The Strom/Sharpton Connection

One of the most disgusting facts about American slavery was the constant raping of black girls and women by slaveholders and their sons. The ideology of slavery may have held that blacks weren't fully human, but the men of slaveholding families viewed black females as very human when they wanted to have sex with them.

Which brings us to Al Sharpton.

Yesterday, there were reports that an ancestor of New York activist Al Sharpton was a slave owned by an ancestor of Strom Thurmond, the recently deceased arch-segregationist from South Carolina.

According to Al Sharpton, "it was probably the most shocking thing in my life." Of course, any connection with as prominent and determined a racist as Strom Thurmond would be shocking and embarrassing. As a white person, I'm shocked and embarrassed that Strom's white relatives haven't renounced him yet. Instead, a distant white cousin of Strom's named Doris Strom Costner,said Sunday she "never heard of such a thing" about slavery because "my momma . . . only talked to me about good things."

Uhh, right. Maybe her mother should have talked with her a little more.

But it gets worse. If Strom Thurmond's forebears owned Al Sharpton's relatives, there's probably a distant blood connection between the two men as a result of liasons that escaped the notice of genealogists.

Sharpton's no saint, but you really have to feel for him at a time like this.