The self-division of racially mixed people—as portrayed in a 1950s TV series

A. Zarkov writes:

Yesterday I watched The Scorched Feather—an episode from the 1950s television series, Have Gun- Will Travel. This story opens in the usual way with gun-fighter-for-hire Paladin (Richard Boone) interviewing a potential client who identities himself as Robert Ceilbleu (Mario Alcalde). Robert comes across as a highly educated and cultured young man, and Paladin enjoys his company. Robert hires Paladin to protect his father William (Lon Chaney) from the attacks of a Comanche warrior called “Hotanian.” Later Paladin meets William, and finds an ill-mannered Indian scout who is nothing like his son. After some diligent probing Paladin discovers the family secret—William took an Indian wife and Robert is a half breed. In fact Robert (who has hired Paladin) and Hotanian (who Robert said was threatening his father) are one and the same physical person! Paladin instantly recognizes something that has escaped father William about his son Robert: he suffers from what we now call disassociative identify disorder or multiple personality disorder. One son wants to kill his father while other wants to save him. It seems Robert was never able to form an integrated personality because he was torn between the world of his Indian mother and the world of his white father. Two worlds at war at that time. In fact Robert’s mother was killed as the result of an attack that his father participated in. Robert couldn’t choose sides so he became two people. We also find out at the end (here comes the spoiler) that Robert really wanted Paladin to kill him by killing Hotanian. In other words, Robert decided the only way to relieve the tension of his conflicted existence was self destruction with the aid of Paladin.

All this brings us to the subject of mixed marriages and the tension such marriages can create in their offspring. This tension can often be avoided in the case of religiously mixed marriages if one parent is willing convert or otherwise remain religiously passive. The children then get raised in one religion and never have a conflict to resolve. Mixed race marriages are another matter. Here we have the potential for problems even if the parents are compatible because the children will have to decide which world they want to identify with. I know one mixed race marriage where the first two children have very easy going personalities, but the third child is a little ill-tempered (but still very nice) compared to the others. But I’m afraid my friends are exceptional, and in general mixed race marriages are high risk marriages for the children.

Obama is a man of mystery. He has tried to keep most everything about his life a secret being careful to reveal only what he wants to reveal. We can’t get his original long-form birth certificate, and he has spent over a million in legal fees to avoid producing it. We can’t get his high school records, or is undergraduate records. He won’t even release his senior thesis. He has written virtually nothing except two vanity books. But we do know he’s the offspring of a mixed race marriage. We really don’t know to what extent he’s resolved his internal conflicts. His white grandparents raised and nurtured him for several years of his youth, but he seems to identify more with the black world of his father than the white world of his mother. But he’s done little or nothing to help his black half brother in Africa or his illegal immigrant aunt in the U.S. If Obama does have terrible internal conflicts like Robert Ceilbleu will he ultimately choose self destruction? Is this why he continuously screws up as president? At this point all I can do is ask questions and offer speculations because we know too little about this man to come to definitive conclusions. This is what you get when you elect an unvetted candidate.

LA replies:

“he seems to identify more with the black world of his father than the white world of his mother.”

There’s no “seems” about it. He explicitly said in his book that he had resolved the conflict by identifying with the black half of himself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2009 08:30 AM | Send