Ken Burns' recent documentary on Country Music talks about an incident in the 60s when a racist group in Alabama with links to the KKK questioned Vivian's whiteness, saying she looked like a "negro", but in an interview Rosanne claims that she was just very exotic looking because "her people were Italian", without even mentioning the Robinson side of the family.
Not everyone's buying it, like in this popular blog thread where many commenters believe she was black passing for white. There are the usual idiots repeating refuted lies about Sicilians being "African" and North Africans being "black", but one comment focusing on the Robinson line (if accurate) solves the case:
I dug around into her genealogy a bit out of curiosity – the commenters who stated that her parents (and maybe grandparents too) are white according to the census etc just didn’t dig far back enough. Also, regarding the census, it does have mistakes at time and people would just tell the census taker their info – so if they say so and so is from a certain place, or that they’re white then that’s what will be put down. Anyhow, Vivian’s mom was Irene Robinson. Irene’s mom was Dora Minnie, and Dora’s dad was Lafayette Robinson, born 1844. In the 1880 census he is listed as “mulatto” and by the 1910 census he is listed as “white,” so I’d assume that somewhere in that time he decided to start passing as white. His mother, Sarah, born about 1830 was also listed as “mulatto.” You can see various photos and family trees of the family on ancestry.com and one of them has Sarah’s mother listed as an unknown black slave and her father looks to be a slave owner by the name of William Shields. Sarah is listed in the 1870 census as “mulatto” and then in 1880 she is listed as “white.”
Anyway, here's a photo of Johnny Cash with Irene Robinson and Tom Liberto:
Which parent do you think Vivian gets her "exotic" looks from?
UPDATE: Genealogical research and genetic testing done on the show Finding Your Roots has confirmed that the Robinson line was mulatto passing for white.
6 comments
The woman has very plainly black african facial features - particularly in regards to her nose.
The father resembles actor Anthony Hopkins.
Well, it's pretty obvious that she inherited her mixed race phenotype from her maternal side of the family, which is not Italian, but black mixed with Anglo.
Tom Liberto is clearly a generic white male, while Irene Robinson is obviously mixed race.
Southern Italy's exoticness is very overrated, most look like plain Southern Europeans, and the few exotic ones look Levantine, not pseudo mulato(a).
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Eartha Kitt looked like a Black woman. She didn't look biracial at all and couldn't have passed if she wanted to.
It's interesting that what Americans "see" in terms of racial features is often very different than what people in other parts of the world see in terms of race. Eartha Kitt doesn't look like Lupita Nyongo, for example. Although her mother was identified as black, Eartha Kitt's mother may not have had 100% African ancestry, which would make Ms. Kitt less than 50% African, and yet Americans one-drop people into a Black identity if they have any visible African ancestry so that "pure" whiteness can be preserved.
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