Talk:Patrick Francis Healy
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[edit] POV labeling
I question the claim that Patrick Francis was a "black" Jesuit and later a "black" college president. I also question the claim that James Augustine was the first "African American" Bishop. Their photographs show no sign of African features. Furthermore, there is overwhelming first-hand evidence that these men (as well as Patrick Francis's brothers Michael Morris Healy, Jr. and Alexander Sherwood Healy and their sister) saw themselves as White, nothing more. They were accepted as White by their society of the time. They left numerous written documents to this effect, and even the sea-captain’s teen-aged son once scratched his name on a remote rock above the Arctic Circle during an exploration voyage as “the first white boy” to have visited the region.
The notion that a person who self-identifies as White, was raised as White, and looks White, is "really Black" in some invisible intangible way due merely to an acknowledged trace of Black ancestry is a modern notion that became widespread in U.S. popular culture only around the turn of the 20th century. The notion the Healys were "really Black" in some sense would have been as bizarre to them as it would have been to Alexander Hamilton, John James Audubon, Alessandro de Medici, Queen Charlotte, or Florida's first U.S. senator, David Levy Yulee, who led the state into secession.
If the goal is to shed a favorable light on America's mixed heritage, then the goal could easily be met by re-wording to say that "they were among the first <bishop, college president, Coast guard captain, whatever> to openly acknowledge African ancestry." Acknowledging a trace of African ancestry is a very different thing from adopting an African-American or Black ethnic self-identity.
I am not sure whether this is a POV problem or simply one of factual inaccuracy, but I would be grateful if someone could address it. In short, the article applies the 20th-century one-drop rule of "racial" self-identity to people who would have ridiculed the notion and who clearly self-identitified ethnically as Irish-American. -- Frank W Sweet 15:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
This is a very deep question about racial identity, not really a useful subject for a very specific biographical page. Probably it ought to be taken up on a page that discusses race or perhaps race in the United States. I think it would be fine to say that they had "African-American ancestry" or "African-American roots" rather than to say baldly that they were African-Americans. But given the one-drop rule in common use in the United States at the time, they certainly suffered under some social handicap. And the proof of this is that the Society chose to send Fr. Healy to seminary and to ordain him in Belgium, where different rules applied. The first African-American to be ordained in the United States, Fr. Augustine Tolton, had a very rough time of it. --Stewart king (talk) 22:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Photos of Patrick and Michael Healy
Admrboltz removed these two photos. I would like to know why. They are in the public domain. More importantly, they are taken from the book Legal History of the Color Line with the explicit permission of the publisher. -- Frank W Sweet 10:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
