Edited by Azizi Powell
This panococojams post provides a brief excerpt of a December 24, 2014 New York Times article about race entitled "White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier".
Selected comments from that article's discussion thread are also included in this post.
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.
I recommend visitors to this blog read this entire article.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Carl Zimmer, the writer of this NYT article and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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EXCERPT FROM THIS FEATURED NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE
Pancocojams Editor's Note: This excerpt is necessarily brief. However, I strongly recommend that this blog's visitors who are interested in this subject read the entire article which, among other points, mentioned some differences that the reasearch found in racial classifications in different states in the USA.
From https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/science/23andme-genetic-ethnicity-study.html?_r=0
White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier by Carl Zimmer, DEC. 24, 2014
..."In the United States, there is a long tradition of trying to draw sharp lines between ethnic groups, but our ancestry is a fluid and complex matter. In recent years geneticists have been uncovering new evidence about our shared heritage, and last week a team of scientists published the biggest genetic profile of the United States to date, based on a study of 160,000 people.
The researchers were able to trace variations in our genetic makeup from state to state, creating for the first time a sort of ancestry map.
“We use these terms — white, black, Indian, Latino — and they don’t really mean what we think they mean,” said Claudio Saunt, a historian at the University of Georgia who was not involved in the study.
[...]
“This year we saw that we were in a great position to do the analysis,” said Joanna L. Mountain, senior director of research at 23andMe.
On average, the scientists found, people who identified as African-American had genes that were only 73.2 percent African. European genes accounted for 24 percent of their DNA, while .8 percent came from Native Americans.
Latinos, on the other hand, had genes that were on average 65.1 percent European, 18 percent Native American, and 6.2 percent African. The researchers found that European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American
[...]
Jeffrey C. Long, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, cautioned that the research was not based on a random sample of Americans. Instead, Dr. Mountain and her colleagues studied only people who were curious enough about their DNA to pay for a test.
“Perhaps people who have mixed ancestry are more interested in their ancestry than people who don’t think they have mixed ancestry,” Dr. Long said.
David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University and a co-author on the new study, acknowledged this was a reasonable concern. “It’s classic survey bias,” he said. But Dr. Reich also noted that the new results were consistent with smaller studies done in the past."...
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SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THIS FEATURED ARTICLE
This discussion thread has a total of 267 comments. The comment section for this article is closed.
I read many of the comment in this discussion, but I didn't read all of them. I believe that these selected comments are representative of the ones that I read.
I've only added a few editorial comments in this compilation, and I haven't visited any of the websites that are given as hyperlinks in some of these comments.
For the record, I share the same name as a commenter in this discussion thread (A Powell, December 26, 2014). However, that commenter isn't me and she isn't quoting me. I just happened upon this article and its discussion thread on April 24, 2017.
All of the comments in this discussion were published between December 24, 2015- December 26, 2014. This compilation presents these selected comments in relative chronological order with comments from December 24, 2014 given before those published after that date, except for replies. Numbers have been assigned to these comments for referencing purposes only.
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From https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/science/23andme-genetic-ethnicity-study.html?_r=0
White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier by Carl Zimmer, DEC. 24, 2014 [selected comments]
1. Greg Brooklyn NY December 24, 2014
"I'm looking forward to the day when people who are asked their race just say, "Human being"."
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2. x y December 25, 2014
"How about looking froward to the day when people don't ask?"
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2. Alan Church Florida December 24, 2014
"Sounds to me like a good case for getting rid of hyphenated ethnic categorization entirely and all the baggage associated with it."
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4. AB Maryland December 24, 2014
"Getting rid of hyphens won't convince white people to accept Americans of African descent."
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5. Bert Schultz Philadelphia December 24, 2014
"The categoey of race is a social comstruct, it is mot based om biology. "The White Race" was imvented from Northern European protestants and gradually expanded to inclide Irish, Italians, and most recently Jews."
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6. Josh Hill, New London, December 24, 2014
"I suspect that the reason that people with less than 28 percent African ancestry identify as white is because a common myth notwithstanding it isn't visually apparent at low rates of admixture.
Back in the days of Jim Crow, when people of mixed race were white enough many moved to another town and "passed for white" to escape the status of second-class citizen. In many cases, the secret wasn't passed on and their descendants don't know that they have African ancestry.
It's true as well that society has changed to the point at which the one drop rule is no longer as significant as it once was. While my African ancestry is fractional and as such isn't visually apparent, as a boy, I was legally black in some states, and even up north I was considered black by those who knew I had African ancestry. Now attitudes have changed significantly and classification seems to correspond more closely to visual appearance, in that someone who looks part black is referred to as black, but those like me who don't are typically referred to as white, Hispanic, or (most appropriately, I think) mixed."
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7. Josh Hill, New London December 24, 2014
"Steve, I think you're misinterpreting the article, which said that "*European-Americans* [emphasis added] had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American." In other words, the group that was on avereage 0.19% African includes *both admixed* and non-admixed European Americans, who make up the majority. If you look at only admixed of European-Americans, you will find the percentage of black admixture significantly higher than 0.19%, as it would have to be, given the time frame during which most of the ancestral admixture occurred.
That being said, I don't dismiss your point -- the figures I've seen elsewhere suggest that admixture percentages among self-identifying whites with black ancestry are on average lower than admixture percentages among self-identifying blacks. I don't see that this effects my hypothesis, however, regarding the significance of visual identification of the individual and his or her family. There is in fact a great deal of evidence that this occurs, and that it occurred historically; the race fraction laws and one drop rule were in fact anomalies, both historically and geographically, and when people could "pass for white" they frequently did."
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8. Jorge The Dominican Republic December 24, 2014
"What about European-Americans with Asian genomes or the other way around ?? What about African Americans with Asian genomes or the other way around ?? what about Latinos with Asian genomes or the other way around ?? now include in this matrix Native Americans.......for example Native Americans with Asian genomes or the other way around........and what about Arabs and Jews ?? would this test discriminate between European and Jewish genomes ?? Arab-Americans with Native American genomes ???"
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9. Josh Hill, New London December 24, 2014
"Yes, it does make those discriminations and if you send your DNA to 23 and Me or a similar service you'll get a breakdown. I, for example, am 0.1% Yakut, whatever that is. (OK, I actually know because I looked it up in Wikipedia.) One caveat, though: these tests are not 100% accurate, although they've gotten better with time. There are a number of reasons for that, including limited samples, the difficulty of distinguishing between closely-related people (French and German, say), and different criteria.
For example, thie test measures African admixture, but when did that occur, in the last few hundred years on these shores, or 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire? It's known that there were admixture events at both times. Typically, the tests will attempt to set a cutoff date, e.g., admixture based on populations 400 years ago, and this will affect results.
Also, 23 and Me breaks out Ashkenazi Jewish as a separate category, but Ashkenazi Jewish is actually a mixture of largely Middle Eastern and European. So if like me you show up as about half Jewish, you don't get a breakdown of the European and Middle Eastern components of your ancestry. Other tests don't do this so the results can look very different.
Personally, I've noticed that my 23 And Me analysis gets closer and closer with time to what I know of my ancestry, e.g., it's correctly identifying as Iberian Spanish and Portuguese ancestors who were originally identified as Italian."
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10. Will N, Los Angeles December 24, 2014
"Look farther back. When the first Europeans arrived, when the first African people arrived. I think you'll find more mixing very early on. (The Spanish were in North Carolina in 1500s, English 1600s).
Orangeburg, County SC where my family is from there's a term for tri-racial, Euro-African-Indian: Brass Ankles. I'm proud to say I've got brass ankles. My genome results has many Hispanics which I've yet to learn the connection. We're all mixed, we're all related. Racism is not just wrong, it's ridiculous."
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11. Lowell D. Thompson Chicago December 24, 2014
Mr. Zimmer,
The idea of "race" has always been more of a political, cultural and even religious concept than a scientific one.
And until our "leaders" finally face up to and begin to undo the legacy of color coding and "branding" the human species, we in the USA will be building on the shaky foundation of our greatest crime - slavery and the dehumanization of folks like moi.
Right?
Http://RaceManAnswers.com"
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12. vacciniumovatum Seattle December 24, 2014
"It depends on how you define mixed ancestry.
My ancestors came from Spain, Iraq, Iran, Russia and Lithuania. The US government says I'm white but I don't identify as that since I look like my Middle Eastern relations and I think of white as being European, like my mom's side of the family. And since I have Spanish heritage on my dad's side, that makes me part Hispanic (although his family was tossed out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella), although I don't identify that way either.
I hear a lot about identifying which East Asian country people's ancestors come from. I wish that "white" was split into Europe (west of the Urals and north of the Mediterranean) and Middle Eastern/Mediterranean. If I'm to be pigeonholed, let's do a better job of sticking me in a hole.
Or we can throw the "hole" concept away..."
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13. William Case Texas December 25, 2014
"Spaniards, Iranians, Russians and Lithuanians are Indo-Europeans (a language group) while most Iraqis are Arabic. They are all classified as Caucasian, or white. Skin color can vary as dramatically within racial groups as between racial groups. You don't have to have blond hair and blue eyes to be considered white. Most Mexican Americans self-identify as white."
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14. Reader New York December 25, 2014
"I agree about throwing out the whole concept, but whiteness is a political and social construct that shapes lives and appears not be going away anytime soon. In the late 19th, early 20th century, far fewer groups were considered "white" than are now. A book on the immigration of Italians is called "White on Arrival": At the time large numbers of Italians came to the U.S. they were perceived as white, which they wouldn't have been in the past. Being viewed as white gave them an advantage.
http://www.amazon.com/White-Arrival-Italians-Chicago-1890-1945/dp/019517"
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15. Rebecca Fayetteville, AR December 24, 2014
"Most genetic genealogists think that ethnic tracing through autosomal DNA is primitive and unreliable, due to lack of pure baseline populations. This may change in the future but consider any "results" you may get at 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA to be tentative. Mitochondrial DNA and yDNA are much more reliable, but they represent only tiny slivers of a pedigree. Mitochondrial is one's mother's mother's mother's mother's line back to the metaphorical Eve. yDNA is one's father's father's father's father all the way back to the metaphorical Adam. Autosomal is everything in between but only back to the 1500s-1600s."
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16. Rebecca Fayetteville, AR December 24, 2014
"Any article that stimulates conversation about race is a good article."
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17. Avocats WA December 24, 2014
"Actually, other than those discussing the fact that there are no real "races," we don't need more discussion of race."
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18. Suzie Siegel Tampa, FL December 24, 2014
"I got a free test from 23andMe as part of a project to help people with sarcoma, a rare cancer. The results were so fascinating that I paid ($99) for a test for my adopted sister. It has spurred me to begin work on my family tree.
The article doesn't mention that 23andMe isn't as good at Native American ancestry for people whose ancestors belonged to tribes now part of the U.S. Apparently, they haven't participated as much for fear others will try to use the results to claim benefits."
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19. Sleater, New York December 24, 2014
"At no point does this article mention the words "white supremacy," which have underpinned American discussions of and social, economic and political policies around race and racism since the 1600s. Why is "white supremacy," which explains that Virginia law and the "Pocahantas Exception," and so much more, not mentioned at all? Why does the author, like so many, not want to talk about how white supremacy underpins our current discourse on and about race? It's so frustrating seeing this elision/omission occur over and over. It's not that hard to grasp, either."
-snip-
The "Pocahantas exception to Virginia's 1924 "Racial Integrity Act" which prohibited interracial marriage, initially defined White people as having "no known, demonstrable or ascertainable admixture of the blood of another race but white. Because some of Virginia's most prominent families had claimed to be descended from Pocahontas, the legislature revised the act indicating that "Virginians could be up to one-sixteenth Native American and still be white in the eyes of the law." However, they could not have any other racial mixture.
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20. David California December 24, 2014
"The President, a man who is half white and half black, is universally thought of and referred to as black. We have far to go."
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21. Historian Aggieland, TX December 25, 2014
"What are white folks worried about? He was rised by white folks just like they were. But the Obamas' genealogy adds some interesting aspects to this discussion. The President has some slave ancestry--on his white side! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/us/obamas-mother-had-african-forebear-.... Mrs. Obama also has some white ancestors she acquired by the more conventional means: a slave owner or his son impregnating a slave woman."
-snip-
This hyperlink doesn't appears to be viable.
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22. William O. Beeman San José, CA December 24, 2014
"Anthropologists have established that the concept of "race" is mythology. It is in no way a scientifically valid concept. Variation within a given group is greater than between groups, and overt markers such as skin color are selectively attended. We are all mutts."
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23. Mary Kay Klassen Mountain Lake, Minnesota December 25, 2014
"I have a sister who was repeatedly asked if she was an Indian or Jewish, as she took after my mother's side of the family with dark skin, almost black hair, who all had Swiss ancestry, and after my dad's side of the family whose mother was from eastern Europe, and the whole family all had very big noses. My daughter-in-law on the other hand, whose father is from Ghana, and she was born to him and her mother who is light skinned, whose own mother was from Brittany and father from Corsica, is lighter than my own daughter, who has slanted eyes from the Laplander side of my dad' father who was from northern Sweden where the Mongolian influence was, and she is darker than my daughter-in-law whose has African ancestry. In genetics, you can have light skin come out or darker skin depending on what the genes do in fertilization. My granddaughter is so light skinned and blonde that she looks like her mother only in some facial features, and not skin color. People would not know she is the daughter of her mother unless you look closely. My distant cousin's brother married a Thai girl whose first child, a boy had dark skin and the next one, a girl had blond hair and light skin. You would not know by looking at her that the mother and daughter go together unless you know them or look closely. In the past, going back thousands of years to as recent as 100 years ago, most people married no one outside their own religion or neighborhood, almost like incest. We are animals after all."
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24. Bill San Francisco December 25, 2014
"It's time we all stop obsessing over the silly distinctions of skin color, and see us all as one race: human."
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25. Reader New York December 25, 2014
"When black people are no longer discriminated against we can talk about that. When we're all actually treated fairly there will be no need for "obsess[ion]"."
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26. Arty, ma December 25, 2014
"Josh Hill,
I thought you gave me your definition of race. I'm applying it to redheads, and they fit. You haven't explained why you think they don't.
-snip-
This is an exception to my "no note" rule. I'm not sure which comment by Josh Hill Arty is referring to, but Arty might be referring to (what I gather) is Josh Hill's position that physical appearance is the key determinant that most people use to determine race, and that race is also a key determinant regarding how a person is treated."
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27. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"Arty, I just gave what I think was a fairly comprehensive explanation. If you aren't familiar with the principles of Linnaean taxonomy and cladistics, I'm afraid there's little more I can say here without abusing the comments section. I do think though that you're pettifogging the issue. After all, race is something that can be determined algorithmically by genetic analysis. If it weren't a real quantity, that wouldn't be the case. The scientific (as opposed to social) significance of race is another matter entirely. It certainly has some applications in medicine, e.g., different population groups have different frequencies of certain illnesses -- high blood pressure, Tay Sachs disease, etc. It may also have an impact on diet, e.g., many East Asians have been found to have extra copies of a starch digestion gene. Of course, sub-racial categories are significant too in these regards. Other, more serious possible implications, such as differences in mean IQ, remain controversial and will until more scientific work is done."
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28. LV NJ December 25, 2014
"The analysis regarding Latinos is a little uninformed. Latino is not a race but a broad category of regional and linguistic origin that is ignores national differences. Latinos from Mexico and Central America differ greatly from Latinos of Caribbean ancestry and historical European and African settlement patterns in their countries. The former have more native American ancestry and the latter more African ancestry. So it is obvious that areas of the US where Latinos are primarily Mexican have much different profiles than areas where many are Caribbean."
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29. Larry Lundgren Linköping, Sweden December 25, 2014
"I have submitted one comment and many replies. Since only two minor replies appear I add this final thought.
I have learned today by reading all of the comments and especially a large number by JH, a Verified who sometimes disagrees sharply with me - or appears - to that JH and I actually share the scientific views coming from genome research and our differences lie in how we think about concepts of "race".
I make this suggestion to all of us: If you are going to write anything in which you use "race", first explain the uses to which you think this concept should be put. I would like JH to be the first to explain. Here is my position.
Prof. Roberts, in an elegant Email to me wrote: "I do not believe that ignoring the existence of the political system of race will end racism."
Note: POLITICAL SYSTEM of race. I agree with her completely. The use to which "race" was and is put is to be part of a political system. We see this in Sweden today. The SD party believes that there is an Aryan race that is superior to any other race you might want to name. Need I tell you where they got that view. In World War II there were many Swedes who believed that.
I do not want to be part of any present-day political system that uses "race" as a means of classifying people. In 1922 Sweden created The National Institute of Race Biology to that end. No more.
That is why my blog is Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
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30. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"Larry, I think I touche don some of this in my reply to your later comment (I'm reading top down) but I don't think that race is something we can wish away, not when there are still ghettos and black kids with hoodies have to fear for their lives. So I'm all in favor of pointing out that we have most of our DNA in common, that there is more historical mixing than most people know (or than this article suggests since the study measured only recent admixture), and that individual genetic differences swamp racial ones (is a Pygmy as likely to be a great runner as a Kenyan). But when people claim that race doesn't exist, well, that's just a fantasy -- a child can see that an Eskimo doesn't look like an African, and genetic testing tells us that there are statistical clusters in areas that are separated by natural barriers that reduce (but don't always halt) gene flow, and can identify them with ever-greater precision.
Claims that race doesn't exist may convince the ideologically committed, but only because their confirmation bias deprives them of objectivity. For others, those claims are like the emperor's new clothes -- so outlandish that they weaken the case for racial equity rather than strengthening it. I think it may mean more to them to know that six million of us "white" Americans aren't completely white at all. The figure is even higher if you include African admixture in people of Mediterranean descent, which this study didn't do."
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31. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"Larry, I think it's important to distinguish between science and pseudo-science here. Those who are politically or economically motivated twist science to suit their ends. Nazi Germany is perhaps the most spectacular example of this, but in much of the world race has been used to justify appalling abuses like slavery and apartheid. Often the claims that were made had no real scientific foundation, but were presented as if they did.
By way of contrast, an example of real science might be the observation that people of African descent are more likely to develop high blood pressure.
I think we also have to admit that while progress has been made, we don't really live in a post-racial society. So there are very practical reasons for asking, for example, about race on the census. Without that, we have no measure of black progress in earnings or other measures of social equity.
But to me what comes out most strongly from this and similar studies is that while we can't pretend that race doesn't exist, it isn't an either-or affair. Our genes are shared and mixed -- even more mixed than this recent-horizon study suggests -- and the only fair way to treat people is as individuals. Only then can we avoid the abuses that come from stereotyping people on the basis of group traits, real or imagined."
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32. GM Tokyo December 25, 2014
"It's common for people from parts of southern Europe, such as Sicily, to have a few percent African DNA, so the fact that someone in the US has 1% African DNA wouldn't necessarily mean that that person had an ancestor who was a slave."
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33. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"True, however, the 23 and Me results use IIRC 400 years ago as a baseline. That's after the Mediterranean admixture occurred. if the calculations were done in such a way as to include admixture events during say the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, proportions of African blood would be higher in people of Mediterranean descent. But as things stand, the study measures admixture that typically occurred after the colonization of the Americas. I can see this in my own results -- 23 and Me gives a lower figure for African ancestry than other profiles. (For those who are curious, it's possible to estimate the date of admixture events by measuring the degree of fragmentation of DNA segments -- the smaller the fragments, the longer ago the mixing occurred, on average.)"
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34. Daniel Cocciardi Florida December 25, 2014
"To make the matter even more confusing, Benjamin Franklin once used the term "swarthy" to describe Germans when he discussed immigration. I think "white" according to Franklin was Nordic europeans only. Maybe the other founders adopted the same policy of exclusivity?"
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35. Daphne Philipson Ardsley on Hudson, NY December 25, 2014
"I could never understand why Barack Obama is considered black when he is half black and half white. He is as much white as black but everyone refers to him as black. Go figure..."
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36. lm1b2 ohio December 25, 2014
"Does He even look white,hardly LOL!:
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37. Daphne Philipson Ardsley on Hudson, NY December 25, 2014
"Doesn't really matter what he looks like, although he looks like a white man with a tan to me. Everyone knows his story that he is half black, half white but everyone just seems to say he's black."
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38. greg savannah, ga December 25, 2014
"He is considered black because that's what our race obsessed culture has decided that he is."
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39. Mart US December 26, 2014
"Wrong, that's what he considers himself to be."
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40. Readers Pick’s [187] no date given
"It was my impression that Dr. Long was merely pointing out that the sample, while quiet large, was based on self-selection (those who sought the genetic testing and also agreed to let their results be included in the research), and not a "random sample" of the entire U.S. population. It's a good point. What you characterize as his "speculation," isn't quite, but rather a suggestion of how that self-selection could affect the fascinating findings reported as compared, that is, to findings from a truly randomized (and equally large) sample.
I was under the impression that some years ago the National Geographic Society was initiating similar research, but on a global basis. Has anyone here seen any reporting on such a study -- where it stands, what it found?"
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41. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"H. almost sapines, you can read about the National Geographic project here:
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/03/new-genographic-y-chromosome-tree/
It focuses more on deep ancestry, e.g., early human migrations rather than the within-the-last=400-years mixing that I believe characterizes the 23 and Me study. I sent my DNA to both but I found the 23 and Me results much more interesting."
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42. Charles Washington DC December 25, 2014
" “Perhaps people who have mixed ancestry are more interested in their ancestry than people who don’t think they have mixed ancestry,” Dr. Long said. This is pure speculation of course. It is also possible that people who have mixed ancestry are LESS interested in their ancestry. At this point there is no way to parse this out.
No one should be surprised by the findings of this study. We are all mixed. "Race" is more a cultural concept than a biological one. The genes that guide the development of external features and skin tone are few compared to the total 24,000 genes that guide embryonic development. Thus, some African Americans with very dark skin may have more European ancestry than other African Americans who have very light skin color."
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43. Rocky California December 25, 2014
"The US is still as hung up on race as Germany was about religion during and before The Third Reich. A 1900 survey for Frankfurt Am Main gave a statistical breakdown of income categories to the second decimal place. In case you were wondering, the Jews came out on top and the Catholics were at the bottom, with the Protestants in the middle. (from Hinhaus aus dem Ghetto Juden in Frankfurt am Main 1800-1950). During the Third Reich, men who wanted to join the SS had to prove 250 years of racial purity (no Jewish blood).
There aren't many Americans 100% anything and the first white Americans didn't come over on the Mayflower or to the Virginia colony. Linda Chavez, a former Ronald Reagan appointee, can trace her American ancestry back to 16th century New Mexico, to which her Sephardic Jewish paternal ancestors had fled after converting to Catholicism under pressure during the Spanish Inquisition. Linda Chavez is one of the guests featured in the PBS documentary "Find Your Roots". By coincidence, her husband is Jewish."
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44. Reuven Orlando, FL December 25, 2014
"Interesting, that the very vilified George Zimmerman, who was 1/8 African American, would have been "Black" under Virginia law. (NY Times had to invent weasel-words to try to make him white, calling him a "white hispanic"--a term they never used before.)"
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45. Josh Hill, New London December 25, 2014
"Well, in truth, those of us who are 1/8 black or less are usually referred to as white these days. That for example is what my birth certificate and driver's license say. That wasn't the case 50 or 100 years ago, but if the Times were to call someone like Zimmerman black now, it would create no end of puzzlement.
Of course, some people still use the one drop rule, as some of the posts here illustrate, but I think they're in the minority (when I checked into that a few years ago, no scientifically valid surveys had been done). And there's some controversy within the black community over this, with some feeling that people abandon their black identity the moment it's convenient. But even if one droppers don't know you're part black, they'll just assume you're white, so it doesn't really have an effect."
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46. Citizen Seattle December 25, 2014
"I'm proud to be a mongrel-american. Genetically three fourths of me is mostly European, one eighth is black, and most of the other eighth is native american. I wasn't sure about the black part until 23 and me results confirmed it.
Because I was adopted in a white family and look white I'll never suffer the same sort of discrimination others face. But knowing ancestors likely came via slave ship, how someone with my makeup would have fared in the old south, and historical facts about how it affected a grandfather certainly affects my thoughts.
That combines with understanding of the persecution and hardship my biological and adoptive European ancestors experienced before arriving here and how they fared after.
Having more people realize that they have those links is probably all to the good. I don't claim the effect would be other than subtle, but I think it would be beneficial for the most part as we consider both racial and immigration issues.
Data about distribution of genes in the population may shake beliefs of some of those who still think there are sharp biological lines between races. A few minds might change for the good although others among them may just shift to using other rationales to support toxic beliefs.
The crazies may try to fit the statistics in with their predictions and worst fears of admixture. But most people in the general population will come to understand this blending as a positive thing,"
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47. RE Ellis Hong Kong December 26, 2014
"Actually this study proves that most American Whites are emphatically NOT particularly mixed, whereas most blacks have a significant White component."
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48. Fred Palo Alto, CA December 26, 2014
"Nothing new:
"Although racial segregation was adopted legally by southern states of the former Confederacy in the late 19th century, legislators resisted defining race by law to prevent interracial marriages. In 1895 in South Carolina during discussion, George D. Tillman said,
It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of... colored blood...It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed." From Wikipedia."
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49. Apowell232, Great Lakes December 26, 2014
"There is nothing wrong in being both WHITE in racial identity AND of multiracial ancestry. The only thing new about it is that it is finally losing its stigma."
http://melungeon.ning.com/forum/topics/5th-union-presentation-by-a-d-powell
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