Will Meghan Markle be the first black British Royal? Not so Fast…

Seems the Royal History is a bit “darker” than we thought…

I have a niece who is a dead ringer for Charlotte.

Britain’s black queen: Will Meghan Markle really be the first mixed-race royal?

A portrait of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, and American actress Meghan Markle, who is engaged to Prince Harry.

When Britain’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle announced their engagement Monday, Twitter erupted with the news that the newest princess in the royal family would be bi-racial.

“We got us a Black princess ya’ll,” GirlTyler exulted. “Shout out to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Their wedding will be my Super Bowl.”

But Markle, whose mother is black and whose father is white, may not be the first mixed-race royal.

Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III who bore the king 15 children, was of African descent.

Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Queen Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family: Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor.

In the 13th century, “Alfonso III of Portugal conquered a little town named Faro from the Moors,” said Valdes, a researcher for Frontline PBS. “He demanded [the governor’s] daughter as a paramour. He had three children with her.”

According to Valdes, one of their sons, Martin Alfonso, married into the noble de Sousa family, who also had black ancestry. Queen Charlotte had African blood from both families.

Valdes, who grew up in Belize, began researching Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry in 1967, after he moved to Boston.

“I had heard these stories from my Jamaican nanny, Etheralda “TeeTee” Cole,” Valdes recalled.

He discovered that a royal physician, Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, described Queen Charlotte as “small and crooked, with a true mulatto face.”

Sir Walter Scott  wrote that she was “ill-colored” and called her family “a bunch of ill-colored orangutans.”

One prime minister once wrote of Queen Charlotte: “Her nose is too wide and her lips too thick.”

In several British colonies, Queen Charlotte was often honored by blacks who were convinced from her portraits and likeness on coins that she had African ancestry.

Valdes became fascinated by official portraits of Queen Charlotte in which her features, he said, were visibly “negroid.”

“I started a systematic geneological search,” said Valdes, which is how he traced her ancestry back to the mixed-race branch of the Portuguese royal family.

Charlotte, who was born May 19, 1744, was the youngest daughter of Duke Carl Ludwig Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. She was a 17-year-old German princess when she traveled to England to wed King George III, who later went to war with his American colonies and lost rather badly. His mother most likely chose Charlotte to be his bride.

“Back in London, the king’s enthusiasm mounted daily,” wrote Janice Hadlow in the book, “A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III.” “He had acquired a portrait of Charlotte and was said to be mighty fond of it, but won’t let any mortal look at it.”

King George III ordered that gowns be made and waiting for his new bride when she arrived in London.

He met Charlotte for the first time on their wedding day, Sept. 8, 1761.

“Introduced to the king, Charlotte ‘threw herself at his feet, he raised her up, embraced her and led her through the garden up the steps into the palace,’ ” Hadlow wrote. “Some later reminiscences asserted that at the moment of their meeting, the king had been shocked by Charlotte’s appearance.”

In a portrait painted by Sir Allan Ramsay, Queen Charlotte’s hair is piled high in curly ringlets. Her neck is long and her skin appears to be café-au-lait.

Ramsay, Valdes said, was an abolitionist married to the niece of Lord Mansfield, the judge who ruled in 1772 that slavery should be abolished in the British Empire. And Ramsay was uncle by marriage to Dido Elizabeth Lindsay, the black grand-niece of Lord Mans field. Dido’s life story was recently recounted in the movie, “Belle.”

In 1999, the London Sunday Times published an article with the headline: “REVEALED: THE QUEEN’S BLACK ANCESTORS.”

“The connection had been rumored but never proved,” the Times wrote. “The royal family has hidden credentials that make its members appropriate leaders of Britain’s multicultural society. It has black and mixed-raced royal ancestors who have never been publicly acknowledged. An American genealogist has established that Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, was directly descended from the illegitimate son of an African mistress in the Portuguese royal house.”

After the Times story, The Boston Globe hailed Valdes’ research as ground breaking. Charlotte, who died in 1818, passed on her mixed-race heritage to her granddaughter, Queen Victoria, and to Britain’s present day monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

Some scholars in England dismissed the evidence as weak —  and beside the point.

 

The Chumph and Puerto Rico

Can you imagine the response from the Federal Government if any major city in the US was hit by a natural disaster that as a result it would lose electricity for 3-6 months?

Well..That just happened to Puerto Rico.

Houston Hurricane Harvey –

President Donald Trump has already made a $7.9 billion request to Congress for emergency funding, which the House passed Wednesday. It’s just a starting point for total Harvey recovery spending; the White House says it plans to request an additional $6.7 billion soon…

Trump promised last Monday “you’re going to see very rapid action from Congress” about approving recovery dollars. “We’re going to get your funding,” he told Texans.

Florida Hurricane Irma –

Trump approves greater FEMA aid for 37 Florida counties

HURRICANE IRMA AND HARVEY $15B DISASTER FUND WON’T LAST 30 DAYS, SAYS EX-FEMA CHIEF

Puerto Rico –

The tragedy has received relatively little media coverage compared to Harvey and Hurricane Irma, and President Donald Trump hasn’t brought much attention to it.

As Puerto Rico reels from hurricane, Trump focuses on football

Yeah …Puerto Rico has 4 things wrking against it

1. Brown Skinned people
2. Spanish Language
3. Votes Democratic
4. A Territory not a State

None of those things should count…But under the Chumph and the Reprobates they do.

The U.S. Government Couldn’t Care Less About Helping Puerto Rico Right Now

In Puerto Rico, more than 3.3 million people—who are also U.S. citizens—are still without power, electricity, cellphone service, and, in many cases, the bare necessities for survival after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island nearly a week ago. And Congress doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to help them.

Jennifer Bendery, a HuffPost politics reporter, tweeted Monday that the White House was expected to send a disaster aid request to Congress sometime during the first or second week of October.

She went on to explain that FEMA and the Office of Management and Budget first need to assess the scope of the damage in Puerto Rico—where the governor said on Monday a “humanitarian crisis” is looming if help doesn’t arrive soon—then request money. Then Congress will act.

In a worst case scenario, that means Congress, a body not exactly know for its efficacy, could only start consideration of an aid bill for Puerto Rico sometime after October 10 (the legislature won’t meet on the 9th in observation of Columbus Day), nearly three weeks after the storm first made landfall on September 20.

For context, Hurricane Harvey—whose devastation, while significant, was nowhere near as horrific as what has happened in Puerto Rico—made landfall in Texas as a Category 4 storm on Friday, August 25. A massive aid bill easily passed through the House on September 6 and sped through a Senate vote the next day—pushing a significant aid package to start rebuilding parts of Texas and Louisiana decimated by Harvey onto the president’s desk less than two weeks after the storm hit.

So it’s hard not to read the somewhat lackadaisical approach Congress and President Trump are taking to helping Puerto Rico, an impoverished island that’s more than $74 billion in debt, as a cynical value judgement on what’s worth rebuilding. Trump’s Twitter page, his bullhorn of choice, makes the point even clearer. Since Maria, Trump has tweeted about the devastation in Puerto Rico twice. Just since Saturday, the president has tweeted (or retweeted) messages to stoke his ongoing war on the NFL over the national anthem protests 17 times.

 

Texas Cops Create “Honorary White People” To Avoid Racial Profiling

A small sample of “honorary white folks” ticketed by Texas cops. Misidentified in an effort to evade evidence of racial profiling in traffic stops.

If you picked Contestant #12…See your Optometrist…Soonest!

I got news for the station who found this…It isn’t just Hispanics.

Texas troopers ticketing Hispanic drivers as white

Senator says DPS ‘playing games’ with racial profiling data

DPS troopers are inaccurately recording the race of large numbers of minority drivers, mostly Hispanic, as white, according to a KXAN investigation. The agency’s traffic stop data reveals racial profiling reports are likely flawed, according to experts.

Sergio Raul Mejia got a traffic citation for having his license plate on the dash of his truck in Georgetown last May. The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who pulled Mejia over put his race as white on the ticket.

“That’s bad,” said Mejia. “I’m Hispanic. He was not supposed to put white people,” Mejia continued, speaking in broken English. “You don’t think you look white?” asked KXAN Investigator Brian Collister. “No, Hispanic,” replied Mejia.

A Texas law aimed at preventing racial profiling requires peace officers determine and document the race of every driver to whom they issue a written warning, traffic citation or arrest during a traffic stop. The statute says officers must report: “the person’s race or ethnicity, as stated by the person or, if the person does not state the person’s race or ethnicity, as determined by the officer to the best of the officer’s ability.” White and Hispanic are just two categories listed in the law, which treats race and ethnicity the same for purposes of gathering the statistics.

The Texas Racial Profiling statute requires race and ethnicity be treated the same for purposes of gathering the statistics: “Race or ethnicity” means of a particular descent, including Caucasian, African, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or Middle Eastern descent.

But a KXAN investigation discovered DPS troopers across the state are inaccurately reporting the race of minority drivers who are African American, Asian, but mostly Hispanic, as white. KXAN uncovered the discrepancies while reviewing more than 16 million DPS traffic citation records dating back to 2010.

Richard Kai-Tzung Chang got a traffic ticket in Austin from a DPS Trooper last April. Chang is from Taiwan and says he believes its obvious he is Asian. But the trooper documented him as white on the citation.

“I was shocked,” Chang told KXAN. “It’s almost incomprehensible that I could be mistaken for a white male because I don’t look anything like a white male,” Chang continued.

Dominique Deshaun McGrew was arrested last April during a traffic stop near Victoria. In the dashcam video it’s clear that McGrew is African American.  But instead of recording him as black, the trooper recorded him as white.

Pastor Gonzalez Sosa was pulled over for speeding earlier this year in Caldwell County. In the dashcam video obtained by KXAN through an open records request, Sosa speaks Spanish to the trooper and tells him he is from Mexico. But the Hispanic trooper, who also speaks Spanish, documented Sosa’s race as white on the citation…

Lawmakers and media have scrutinized the race of drivers stopped by state troopers since the controversial arrest of Sandra Bland. A DPS trooper arrested Bland, who is African American, in Waller County this summer for a minor traffic violation. She later committed suicide in jail, according to the county coroner. The increasing number of Hispanic drivers reported in DPS racial profiling data has also been the focus of those legislative hearings and news reports. A KXAN analysis of the DPS traffic stop data confirms the number of drivers stopped by troopers and recorded as Hispanic has gone up annually since 2010, while the number of drivers recorded as white has gone down.

But a racial-profiling expert says what we uncovered reveals DPS statistics used to create its annual reports on traffic stops do not add up.

“The under-representation of Hispanics and over-representation of Caucasians on the contact data counts has a significant impact on the analysis of racial profiling trends,” said Dr. Alex Del Carmen, executive director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies at Tarleton State University in Fort Worth. “It is imperative that the citation count is accurately recorded and reported by all police officers that interact with the public. This is the only manner in which we can ensure an accurate representation of motor vehicle stops and trends.”… Read More on This Here…

 

RNC to Asians & Hispanics – All Y’all Look Alike to Us!

Small problem with Republican outreach Web Page to Hispanics…

The pictures are actually of Asian kids.

RNC Latinos Site Removes Picture Of Asian Children

The Republican National Committee corrected an embarrassing mistake on Thursday after the children in a picture used on its RNC Latinos website turned out to not actually be Latino.

A blog post on U.S. News & World Report quickly spread after the reporter found thestock photo used in the site’s header had been tagged with “asia,” “asian,” “japanese” and “thailand” — but nothing to indicate that the children were Latino.

“An outside vendor developed the site and it is being corrected immediately,” RNC Spokesperson Alexandra Franceschi told HuffPost in an email.

The site, which is in Spanish, is part of an effort by the Republican National Committee to increase outreach to Latinos, a voter bloc the GOP normally loses to Democrats.

As of 4:30 p.m. EST, the photo had been taken off the page.

It’s not the first time Republicans have misidentified Latinos: HuffPost discovered in April that the National Republican Congressional Committee’s list of supposedly Hispanic candidates included two white women who were married to Latinos.

Former senate hopeful Sharron Angle, a Republican, made a more damning comment about Latinos and Asians during her 2010 race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), telling a Hispanic group, “some of you look a little Asian to me.”

 

Was Columbus Jewish?

One of those historical mysteries was the actual background of Christopher Columbus, the European credited with “finding” the Americas. Some scholars now believe that Columbus was actually Jewish, and hid his background and religion to escape persecution common in Europe at that time. This would be interesting, as Columbus is also widely seen as opening the “New World” to Christianity.

Artist depictions of Columbus landing often include Christian Symbols and the presence of the Church in the form of a Priest carrying the Cross.

Was Columbus secretly a Jew?

Today marks the 508th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus.

Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? He was an Italian explorer from Genoa who set sail in 1492 to enrich the Spanish monarchs with gold and spices from the orient. Not quite.

For too long, scholars have ignored Columbus’s grand passion: the quest to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims.

During Columbus’s lifetime, Jews became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.

 

Increasing Number of Latinos Identify as Native American

In some Latin American countries – being Native American is a definite negative. Discrimination, such as that experienced by Native American people in Southern Mexico is common. So historically, a lot of Hispanics have run away from their Native American background (Not unlike the disappeared black folks in Mexico). So this is interesting…

Taino Festival in Puerto Rico

More Latinos identify as Native American, census shows

When Ana María Tekina-eirú Maynard filled out her census form last year, she checked the box for Latino, and for the first time, she also checked the box for Native American.

It had taken her more than 30 years — plus research and genetic testing — to discover her ties to the indigenous Taínos of Puerto Rico, to claim her identity and re-learn what she thought she knew of her history.

She’s not the only one. Since 2000, the number of Hispanics who identified themselves as Native American grew from 407,073 to 685,150, according to the 2010 census.

Some attribute the increase to immigration from parts of North and South America where there are large indigenous populations. In some cases, it’s because of recently discovered ties to native cultures.

Growing up in the Bronx, New York, and spending summers in Puerto Rico, Maynard said she had no words to identify who she was. She just felt “different.”

“It is one thing to know that you have indigenous blood,” Maynard said. “And I have always known it. I look at the faces of my mother and grandmother, and that reality is undeniable.”

But Maynard had long been taught that Taíno Indians, the indigenous people of Puerto Rico, were “gone, dead and buried” for centuries, decimated by Spaniards who arrived on the island in the 16th century.

“Why would you question what you have always been taught and what was considered as common knowledge?” she asked.

Still, 14 years ago, Maynard founded the Puerto Rican Folkloric Dance & Cultural Center in Austin, Texas, to preserve the culture of indiginous Puerto Ricans. Today, Maynard gives dance and singing classes as a volunteer at the center, in addition to her full-time job as an engineer with IBM.

Four years ago, Maynard heard about the work of Dr. Juan Carlos Martinez Cruzado, a geneticist from the University of Puerto Rico. In an island-wide genetic study, he found that at least 61.1% of those surveyed had mitochondrial DNA of indigenous origin.

Cruzado’s findings eventually cast doubt upon the notion that the Taínos of Puerto Rico had been completely extinguished but suggested that they assimilated.

“When I learned about (Cruzado’s) work, my life changed,” Maynard said. “It was an awakening that the Taíno heritage was not extinct.”