Radiolab - The Vanishing of Harry Pace: Episode 3

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

Black No More, White No More.  We follow Harry's grandkids and great grandkids as they grapple with his legacy in their own lives.  The Vanishing of Harry Pace was created and produced by Shima Oliaee and Jad Abumrad.  This series was produced in collaboration with author Kiese Laymon, scholar Imani Perry, writer Cord Jefferson, WQXR’s Terrance McKnight, and WNYC's Jami Floyd. Based on the book Black Swan Blues: the Hard Rise and Brutal Fall of America’s First Black Owned Record Label by Paul Slade. Featuring interviews with Pace's descendants and over forty musicians, historians, writers, and musicologists, all of whom grapple with Pace’s enduring legacy.

Hey, this is Chad. Before we get to today's episode, I want to ask you to do something. Reflect back on what you've heard in this series so far. If we've taught you something new, or introduced you to people you've never heard of before, will you please consider supporting our show? Donations from listeners are an important source of funding for Radio Lab, and it helps our team bring you deeply research series like the vanishing of Harry Pace. If you've been enjoying this series one thing you can do is support the work we do with the donation. It's really easy to donate. You can text the words black swan to the number 70101 and we'll text you back a link where you can chip in your support or you can go to radiolab.org slash

donate where you can donate. Thanks for your support. We really appreciate it now onto this week's episode. Oh, wait, you're listening to radio lab. Radio from W and Y. This is the, uh, excuse, excuse me, the vanishing of Harry Pace, a mini-series on radio lab. I'm Chad Abumrod, here we are. And Shima A. Oliaii? Man, I jumped in too fast again. There's an A in there? I jumped in too fast. Anyhow, this is episode three. The last in the Harry Pace trilogy.

And it's all about the gray space. Ooh. So, on last week's episode, we were left with this kind of uncomfortable question. Are you black? No, I miss white as you! You're white! Why not? I'm just saying, my sense when I heard that story, I thought the dude could be white.

I was, I kept saying, wait, is he white? Because that sound like the white boy. Is he white? And you know, she might wouldn't tell me, but I'm like, you white. That, that's white. Like, sorry. So, Harry Pace vanishes by passing into white society. But I'm like, you white, that's white. I'm like, sorry. I think.

So Harry Pace vanishes by passing into white society. And then there's the question of what to make of it. Like, was he pressured into passing? Did he choose to? Was he actually white all along and passing for black? And what does that even mean even? And I love this notion of this possibly white guy who put on black, not face, but a black persona to ultimately help liberate and free and get access to things for black

nooks. I love that part of the story. Now there's no way for us to get into his head because Harry didn't leave any journals or letters behind about this moment. All we really have are these two pictures. And so like inevitably what we ended up doing with our collaborators, he has a lemon and a money period was just like staring at these pictures and trying to read into them. Okay, I'm going to show you pictures of Harry Pace. Are you ready? I'm gonna share my screen.

I think it's pretty big. Can you see it? Oh wow. Whoa. On the screen, there's a black and white photo of a very attractive man. Looks about maybe 18, I don't know. Broad shoulders, VP suit, and a knowing grin on his face.

Let's see, I would have claimed this brother right here. Oh man. That was my first assumption. I'm like, oh, I noticed brother, I feel like I, I feel like I played ball with a version of this brother before. So what is it, is it the hair? Yeah.

Sam, it's the art, the part in the hair, it's the hair line. His hair is kind of wavy. And if you do a mustache on him, you could not tell us he wasn't black. Oh my God, you thought we'd go see on this present? It's a wrap. Nobody's questioning him. Okay, let's go second picture. Thoughts, older, older, hairy pace.

Probably the time when he was testifying. Ooh. This is the picture that had been on her wall. That Harry's grandkids had on their wall. The one that Peter showed them the day, the hand of the mecha packet. He says, do you all know who this man is? We'll hear from them in a second. It's the one where he's in a pinstriped suit.

It's kind of the sepia tone. And he looks weary and maybe a little letter-skinned. Nasi, this is the Harry pace. I imagine the whole time you were talking. I don't know what KS is talking about. He has wavy, this looks like a black man to me. I don't know what he's talking about. He looks like, like, many black men I know.

Oh, wait. This is Scallery Money Perry. And it sounds odd to say. It's sort of a weird thing to say when not talking to another, like, Black Southern person. But, you know, there are Black people who are lighter than white people, like who have really have white complexions.

It's not, so it's not even just appearance, like it's carriage, it's sound. Wait, can I see the first one again? Sure. Can you see it? Oh no. Wait, Eve. Wait, Eve, come here.

Kasey called to a friend who is in the room with him, but off screen. Is that brother? Is this brother right here? Do you think that's a brother? Is that a? Who's he could be? Well, let's see. He could be. Is he? is he Latino? Oh no, sir! Race is not something that is something that happens. So the only way we know the answer is to see what happens. So in terms of Harry's story, this is what happens. After he dies, Harry's son, Harry Jr. he drops out of college and enlists in World War II as white.

He then marries a white woman and moves into an all white neighborhood. In Harry Jr., he dropped out of college and enlisted in World War II as white. He then marries a white woman and moves into an all-white neighborhood. His kids attended segregated school. Harry's daughter, Josephine, pledges an all-white sorority in college, marries a white man, raises her children in an all-white, late community. It seems that Harry Jr. and Josephine together destroy any evidence that they are black. That includes his legacy, his life, and his memory.

They hide the secret so well that even their kids had no idea who their father was. Basically, Harry's story dies in one generation. We knew very little about my father's family. Well, I don't know how far back you want to go. I'll try to make it brief. You don't have to edit if you don't want to. You can tell us the long version.

That's true. Yeah, I went to San Jose State and graduated in 1967. And this was at the height of the Vietnam War. This is Peter Pace, grandson of Harry Pace. I was under indictment for about two years for the felony of draft refusal. I was pretty much unemployable. Rather than going to jail, I needed to get two years' work in the public interest. I ended up getting a job working with emotionally disturbed kids

and I met a couple counselors there. And they formed a band. The Shast of Band. We got together, borrowed some amps and stuff and made some noise. Don't you hear the music, baby? We started off being the Soilant band because the drummer had this fascination with Soilant Green.

Oh my god. That's a reference by the way to an old film starring Charlton Heston. Silent Green is people! Did you sing in the band or what did you play? Yeah, I was primarily the singer. You know, they kind of saw me as having frontman potential at the time with my afro. Did you ever wonder why you had an afro? No, when I was in high school, I really wanted to have a flat top. That was the thing.

But in the 60s, all of a sudden, it was cool to have an afro. And my hair did that. It got pretty big, so big that when I got in the car, I had to slope, because it would get flattened out on the ceiling. I didn't really question it. But he says there were a couple moments. Once I was at a festival and some guy came up to me and he said what are you? And I thought that was an odd thing for him to say to me. I said what do you mean? Yeah. What are you? Weird. Now, Peter really didn't say anything in that moment.

He just went back to tuning his amp because in his mind, there wasn't really a question. His family, they lived in Northern California. I brought some pictures. Oh, perfect. And they were very white red. Christmas and Stockton. This is a picture of the old man family. That's my father sitting up there on the right.

Harry Jr. Her face is sun. The bus cut. That's Joe's husband. That's my mother sitting next to her. And this is Aunt Joe. Josephine, Harry's daughter. That's Yale, my cousin.

I get to tell you with all the retro glasses and bus cuts. It has a sort of, I hope just doesn't sound offensive, but kind of a leave it to be revived. I don't know why that would be offensive. But again, there are moments. You know, actually, it's funny you would say that, and this is kind of an anecdotal thing, and it's kind of silly. Way back in the days when I was starting to play music.

He says, one night. I was Practicing in my little house for some reason I looked down at my skin and It was like a kind of thing all of a sudden. I'm looking at I think I was looking at at at a at a black person You you're saying the skin on your hand look black to you? I mean, it sounds silly, but it was distinct. I gotta tell you, I was probably, I was, I think I was on LSD.

And you were playing an instrument, like what you were. I was just playing and I just kinda looked down at my hands and my arm and everything. I, oh my God, I've turned into a black man or something. Like I said, it's silly, but it happened. I love it. Fast forward to 2006. A very different time.

A website called thefacebook.com. Consider the site the 21st century version of the old paper bound yearbook. This is when the internet really starts to go mainstream. Genealogy sites are popping up. And after years of Italian mafia rumors about her husband's family, Peter's wife Susan does this search on this website called Google.

She searches Harry Pace Chicago lawyer. She thought maybe with the internet she might be able to find something else. The most popular place Chicago lawyer. She thought maybe with the internet she might be able to find something. And what came up was that Harry Pace was the founder of the first African American record company. And she just kind of that. I can't be right. Couple months later we were visiting my sister in Santa Barbara.

My wife kind of presented it with a giggle. Like, oh, look what I found. Do you guys know that there's this other Harry Pace out there? It says, here, I'll show you. And she pulled it up on the laptop and we're looking over her shoulder at it. And it gets into 1917, Harry Pace married Ethelun bib.

And it gets into 1917, Harry Pace married Ethelun Bibb. Well, my sister, her middle name is Ethelun. So at that moment, we all looked at each other and thought, whoa. It was mind blowing. But we didn't know what to do with it. After we kind of got over the giddy aspect of it, It was mind-blowing, but we didn't know what to do with it. After we kind of got over the giddy aspect of it, you know, we were trying to decide what to do with this knowledge. And it was kind of discussed that maybe this would be hurtful to other members of the

family and that we should be careful about disseminating it. Peter says they made the pact for many reasons. One of which was that there were still members of the family living in gated white communities. They were, yeah, with a restrictive covenant. Wait, what? Blacks were not allowed in their lake quavera. Given that your grandfather tried to take down restrictive covenants, Did it eat at you? Like after you made that decision to keep it quiet. That aided me. Yeah, it did. Peter told us that he kept thinking about events from a childhood. Did I dream this? But in the 50s and 60s, there was a dentist, professional man and his family that tried to move into our neighborhood. There was a homeowners, professional man and his family that tried to move into our neighborhood.

There was a homeowners association meeting in our house, where they were talking about how the property values were going to plunge, because as African-American, dentist and his family were moving into our neighborhood. This is in your house with your dad Harry Paces son at the me's with my dad yes. The guy who tried to desecrugate the neighborhood his son tried to re-secricate it and he thought about other memories. My youngest sister when she was invited to go to the senior prom by an African-American kid. The only black boy in the school, he was very handsome and he was a football player. This is Peter's sister, Susan.

So I was very excited and I said yes. And... My father said absolutely not. He flipped out and made me cancel the date. My father forbid her. Susan, what was your reaction when you found out about your grandfather, Harry? It was like, oh my god.

You know, it was just like, I can't believe this has been kept from us. All these years, I've thought I was something else. And I'm something else. The next morning, I called something else. The next morning I called my husband and I was in tears. You know, I thought this was just going to be, you know, my husband's going to leave me because honey, this man's incredible.

So it was just confusing. Why did you think he was going to leave you? This was my own thoughts in my head I didn't know how he would react because you have to understand all of a sudden my world was rocked I'm just trying to figure it all out. Suppose You had known this all along Do you think you'd have a different life as a result of knowing this one thing? Yes.

Oh wow. Yeah. I mean, I was born in 1953. And I do think we probably wouldn't have lived in the neighborhood that we lived in. I probably wouldn't have gone to the school that I went to. Life would have been different, yeah.

I would like to think that my parents realized that they were doing this for us, you know, so that we would have the benefits of the privilege that it comes with being raised white. Without the burden of the lie. Yeah, when you pass, you have to learn how white people see black people. You understand how white people feel to the extent that you hate black people. You hate your own people. And I think my father had gotten to that point. And what changed for you that made it so you didn't want to keep this a secret anymore?

It was a mixed thing because the more we read about this man, the more remarkably wise, my grandfather, Harry Pace, as you know, was successful over and over again. And pretty soon that kind of, for me personally, became the primary thing that we kind of won the genetic lottery in a way. Oh, wow. I decided that secrets are toxic,

that we needed to share this with family members. And so in the summer of 2006, Peter sends out a text to all of his kids. And we got a message from my dad, saying, we have a mandatory family meeting. You guys need to leave work to come and talk to us. He didn't give us any other information. He said, no, you got to come to the family meeting,

and I'll tell you everything. So this is how we started the series with Eric Pace, Harry's great grandson, driving three hours from his YMCA job to his childhood home and riding California, walking into the living room, seeing his whole family gathered there. And this is really where Eric's journey begins, which is an interesting mirror to Harry's. And that's after the break.

Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. science and technology in the modern world. For more information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org. This is the vanishing of Harry Pace, the miniseries on Radio Lab. I'm Chad, here with Shima. Let's get back to the story. So picking up what we left off, Eric Pace, great grandson of Harry Pace, gets its hex from his dad Peter, drives three hours, walks into the living room of his childhood home, where he discovers his family has already gathered. My dad tells us to go sit in the living room, and we're not a very formal kind of family, and so that was strange. We're like, okay, this is getting weirder and weirder, and then he holds up a picture that had been on our wall our whole lives. And it was this picture of his grandfather.

And he says, do you all know who this man is? And we said, yeah, that's your grandfather, Harry Pace. I think I told him. I said, you know how we've never really known anything about grandfather, Harry Pace? Well, we've discovered some interesting information about it. Then he handed us the packet. It's about 10 pages long.

And so we started waiting and within like about 30 seconds, my older sister started set out loud, oh so does this mean that we're African American? I think my two daughters, they just kind of shrug their shoulders and thought, yeah is that it? Which Eric says for some reason really set them off. I was just so, I just, you know, it was so, I stood up and I just, you know, it was so... I stood up and I said, are we done here? And he's like,

yeah, I'm kind of shocked that I reacted like this, but I literally was like, are we done? Like, I don't know why I got so angry. I kind of like, they were like, Eric, come sit back down. We want to talk some more about this. And I actually left. It was like like fuming I

Don't know what I actually ended up jumping in my car and driving just driving down the road where'd you go down? I five for like 50 miles This whole family secret thing rub me the wrong way that somebody would hide something about something good about my family. There was definitely a quick understanding that there was some kind of racism in my family. I was having some kind of crisis in my head. He says he felt like something he didn't know he own had been stolen from him and his dad. I, my dad, wanted to be a rock star.

Imagine if he would have known about this and then there was also a strange kind of feeling like, well, does this explain me in some way? I was obsessed with Sam Cook and I would just listen to him. I was obsessed with soul music and I also was... I was in this hip-hop band and I was in a hip-hop band with a white dude I might add. It's kind of, you know, I felt like an appropriator leading up to this. And then afterwards I was like, okay, maybe I'm not an appropriator. Maybe this obsession with black culture and black music is not so delusional.

Eric says he pulled off at a truck stop, read the packet one more time, then got in his car and drove back. On that drive-back, he just felt kind of changed. You know, he was a 21-year-old kid, feeling already uncomfortable in his own skin as we all are when we are 21. And this just felt like an answer to something. It just felt like an answer to something. How I understood what this all meant was that I was now officially black. It's kind of funny. I was like, you know, bumping hip-hop music, bumping like Bob Marley and stuff.

And it just felt like I was black. I was like a cool African American. I went to the black barber shop and got myself all- You went to the black barber shop. Right away. What kind of haircut did you got? I got a what it was called a lineup. And they were like at first they were like what's this white boy doing in here getting that? Haircut. This is crazy. I told them all about the Harry Paye story

and they were like, they were like, for real, like what? They listened to the whole Harry Paye spiel and they listened to me talk about how he had the first black record company and I showed them the Wikipedia page. They were like, cool. They were like, I was like, yeah. Black people totally approve of this transformation

that I'm going through. It was a major change in his orientation. When I made it back to college, I remember going up to some of my black friends and being like, guess what? I'm black. What's up, brother? You know, like, some people found it interesting.

Some people found it irritating. So it was really embarrassing and high inside. It was stupid. Oh, baby. So sweet. Ah, you're so kind. No, I just love it. She's so generous.

She make me look like a f*** with. Our collaborators, K.A.C. Lehman and Imani Perry, predictably both had very different reactions to this moment. I don't know, I was just moved by that. I'm generally moved by young people feeling excited about learning something about themselves. I like listening to people be happy, you know what I mean? And maybe I don't know. Is blackness just like one thing you can get injected with and then you're like, hey, this is why I like Bob Marley. And I know. Is blackness just like one thing you can get injected with and then you're like, Hey, I do this is why I like Bob Marley and I'm not sure blackness

operates the way the younger pace Assumes it does Casey's point is that you can't just take the good stuff or what you assume to be the good stuff about being black without also acknowledging that that stuff came out of hundreds of years of violence and racism. And the fact that that doesn't ever come up

in this conversation, then makes me feel like, you know, this character is dipping into a black, like grab bag of stuff, but there's only like the good candies, you know, there's no f*** peppermints, there's no goddamn wack-ass butterscotches, it's like all snickers, you know what I'm saying? I get that. Why guess for me that's a remains to be seen question.

Right, do you know what I mean? Like so, so he finds out. And what does he do with it? To me, the question's okay, so now what do you take this to me? That's true, that's true. One of the things that kept coming up in our conversations with them and also with Eric

and Peter, his dad, is the idea of the One Drop Rule. It was almost like he took it to heart that the One Drop meant that he was African-American. Now the One Drop Rule was the legal definition for race throughout the 20th century. One of the most famous examples was a man by the name of Homer Plessy, who looked about as white as Eric, and had roughly the same amount of quote-unquote black blood in him as Eric. And parent is quarter.

Then great-grandparent is eight. Great, great, grandparent. 16. 1892, he goes into a white's only railroad car, sits down, announces to the conductor that he's black. He gets kicked out, he sues the company, case goes to the Supreme Court, and one of the big questions, not so much in the case, but looming over the case, was if you were America and you were obsessed with separating these two races. What do you do with a guy like Homer

Plessy who looks white but says he's black? You could ask the same question about Harry Pace and the ultimate solution was the one drop rule which is you are legally black if you have even one drop of African ancestry. Now this can all sound like a bunch of bulls**t that doesn't matter anymore, but this legal definition, according to Kasey Animani, has seeped into our thinking

in ways that are still very much with us. Yeah, oh yeah. You know, grown up Mississippi, we were always taught, whether it's right or not, that one drop could mean you were contaminated to white people and white names. But on the flip side, we were also taught that one drop could mean that you were, like, someone who was going to be not just potentially like loving of us, but one of us.

So, the one drop rule absolutely, its origin is in racism, and the idea that whiteness must be pure. But what Black people did with it was to create a kind of collective identity. So I just think there's a way to one draw one on one hand it's a contaminant on another hand it's like an entryway into a community. And that's exactly how Eric took it. Like whoa I'm in the club. I'm part of the African American experience. Like, this is amazing. You know? For seven years, Eric openly called himself a black man.

I was full of attitude. It's like, I'm going to piss off my family. Like, there's going to be no more secrets anymore. Like, I'm- Which led to a lot of fights. Unfortunately, it kind of put Eric a little bit out of the fold as far as the family's concern. But then think shift one more time In 2013 he meets a woman named Candace Candace Edwards from Trinidad and Tobago

X national team Soccer player I met Eric Peace at a concert. It was third world. Third world, yeah. They're like an 80s famous reggae band. Yeah. She said she liked a sense of humor.

Dores was history. They end up getting married in Vegas, and ultimately they fly to Chichandata and Tobago to meet her family. And there, Erika calls this one night. We went to a soccer game. They called it a sweat, like a soccer practice. Yeah. He was sitting in the parking lot near the field.

It's night time. Listening to Kansas and the team play in the distance, and while he waited. I was riding a lyrics. I don't know what this life means, but it's the light screen. I flow past like lightning, I hit the button and virus, finally cyrus, I'm the highest, multiply it by the nicest. Tristan's gonna be getting my bags to rice up. I was kinda trying to feel the environment

and kinda get some inspiration from my surroundings. And all of a sudden, I noticed movement to my left, and I see a little boy standing in front of me. He was a short little guy and he just looks at me for a second and just says, hey white man! You're a girl just watching to know that she's going to be 15 more minutes. He said there was something about the way the kid said it. It was just his confidence that he walked right up to me

and was like, hey, white man, this is totally appropriate to say to the sky that I don't know. The casual certainty of it, you are white, so I will call you white man. He says that moment snapped him out of his one drop dream. White man, white man, I guess you just have to go with it. That just put everything into perspective. So it's what's interesting to me about that is that in Trinidad he would he would have always been white. So they didn't have a one-drop rule.

Fina type is what defines race in Trinidad and Tobago. Meaning how you look, skin color, facial features, hair, it's not about blood. Like the debate doesn't exist in Trinidad in the same way. I mean, in America, if somebody was to refer to me as a sweet dark key, then that would probably be like a headline or, you you know a talk but in TNT They call you a sweet darky

That's fine. Yeah, then because you have dark skin dark skin. I'm chocolate. You can't do that in America Yeah, you can do that as a totally different Connotation. Yeah point is the entire frame of reference was different. And maybe it was that or the fact that he was in a place where he was a minority for the first time, but it just hit him different in this moment. It didn't matter what I thought. There was no possible way that I could ever kind of like convince these people that I am anyway connected with them.

It was almost like a delusion in my end. He says, sitting in that car, again, the car. I just had another identity crisis where I felt like, wow, I don't feel like I've lived a upbringing in the black world that qualifies me to claim that I'm black. And so at this point, and this might be the ultimate answer to Imani's question. Okay, so now what do you take this to mean? Eric decided he just needed to learn more.

I found that it's all worth studying. It's all worth understanding. About history, about W.E.B. Du Bois, W.C. Handy, Ethel Waters, and he dedicated himself to making a documentary about his great grandpa, Harry Pace. Meanwhile, Eric and Candace, actually we started Pace and Candy Record Company. Oh, you're wearing the shirts, that's cool.

They started a music group, as an homage to Andy and Pace. We both make the beach together. We call it a psychedelic, soka. That's what we call it. Their music is actually surprisingly experimental and interesting. I don't think Harry Pace would have liked it. Harry was an opera guy. You know, like...

Not a synth guy. We want to close with one more digression. In talking with Imani. Alright, yeah. I was like, the idea came up that... That thing that Eric experienced in the car, shifting how he sees his relationship to race, waking up from the one drop rule. Emani says that America might be in the beginning stages of that same kind of shift.

You know, what he experienced in the barber shop, that's my experience generationally of black culture. It's like, okay, yeah, come on in. You're one of us, right? But like, you know, young millennials and generation Z, they were like, first of all, you don't look black, you don't experience blackness in the same way you just found, I mean, it's just a very, it's a different moment. Why? I think something has happened where the sense of what blackness is is almost overdetermined by the account of its state violence. So it's like if you don't experience this sort of racialization when people look at you or how they treat you, that that's the outer limit of blackness.

She says that a lot of people are starting to talk about the quote-unquote Latin Americanization of race in America. Apparently in a lot of Latin American countries, and I guess this is also true of Trinidad and Tobago, they see race as about phenotype, how you look, how you're perceived. And as an example of maybe where we're headed, Imani mentioned Brazil.

Yeah, it's wild. When I went to Brazil, Brazil was the first time I'd ever been in a country where just like everybody looked like me. It's like I sort of, I felt at ease in sort of like a piece in a way that it's just a contentment that I had never felt before about the way that I looked. This is screenwriter, Corey Jefferson. He also worked with us on the project. in a way that it's just a contentment that I had never felt before about the way that I looked. This is screenwriter, Cord Jefferson.

He also worked with us on the project. And if you recall, we began the whole series with that memory of his standing at the mirror with his white mother and his black father looking at their reflections and asking, what am I? I neither looked entirely like my mother nor entirely like my father. What am I? I neither looked entirely like my mother nor entirely like my father. What am I? He says Brazil was eye-opening on many levels and he ended up writing an article about it. Brazil in 1976, Brazil's census, the National Household Census, last question on the census, asked people what color they were and they got 136 different responses.

Wow. So the 136 different racial categories, essentially. Yeah. He read us a bunch. Ascanada, somewhat chestnut colored. Alva, snowy white. Alva, scura, dark snowy white. Averinto, kind of blonde. Alvaro, sada, pinkish white.

Amorenara, somewhat dark skin. Avermelada, reddish. Asuo, blue. Benmorena, very dark skin. Benbranca, very white. Branca, Avermelada. White going on for redonseaada, suntan. Ugresinha, escura. Dark skinned, India. Cordecanella, cinnamon colored. Cordecuia, cordecuia, cordecuia. Cordecuia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia.

Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia.

Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia. Cappuccia, cappuccia, cordecuia.

Cappuccia, cappuccia. Cappuccia, cordecuia. Gorda-quea. Gord-colored. Oh my god, we're only in the seas. Cabochia. Copper-colored. Gorda-cafe. Coffee-colored. Canela. Cinnamon. Cafeole. Coffee with milk. Gordeoro. Gold-colored.

Gordeerosa. Pink. Meo aramalera. Af yellow. Meo branca. Half white. Meo moreena. Half dark-skinned. Meo preta.

Half black. Melada. Honey-colored. Mystica. Half cast. Mystiza. Ardaclada. Light brown.

Barada moreena. Brown moreena. Barada preta. Black brown. Polaka. Polish women. Melada, honey-colored, Mystica, half-cast, Mystiza, or the clara, light brown, Barbara Morena, brown Morena, Barbara Pritta, black brown, Polaka, Polish women, Polish woman, Polaka, Polish woman, translation of Polish, which means someone very white, Buka clara, not very light, Buka Morena, not very dark complexion, Bettina, black, either young or small,

Buzja, para branco, somewhat toward white. Sorry, it's a moving color. I know Barabranco, somewhat toward white. It's a moving color. It's somewhat toward whiteness. I guess the question is, if, as you say, younger Americans are Latin Americanizing their idea of race. This is more of a thought experiment than anything, but like if America ends up going the direction of Brazil

with all of these many racial categories that designate the sort of middle spaces. Is that a better world? No, no, absolutely not a better world. And in having been to Brazil, right? And you see children killed by death squads, black children begging everywhere you go on the street, is clear that in Brazil the darker you are, the more oppressed you are,

which is true in much of Latin America. In money senses, before we splinter off into all these different categories, maybe let's first try and address the mistakes of the past, which gets harder to do the more we splinter. So Brazil is trying right now to figure out how to compensate people who have experienced racism in that country. And the problem they're having is, who's white and who's black. And so they have tribunals where they're literally measuring people's nose width and like and testing and measuring measuring and like true like, true like chronology stuff, like bring out the calipers.

We're measuring skull shape and nose width to see who's black and who's white, which is like a whole nother, like sort of like mess on their hands. Right. It's just like, really? So, you know, it's complicated, but we can't be romantic about any of it. I think that's the thing. All right, Shima. Yes. In the end, what I'm left with at the end of this, uh, hairy paste trilogy is just a feeling

of like these categories, these little boxes on the census form that, I guess, divide and also bring people together, what I'm left with is the loneliness. When you don't have a box. Or you're between boxes. Some people have asked us actually, why are you guys YouTube Middle Easterners telling this story? And I think most of all, it's because we connect with that loneliness. Yeah.

And we've both gotten that question, what are you, our whole lives? Yeah. What are you? There's something about people not being able to know quite where you're from when they look at you that allows you movement, but also never like a safe home.

Yeah. That's actually something I want to say, movement, but also never like a safe home. Yeah. That's actually something I want to say, picking up on your word movement. I really do believe that the act of trying to move out of your head and get into somebody else's, see how they answer that question. Like to try and see that person's humanity, regardless of the choices they have made in their life.

Whether we're talking about a white family living in an all white neighborhood, or a black man a hundred years ago, trying to make change and encountering something horrible. Like trying to see the world through that person's eyes. I think that's the work. That's the deepest work we can do. As journalists, I'll always hold to that. But, you know, we're just a two person team. It's not something anyone can do by themselves. We had a lot of help. This is when Trixie comes and brings a lemonade and says, oh, we have to sing another. That's a good idea. We should wave in that tape. And the cotton fields of Dixie is a dear old southern home where the mocking birds

Oh, get that flossy, and moonlight love to sing in the land where cotton is king. That's what this was for. And then Aunt Madj would bring some lemonade. Here y'all go. The vanishing of Harry Pace was created by Jada Bumrod and Chimolye, and is presented as a collaboration between Osomodio, Radio Lab and Radio Diaries. The series is based on the book Black Swan Blues, The Hard Rise and Brutal Fall of America's first Black-owned record label by Paul Slade.

Our editorial advisors are KSA Laman, Imani Perry, Cord Jefferson, and Terence McKnight. Jamie Floyd is our consulting producer, our fact checker is Natalie Mead. Series artwork was created by Katya Herrera, special thanks to Natalie Gillis, Ben Shapiro, Deborah George, and Joe Richmond. This concludes our trilogy on Harry Pace, but the series is not done yet.

No, we have many more episodes coming to you in the next little while. Yes, more on that in just like four or five days. Not even, I think, actually. Yeah. Anyhow, thank you for listening. We'll catch you in the next one. Radio Lab was created by Jad, a boomerot, and is edited by Soren Wheeler.

Lulum Miller and Latif Nasr are our co-host. Susie Electonberg is our executive producer. Dulem Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindoon Yannesambandum, Met Kilti, Annie McEwen, Alex Niesen, Sarah Kari, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Sarah Sandbach, Karine Lyong, and Candice Wong, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly and Emily Krieger.