CROSS BREEDING: IDENTITY THEFT

There, there was another one again, another one of those god damn commercials. Just how many of them had he seen like this in the past couple of months or so he didn’t exactly know. He had tried to document each and every one, keep a running total, but there were so many of them that he just couldn’t keep up with them all and had lost count. But it was lots. More than he’d ever seen before in his entire life. And he was an old man.

But the real question was why. Why now were they showing blacks and whites together, hug ‘em, snug ‘em, bug ‘em. Gotta be somebody’s master conspiracy plan of some kind or other he thought. Someone out there trying to manipulate our minds to make us like blacks and whites mixing together.

He had been a big believer in political conspiracies his whole entire life. He knew who was really behind the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King and why. And now by God he was going to find out who was really behind all this too. Somebody is always behind something. Things just don’t happen by chance.

He began analyzing the facts. In the past when tv commercials featured blacks and whites together hawking something, they usually showed a black man and a white woman together. Those ads had been few and far in between. But now such ads were frequent and so too were ads featuring white men together with black women. That hadn’t been done before and now it was commonplace. Really how many interracial couples were there out there that justified spending millions of advertising dollars on them anyway. Why the number of black white interracial couples in this country had to be small, very small indeed, hopefully. Yet it seemed that all the advertisers were now targeting their products at these very people and them only. Why? That just didn’t make any financial sense at all. Unless of course, there was a conspiracy.

Also in the past these interracial commercials had always featured attractive, good looking couples. But now they were showing dorky dumpy weenie white guys and dorky dumpy bossy black babes together. Geeky looking nerdy types, millennials. Millennials who couldn’t think past their next selfie. What’s with that he wondered?

But what bothered him the most was the fact that these ads purposely made the point of showing these interracial couples as happily married interracial couples with cute little kids to boot. Mixed race kids, black kids with light brown skin and Caucasian facial features. Sometimes even with curly blonde kinky hair to emphasize the point of interracial breeding. These were mulatto kids as far as he was concerned, not purebreds.

He liked purebreds. He liked purebreds because he raised pigeons and he would never ever think of crossing his fantails with his pouters. For if he did that he would end up with a bird that looked like the common feral pigeon that’s everywhere. The feral pigeon being the result of the different fancy breeds getting loose, interbreeding, resulting in gene reversion to their common ancestor, the rock dove. He worried now that the human race would end up this way too, become one mixed breed, a crossbred human race where everyone looked alike just like the common feral pigeon.

Somebody out there must want that. That was the only logical illogical conclusion that he could come up with. Somebody wants us all to be one breed, one big happy family of man living in a world without racial prejudice because we're all one and the same. Our separate racial identities are lost forever. But who?

Probably some utopian dreaming, left wing leaning, big corporate CEO fool that’s who. Someone trying to promote racial crossbreeding on us subconsciously in their ads while supposedly selling their product. Clever eh. Hell it didn’t matter what the product was. It could be soap, or insurance, or pizzas. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that an interracial couple was up there on the tv screen seen with their mixed race children. That was the point being made, not the value of the product.

Yah that was it. Some corporate executives thought it was cool. That it made his company look good somehow, someway, modern, with it. That they were open minded, not racists, an equal opportunity seller.

But then again maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the real reason companies did this was because they were afraid of getting sued under some obscure federal law if they didn’t. That would be so like the government. Make companies implant this bull into their commercials or else. And the government had a lot of or else at its disposal to use on you if you didn’t. That’s for damn sure. Yeah that had to be it, another government conspiracy. Some deep state government operation trying to impose its agenda on us that we will all be the same if only we would just cross breed. And if we’re all just the same, then what? Then it would be easier for the government to control us all now wouldn’t it? That’s the real reason for all this, governmental control.

But then again maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was some self righteous lone wolf left wing looney tune bazillionaire who bought all these commercials thinking his money can change the world to the way he wants it, a mixed race world.

Maybe. But either way it still was one giant step for a mixed race man.

As a pigeon breeder he knew that sometimes it was necessary for new blood to be introduced into a bloodline to improve the breed. Like the time he gave some Oriental rollers to a recently arrived in this country Bosnian pigeon breeder. The Bosnian took his birds and crossed them with some other Oriental rollers that he had gotten from a fellow Bosnian pigeon flier named Amir. After he had gotten a couple of rounds of young ones and watched the fly and tumble, the Bosnian told him, “I take your bird, cross with Amir’s bird, get better bird.” That’s fine, breeding the best of the same breed to each other to improve the breed. Humans should do that. That was different from cross breeding. Crossbreeding was a no no for pigeon breeders and by God it should be a no no for humans too as far as he was concerned.

Now there was another one, another one of those black and white young couple commercials, always young couples, not older couples. He thought about that. Then it hit him like a ton of bricks. Hit him below the belt as the light bulb came on over his head.

“Millennials am I right,” he burst out loud in his Eureka moment. They were the ones behind all this, not the CEO’s, not the government, not some bazillionaire whacko. After all they’re the young advertising geniuses of today aren’t they? They’re the ones who write these ads that target themselves aren’t they? They’re the ones who want to change the world in a generation or two of cross breeding. Make the world free of racial prejudice by making us all the same. Change the world so that we all end up a bunch of common feral pigeons. Taking selfies, why that’s just a subterfuge.

“Thank God I won’t live to see that,” he mumbled.

Now another one. He had been keeping a notebook handy when watching tv writing down the name of the product so that he’d be sure that he wouldn't ever buy it. By God he’d show ‘em. He wouldn’t fall for their gimmicks, their brainwashing techniques. But this time he was so mad he forgot to do so before he clicked the tv off.

Retired for years now, he had been a lawyer in his previous life. So he knew that one could always make an argument for the other side. So in order to be fair here he decided to play the Devil’s advocate and make the arguments for cross breeding.

“Maybe it’s for the best after all,” he argued out loud. “Take this race, cross with that race, get better race,” he said, channeling the broken English of his fellow pigeon flier from Bosnia. After all, we just had a mulatto president. Wasn’t that former Miss America what’s her name a mixture of many different European and African genes. And what about all the mixed race athletes not only of today but in the past too, like Roy Campanella his father’s favorite player on the Dodgers and Franco Harris of the Steelers who he liked when he was a kid, both Italian African Americans. Why the list of mixed race black-white, athletes, authors, actors, etc. could go on and on.

In fact most African-Americans had some white blood in them. Though a lot of it came against their will with the slave owners literally injecting themselves into the picture. And sometimes even worse like with that great American conservative Malcolm X whose red hair came from a rapist in his family tree. And the great singer, actress, and author Ethel Waters was the product of a mixed white black rapist father.

Well maybe these weren’t exactly good arguments for race mixing after all he thought. But there was Booker T. Washington with his gray eyes from his father staring down racial injustice. And maybe Frederick Douglass used his white blood in the fight against slavery.

Then it dawned on him, thanks to his lawyer training, that not just the white race was involved in crossbreeding. Indians were too. Paul Robeson had some Indian blood in him and he was quite the intellect, athlete, singer, and entertainer, even if he was a blankety blank Communist. And don’t forget Eartha Kitt and Lena Horne, both of whom had some Indian as well as white blood in them. Three races went into breeding those mixed race feral folks.

So be it. It had been going on before. It was going on today. It would be going on tomorrow and he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

He knew too that he wasn’t a purebred either thanks to those new DNA tests they got now. He had gotten one. It was well worth the money too as far as he was concerned for it proved that he was ninety four percent pure. That’s pretty good. It was that other six percent that bothered him some. Oh well, the Ibo they were an industrious lot, nothing to be ashamed of. But it was that ninety four percent Mandingo blood of his that he was most proud of. That and the fact that he retained his identity as one hundred percent African.

B. Craig Grafton is a retired attorney. His legal fiction western novels and short stories are published by Two Gun Publishing and his modern day fairy tales by the Scarlet Leaf Review. He has had a number of stories published in online magazines and anthologies.