DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - South African biographical film Skin and Race in South Africa

**giftplas** · 03-19-2012, 01:44 AM

It is quite surprising how they were just totally oblivious to the Black ancestry though. That was never the case for my family, not even my father's family and his parents looked predominantly European. I had to question him a couple times about his SSA admixed look but he finally admitted his grandmother was a Black woman. I feel like my father was like a Sandra Laing in a way, growing up as an admixed SSA looking person in a family who was seen as white. He was always called "el negro" /"the black" by his siblings and mother.

Well, you have to remember the white population they came from was genetically bottlenecked. The Laings probably came from a group of select white families, all having some SSA admixture from the colonial days. That they would forget is understandable given that their ancestors only married "white" people after the initial settlement. What they forgot was that these "white" ancestors also carried the admixture as well as they all came from the same bottlenecked population. I doubt either parent could point to a grandparent and say, "There is the blackness." They were all white to them because they looked white. But they were not purely European. Two different things.

03-19-2012, 01:44 AM	#4
giftplas Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 390 Senior Member	It is quite surprising how they were just totally oblivious to the Black ancestry though. That was never the case for my family, not even my father's family and his parents looked predominantly European. I had to question him a couple times about his SSA admixed look but he finally admitted his grandmother was a Black woman. I feel like my father was like a Sandra Laing in a way, growing up as an admixed SSA looking person in a family who was seen as white. He was always called "el negro" /"the black" by his siblings and mother. Well, you have to remember the white population they came from was genetically bottlenecked. The Laings probably came from a group of select white families, all having some SSA admixture from the colonial days. That they would forget is understandable given that their ancestors only married "white" people after the initial settlement. What they forgot was that these "white" ancestors also carried the admixture as well as they all came from the same bottlenecked population. I doubt either parent could point to a grandparent and say, "There is the blackness." They were all white to them because they looked white. But they were not purely European. Two different things.
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