have unintended consequences. 50%+ beneficiaries of affirmative action are either first or second generation black immigrant children or children of black professionals. The beneficiaries of Title IX athletic policies are often foreign girls sometimes playing obscure sports (50%+ of scholarships in some sports). So it will be funny when the beneficiaries of this new Georgetown initiative will not be underprivileged marginalized students but again the children of successful black parents or even white students who happened to have a slave ancestor from 7 generations ago that was sold by Georgetown. I wonder if Georgetown will cut the latter applicants under the holistic review (we all know that legacy status does not guarantee admission).
Interesting how this thread seems to pull for posts that want to out-diss one another.
I am mostly in favor of what Georgetown is doing, unlike how Yale is handling renaming of Calhoun College. My objection at Yale was that it was effectively window dressing, whereas Georgetown is taking a principled stand (although in my opinion the primary fault was not in selling the slaves, but in buying them in the first place).
My question is, which principle? Is it the principle of we did wrong by owning slaves, and since we cannot make it up to them, we will make it up to their descendants? Or is it that blacks in this country have been oppressed for many generations, and we are going to help black descendants of those we oppressed? A case can be made for either position.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/biographies/thomasday.html
There are a variety of ways “people who believe themselves to be white” descend from someone enslaved, like this coachman. My recollection, from a book I read a few years back, is that his grandmother was the unmarried daughter of a white plantation owner.
It wasn’t this book, which I can’t copy from, but if anyone is interested it discusses the issue:
It states “Children of mixed-racial pairings assumed the status of the mother…”
fwiw
It’s off topic, but perhaps worth a post. imho. I was unaware of this until very recently.
If I understand correctly, Georgetown experienced a financial crisis. Georgetown saved or enriched itself by the sale of the individuals they had enslaved. That sale of one group of human beings allowed the college to continue to exist and to enrich the lives of another group human beings.
If I understand Coates correctly, (and maybe I just don’t because these are very complicated concepts for me) he is saying that the whole economic structure of our nation today is a result of the free labor of an enslaved population. If so, I think there is an analogy to the Georgetown story. It’s one small part of a larger story of what happened.
I have not read Coates, but from your description I would call this a false attribution due to Survivorship Bias. In other words, the US economy is doing great, so let’s go back a couple hundred years and pinpoint out what allowed to become great.
This ignores other great powers at the time that declined for whatever reason. Britain was highly complicit in the slave trade but its economy is far behind the US today. The Dutch East India company was even more powerful than the British East India Company, but the power of the Netherlands today pales even in comparison to England. Slavery was a major component in Brazil but Brazil is now a basket case. We could keep going.
You have brought up the issue of reparations before, and I think that the subject is complicated. My belief is that reparations are an effective remedy when you can 1) Determine who caused harm, 2) Determine who was harmed, and 3) Have those who harmed directly compensate those who were harmed (or their descendants). Georgetown is an almost unique case because it satisfies all three conditions despite happening so long ago.
Outside of these conditions being met, I think there needs to be a statute of limitations on reparations.
Still struggling to understand why that "will be “funny”.
Georgetown has plenty of really smart faculty members, including demographers and social scientists, so I’m sure they understand the fact that many African Americans are of mixed race (more recently due to voluntary choice; historical times, being taken advantage of by white ‘owners’), and some descendants of slaves are doing well economically xx generations later.
But I give up in trying to find the ‘funny’ here.
^I think you are being a little (deliberately) obtuse. Of course there is funny peculiar, and funny ha ha. You know which one this is.