Wikipedia Rewrites Black Identity

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

A few years ago, I was on the sidewalk outside of the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. I was biding farewell to my distant cousin, Sam. Must you know Sam’s race? I suppose so for purposes of this essay. Race is a clumsy way to size someone up. The Burbank Happening was years into the future.

My black American cousin, Sam, was impressed with my wife’s ancestor, U.S. Representative Joseph H. Rainey (1832 - 1887). After a conspiratorial nod about black women, Sam leaned into me and asked me if I had noticed what Wikipedia had done. Wikipedia had labeled Congressman Rainey with the identity of “mulatto.” Mulatto tells one nothing since every single descendant of American slavery is of mixed European and African ancestry. There are no pure 100% Africans in the universe of descendants of American slavery. Black Americans with roots in American soil ran the gamut from dark to brown to light to white-appearing in skin color. There is no dispute here. Some apples are red and some are green and some are yellow. Same goes for Black Americans. See and review my Pioneer Black Lawyer Series, Season 4, Episodes 1 - 29.

Sam didn’t mean Wikipedia recognized Congressman Rainey as of mixed European and African descent. Duh! What troubled Sam was Wikipedia had erased Rainey’s self-identity as a Black Man and inserted a new ambiguous identity, Mulatto! Sam asked me how my wife felt about what Wikipedia had done. My wife cares not about deep history. She is a practical woman who cares more about sales on groceries and the cost of gas at Costco. The new identity bestowed upon her ancestor did not matter.

Although someone later removed the mulatto label at Wikipedia, the switcheroo left me haunted about agendas underneath race identity.

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Last night, I came across the same troubling erasure of racial identity. I doubt the likes of the New York Times or National Public Radio would dive into this ominous impulse in the shadows and its impact on Black American History, so I will give it a whirl this evening.

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The epitome of privilege in Upper-Class Black America is Jack and Jill. There are the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). There is Skull and Bones in New Haven. There is the Social Register. And there is Jack and Jill. Every time I write about Jack and Jill, I feel I am betraying the social class of my in-laws. I have to call up the courage to write about things and people I know, even if these people prefer to live in the shadows like other secret societies. If I grew up in Jack and Jill, I suspect I would lack the courage to carry on.

If you believe I am exaggerating for effect and impact, I will defer to my classmate at Harvard Law School, Lawrence Otis Graham:

Unlike my brother, I already knew that there was us and there was them. There were those children who belonged to Jack and Jill and summered in Sag Harbor, Highland Beach; or Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard; and then there were those who didn’t. There were those mothers who graduated from Spelman or Fisk and joined AKA, the Deltas, the Links, and the Girl Friends, and there were those who didn’t. There were those fathers who were dentists, lawyers, and physicians from Howard or Meharry and who were Alphas, Kappas, or Omegas and members of the Comus, the Boule, or the Guardsmen, and there were those who weren’t. There were those who could look back two or three generations and point to relatives who owned insurance companies, newspapers, funeral homes, local banks, trucking companies, restaurants, catering firms, or farmland, and there were those who couldn’t.

—Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham, p. 4.

Is there a movement afoot at Wikipedia to weaken the crown jewel of Upper-Class Black Americans? Here is my evidence and speculation.

The beloved and cherished founder of Jack and Jill was Marion Stubbs Thomas. 10,000 mother members learn about Thomas and how she founded the association on January 24, 1938 for the children, for their “social, cultural and educational opportunities”. In other words, “the wives of black lawyers and doctors wanted appropriate play opportunities for their children during a time of racial segregation as well as refined friends and playmates from good black families.” Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America, p. 241

Wikipedia has erased the clear black identity of Thomas, the founder of Jack and Jill. Wikipedia now labels the founding mother of Jack and Jill as “Marion Stubbs Thomas, a woman of ‘mulatto’ ancestry…” This editing of Thomas’ identity is wrong for several reasons.

First, Marion Thomas understood herself in her place and time as a Negro woman. She would have said so with pride. Was she light-skinned? Yes. So what of it? The tent of blackness set the gold standard for inclusiveness. The legions of white-appearing, let alone light-skinned, black leaders are too numerous to recount. I would be here all night. A short sampling to make my point…Walter White Mordecai Johnson Norris Wright Cuney Spottswood W. Robinson III Augustus Hawkins etc. etc.

Second, it is a moral wrong to rewrite history and erase someone’s sense of racial identity. When Wikipedia labels Marion Stubbs Thomas as a mulatto, it is purposely removing her from her people, the Negro and Black upper class. There was no class of people labeled mulatto. Why? Because every last Black American was of European and African ancestry. What Wikipedia has done is create a non-existent social class of people labeled mulattoes, remove Thomas from her self-identified box of Negro, and re-imagined Thomas as something artificial.

Why would Wikipedia uproot Marion Stubbs Thomas from her self-identity in life?

I suspect the busy bodies at Wikipedia believe all Blacks are oppressed. Nothing else matters. A socially ambitious Negro woman from high society in the middle of the Great Depression does not fit the narrative. So, the racial identity of Mrs. Thomas must be manipulated. She could not possibly be a Negro, the daughter and daughter-in-law of doctors. Does not compute.

So, the shadowy elements at Wikipedia reimagine the affluent and comfortable Negro woman out of existence. Mrs. Thomas can only be understood as a woman of mulatto ancestry.

Am I the only one who sees a disturbing problem? Wikipedia has purged out of existence a Negro woman because, I suspect, Mrs. Thomas does not fit the oppression narrative.

With this sleight of hand, Wikipedia has severed the sense of blackness that binds Mrs. Thomas to her creation, Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill is for African American mothers, not mulatto mothers. (Many would laugh at that label.) Wikipedia should do the right thing. Return the race identity of Mrs. Thomas to its proper place. In 1938, Mrs. Thomas, a Negro woman of high society, founded the premier society for Negro mothers and children.

Play it straight, Wikipedia. Marion Stubbs Thomas was born, lived, and died as a proud Negro woman. And upper-class to boot. Daughter of a Black doctor. Her first husband, a Black doctor. Her second husband, a Black doctor. Change the entry.

Marion Stubbs Thomas