A Question of Whiteness...

Another thing I found searching military records in Fold3.

Tool:

Again, dipping into military records on Fold3.

The Story:

When I was taking driver’s ed (although it would be years before I got my driver’s license, because I was the oldest of four and knew that as soon as I got it, my afternoons would be spent shlepping around John, Robert, and Haven and I was not that good a daughter), my dad told me about getting his license. Or rather, about how when he got his license, they made him change “white” to “olive” on the line for skin color, because his last name was Einstein. He’d been raised Presbyterian, and not Jewish, and according to Ancestry his Jewish ancestry most likely only included one great-great grandfather. Here is a picture of him shortly after I was born. He was not olive-skinned.

My father as a young man.

So perhaps I should have been surprised when I found in their military records that, except for Uncle Lake, my grandfather and his brothers complexion were listed as variously “dark” and even “light brown.” For what ever reason, only Uncle Lake’s complexion is listed as “light” even though he was no more or less fair-skinned than his brothers.

I don’t know why, but I can’t get Uncle Charles’ and Uncle Lake’s records not to be mirror images. Sorry about that!

Here is a picture of all the brothers (and their wives and some of their children) taken close to the time these draft cards were filled out.

Left to right, back row: Albert, Eddie, Lake Sr., Lake Jr. Mary Lake, Charles, Mickey. Left to right, front row: Frances, Nancy, Dorothy, Josie, Nancy holding Bill, Charles.

I know it’s a black and white photo, so you have to trust my memory a little bit… but these are not dark-skinned people. We are the sort of fair that requires a lot of sunscreen and wide-brim hats when we spend too much time in the sun. Which begs the question, why were most of the brothers assigned “Dark” for their complexion?

The answer, obviously, has to do with “otherness.” It also has to do with the slipperiness of the idea of race itself. (If you’re not familiar with the idea that race is entirely a social construct, I point you to this excellent essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates.) Note that the choices listed under race—White, Negro, Oriental, Indian, Filipino—are almost all different from the list choices under race—White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and a sixth category for Some Other Race—on the most recent census. Of the list on the draft cards, only White remains and only Black or African American is a simple name change. All the rest are substantially changed.

What, exactly, to make of all this will be part of the work the essay collection will work toward doing. But it’s worth noting that digging through old records says as much about the culture which generated those records as it does about the lives recorded, and it’s important for us all to keep that in mind when we’re doing this sort of research.