Posted: Mon 25 Feb 2008 19:55 Post subject: Aida Sanchez (1st wife of Anatole Broyard
In 1961, Broyard married Alexandra (Sandy) Nelson, a white woman of Norwegian ancestry, who knew of his background. They had two children, Todd, born in 1964, and Bliss Broyard, born in 1966. (Broyard had previously been married to Aida Sanchez, a Puerto Rican of African descent by whom he had had a daughter (named?), but the couple divorced after Broyard returned from military service in World War II.)
Anyone have any further information of Aida and her child with Anatole?
I remember reading about this part of his life in the New Yorker article
Posted: Mon 25 Feb 2008 22:55 Post subject: Mrs. Broyard #1
We covered this in the "Books of Interest" section.
Powell wrote:
Powell wrote:
You'll recall that in the original New Yorker article claiming Anatole Broyard as "black," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. claimed that Broyard's first wife was a "black Puerto Rican" who bore him a daughter. Gates seemed to be trying to imply that the marriage broke up because the first Mrs. Broyard and her daughter were too dark or "black." The truth about the first Mrs. Broyard, Aida Sanchez, is quite different:
pages 368-369:
Quote:
In the United States , Puerto Ricans and Hispanics in general, remained outside the one-drop standard applied to mixed-race African (sic) Americans. For example, up until 1960, census enumerators were instructed to record mixed white and black people as Negroes no matter how small the black component. Hispanics, on the other hand, were generally classified as white unless their appearance was too black for the enumerator to ignore.
Quote:
For my father's friends in Bed-Stuy, his decision to marry Aida marked the beginning of his living as a white man. Indeed, both he and Aida described themselves as white on their marriage license. When I tracked Aida down in a nursing home in Los Angeles, she says that my father wasn't being dishonest. She describes the pale skin and wavy hair of her former in-laws, insisting that there was very little black in the Broyard family. Aida has a daughter with
my father, which might explain her reluctance to acknowledge his African ancestry, Also, by the standards of the Puerto Rican community, my father was white.
Of course, Bliss doesn't explore why this double standard exists. If "black blood" is so genetically terrible, why would one get a pass just because the person who gave it to you spoke Spanish instead of English or French?
Quote:
When I ask Flora Finkelstein what she made of my father's decision to marry Aida, she says simply, "Well, she was very beautiful." Aida was vibrant, smart, and fun too. But it's also true that marrying a Puerto Rican woman was a way for my father to postpone committing to a specific racial identity. For a mixed-race person, the choice of a mate is often viewed as an indication of the world - black or white - in which a person locates him- or herself. Whenever I tell my Aunt Shirley I'm dating someone new, she asks about the fellow's race. I imagine that an answer of black would convince her that I'd truly embraced my african American heritage.
[Bliss is married to a man she describes as a Sephardic Jew with roots in Spain, Greece, and Turkey. His name is Nico Israel (p. 462). Maybe she's doing what she accused Anatole of doing when he first chose a mate.
Bliss says in her book that she interviewed Aida Sanchez in a nursing home. Aida made it clear that she identified as white and saw Anatole and his family as white. She raised their daughter in Texas (during the Jim Crow years) as white.
I think we are watching the creation of a racial myth - that Anatole "abandoned" his "black" wife and child in order to "pass." Anything to make people hate him more.
'
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