"Did you hear who's estelvste?"

The character Arunëi Jack in “If It is God’s Will” mentions in an aside that his people don’t like to be considered Black; they are Carib Indians.  Visiting a Garífuna community today, whether on Roatan Island, Honduras or Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, you find something different entirely.  While Garífuna people like to be clear about their distinctness, they do not reject an identity either as Africans or as Black people.  Is this different than their attitudes a hundred years ago?  And what are the causes of either their identifying with African Americans or their distinguishing themselves from them?

One possible explanation is that in the context of both North American and South American racism, it has been better to be anything than to be Black.  When Oklahoma became a state, it adopted all the Jim Crow laws of neighboring Texas and Arkansas.  But those laws did not apply to Native Americans.  And while the Five Tribes adopted an entire apparatus of “blood quantum” to determine just how Indian a person was, the “one-drop rule” (or hypodescent) determined whether a person was African American.   This is also a good place to note that while the post-Civil War treaties guaranteed tribal citizenship to Black members of the Five Tribes, all of them have since revoked it.

The persistent anti-Black racism of the Five Tribes is not contradicted at all by widespread denial of their Black ancestry by tribal members.  It only shows its importance.  In his compelling book, “Black, White and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family,” Claudio Saunt relates a conversation with a Creek Indian tribal leader whose uncle was instrumental in disfranchising African Creeks.  That Creek man describes a kind of “genealogy rush” in the 1970’s, when each tribal member who could prove that their ancestors were listed on a particular nineteenth century census could get $112.  

There were surprising revelations.  “Rumors soon began to fly about families that had uncovered black ancestors. ‘Did you hear who's estelvsti?’ Creeks asked their neighbors, using the Muscogee expression for ‘black man.’”

Speaking to a tribal officer over lunch this man says, in Mvskoke, “I’m estelvste.”  She responds, in English, “I’m part Black, too.”  But later, on the street, when he continues, “Aren’t we all?” she responds, “Not me,” and walks away.