“why do you keep bringing up racism when you talk about the Seam inhabitants, they’re Melungeon, they aren’t Black”
I’m going to hold your hand when I say this:
The Melungeon ONLY EXIST BECAUSE OF SYSTEMIC RACISM. That’s the ONLY REASON it’s even a term for us to use to identify this group with!
There used to be this fun thing called the one drop rule, or blood quantum laws. “One drop” of negro in your bloodline could see you lose any standing in polite white society, or at worst, see you enslaved! A great example of a common way people hid Black ancestry was by claiming indigenous ancestry— hard to trace, and more “noble” to claim (ever heard someone saying their greatx-grandma was a Cherokee princess? Yeah.)
The Melungeons are traced back to a group of families in 1800s Appalachia who were mixed-race. The term “Melungeon” is actually a slur for them, coming from the French word for “mixed” (mélange, thanks @midwesternfields for reminding me I left that out). They were part white, yes, but they claimed mixing with Native American tribes, Portguese, even the ancient Phoenicians (which… don’t get me started).
The thing is— they did DNA tests on the descendants in the past twenty years. The majority of these descendants were found to only have European and African ancestry, not Native American (one or two families were the exception). Being Black was so dangerous and shameful that they claimed a whole new ethnic term for themselves. And I’m not saying that’s bad. I understand why people would do that in that situation. And I agree that they have formed a regional culture of their own in the past 200 years.
The problem is y’all trying to pull the “I’ll accept the Seam people are brown but it’s because they’re Melungeon, not Black!”
Be so ffr. You’re continuing the same racist rhetoric that led to the whole reason they needed to create the term in the first place! You do not have one without the other.
Yes, the Seam population is not largely written as “Black” in the manner District 11 clearly evokes with dark-skinned kinky-haired farm laborers who work at gun point and with the threat of whippings, who have overseers and recognize Lou-Lou as theirs from a plantation hymn. But the commonality is there: Louella McCoy from the Seam had a near enough body double in the form of a Black girl from the fields of District 11 because Louella McCoy and enough of the Seam has African ancestry, because the regional population of Appalachia has it too, even if they still don’t like acknowledging it.
And then maybe you should consider why the easier group to think of as “Black” is the one compared to plantation slaves and field laborers, and not miners despite that history, too.
Anyways. Racism and colorism are a key point of the Hunger Games books and you don’t have one without the other.
this has been another tea time with hawk ☕️🦅
