My black ancestors were in the south ot Ireland.

God, Amy-- I love that lipstick with that hat.

Oh yes. Here's some fun with bloodtypes.

From http://www.bloodbook.com/world-abo.html:

In the U.S., 49% of African Americans have type O blood. 45% of European Americans have type O blood. 52% of the Irish have type O blood. 60% of the Kikuyu in Kenya have type O. 61% of Australian Aboriginal peoples have type O. The type O blood allele originated in Africa.

And from http://www.afrigeneas.com/forum-fpoc/index.cgi?noframes;read=1136 there's this:
"If any branch of your family has been in America since the 17th or 18th centuries," Dr. Berlin said, "it's highly likely you will find an African and an American Indian."

I'm guessing that there'd be a lot more "white" Americans who would be upset to learn about their African ancestors than the opposite. But that's just a guess based on all of the red-necked racists there are out there.

Personally, I'm happy to be a mix of most races even if I look like Ms. Whitebread. My Dad's people came to this county in the late-1600's to farm, so I'm assuming we are quite a mix. There was a period of several years my ancestors spent "away" during the Revolutionary War because they were loyalists, so there's likely to be some French-Canadian in there somewhere too. You don't hear many American families bragging about the loyalists in their family trees, either, but they're there.

Food for thought.

Why, thank you, Deirdre!

And actually, Harris, any pride of ancestry seems ridiculous. Or shame of ancestry. You didn't ask to be born to a particular set of parents. You just woke up that way.

For those who are racist, however, I'm sure it's something of a rug-pull to find that you're not quite who you thought you were in terms of your skin color.

I imagine the outrage at being black and finding out you have white ancestry is the realization that somewhere along the line one of your grandmothers was raped. Up until recently (past 70 years) interracial sex was too taboo to be anything other than rape in most cases.

History sucks specially for the ones who lost the war. In college people ask me, oh you are Hispanic, to which I answer yes by rape. I am Quechua you see. We need to keep history on our cross hair so we do not make the stupid mistakes of the pass. I don’t hate Spaniards. However, if I get a chance to travel back in time I would like to get a couple punches at Fransisco Pizarro for example. I married a wonderful white woman whom I love because everything she is and what she makes me be. I don’t care if she is white or not I love the human being in her every little each of her. At the end we are all humans, regardless of some white people wanting me to be from Mars.

> don't blame my ancestors. They were
> busy across the pond getting raped by
> the Cossacks.

For the record, they were probably doing the raping, too. That jawline is AGGRESSIVELY slender...

Silver, probably a great deal of the human race exists because of rape at one time or another -- a few centuries ago, or many. People just don't give it any thought.

Oh, and Crid, you might be right. More on my unladylike aggressive tendencies tomorrow.

Hey, Deirdre -- My mom is from the south of Ireland. That's where I got my rhythm! We mics can dance, baby! Many of us are also quite adept at kinky, shameful sex acts (witness the priest abuse scandals in the Boston area).

Hey, Amy -- I basically agree that pride or shame of ancestry is bullshit. But I do have an overall love of ancestries in this crazy nation of immigrants.

I find people's individual cultures interesting. But, here's a twisted idea. What if a white kid or an Asian kid was raised as a black person? Is what people have pride in really race or culture? And what if you could convert to a certain culture the way you can convert to a certain religion? (Not that this would necessarily play out well on the surface, in terms of not making the rest of us sick to our stomachs, a la Vince Vaughn "acting black" in "Be Cool.")

Amy, I am sure that you are right about rape being in most people's ancestry. I guess it is more a matter of having it confirmed. Likewise, we all know that our parents have sex, we just don't want to hear them talk about it or walk in on them doing it.

Rape? I'm sure all my ancestors were seducing the big strong hairy guys on horses. Anything to get out of the village.

Well, Silver, that's relatively recent thing, too. I can't remember where I read this, and I'm too busy to look it up (deadline), but I think our ancestors (not the ones 200 years ago, but prior), used to have sex while the children were in the same hut/tent/lean-to, and nobody had a problem with it.

Why, by the way, is it that people are ashamed to walk in on people having sex, but not ashamed to watch people hurting each other while, say, boxing?

Is what people have pride in really race or culture?

Culture, of course. That's what people are talking about when they talk about race/ethnicity. We've known for decades that there's more genetic variation within than between the "races."

And what if you could convert to a certain culture the way you can convert to a certain religion?

I would say that the desire to convert to a certain culture is itself culturally determined. It sounds like the Vince Vaughn character in Be Cool (which I didn't see) is a true blue wannabe-hipster white boy. Which is kind of quaint and adorable. Yay, white boys!

I think DNA testing is a fun idea, see this.

I particularly like the Genographic program at National Geographic. For a simple cheek swab, you get to see your genetic history. My roots are Irish/German and my wife mostly the same on the maternal side and Hawaiian/Filipino on the paternal side. I figure our daughter might have markers circling the globe.

When you consider the fact that up until modern times, women in most cultures throughout the world have been considered chattel - rape was a standard practice. I'm mostly English. How many times was England overrun by invaders? I have to accept that I have Roman ancestors, Angles, Saxons, Scandinavians, French, etc. It doesn't mean anything, really, to say that I'm English. That's just where my most ancestors came from.

Here's an instance of a cultural impact:
I know of a young man who lives in my town whose mom is Finnish and whose dad is African American. Dad didn't stay around to help raise this young man. Mom married an Ojibway man that helped raise the young man. The young man looks African American but identifies as white first, Native American second; African American is a distant third.

The time is coming when we finally all realize that we're part of the same family.

The term African American is actually a poor descriptor for all American blacks. Take my neighbors, who still have relatives they're in touch with on St. Lucia. They're black, but not African American.

The term "white" is also very uninformative.

"Why, by the way, is it that people are ashamed to walk in on people having sex, but not ashamed to watch people hurting each other while, say, boxing?"

I like watching both.

In Latin American countries this admixture has been recognized by the development of various terms including Mestizo and Ladino.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo

We look funny while we are having sex. And since we're so proud of our high and mighty intellect/soul, we feel shame about our funny looking, smelly, odd-sound-making bodies. Only the most coarse don't feel a little shame when they fart in public. Without shame there wouldn't be comedy and, thus, there wouldn't be humanity. See Aristophanes, Mel Brooks, etc...

PS Amy - loved the old Woody Allen line "..busy getting raped by Cossacks"!

You know me well enough by now to know I don't steal. If I borrow, I credit. I've been saying that for a long time. If I'd gotten it from Woody Allen (and I've been told before or heard before that he'd said it), I would've said, "as Woody Allen said," or "in the words of Woody Allen." I do it all the time. Scroll down to the Russ Baker entry. I'm very, very careful about using quotes. Note that I put them around the title of the entry -- because it's his title. Just so you know. I write funny shit every week. I do not steal!

The presence of "white" blood in an American black person's ancestry can't possibly be a surprise to anyone decended from slaves.
White slaveowners sytematically impregnated female slaves.
Is this really news to some people?
Some "black" slaves looked as white as I do, and I'm an all-American bleached-out mutt.

Culture is a definite choice. My husband is Filipino (first generation born in the States) and I'm half Portuguese and half Jewish. We have made a conscious effort to provide support and information about each one of the kids' cultural backdrops. I learned to cook Filipino food, made Filipino clothing, etc. and my husband eats gefilte fish and linguica (although usually not at the same time) and wears a yarmulke at Hanukkah and Passover. They also are participants in the predominantly Mormon pioneer culture of Utah, because that's where we live. Despite the inherent contradictions between the cultures (dinuguan and linguica are about the most NOT-kosher foods in existence) we have managed to teach our kids about all of them and encourage them to take the best from each to incorporate them into their own lives.

I've also done a lot of genealogical research on both sides of the family and discovered a few things, one of which is that we are descended from a slave and her mistress' son. We don't have any idea of the slave's origins or race; she might have been of native African or Brazilian descent, or have been a "white" slave. Also, most people's ancestry will eventually trace back to royalty, making it possible to descend from both the prophet Mohammed and the Exilarchs of Babylon. The very idea of a "pure" race is bunk.

Very neat, Wacky Hermit. You haven't converted to another culture. You're creating a new hybrid -- sort of like Tagolog, with its swatches of English, Spanish, and indigenous languages sewn together in seemingly arbitrary fashion.

Relax relax- nobodys accusing you of stealing!

It was a line from Annie Hall though.

Hey.who doesn't love a sweet mutt?
I was told by a dog person that they are actually lees prone to all of the genetic problems that happen with pure-breds ( see hemopheliac royalty line).

I'm having trouble concentrating. All I can think about is the big hairy guys on horseback.
Bottom line is we are all decended from some gal from around Kenya. Natl Geographic calls her Eve. Word is, she got around.

I had ancestral reassignment surgery, and now Cleopatra is my granny. Top that!

I'm sure there are a lot of rednecks who would be appalled to find out they weren't as lilly white as they thought. Blue eyes are resessive.

"What if a white kid or an Asian kid was raised as a black person?"

You mean they aren't? Then who are all the blue eyed kids in the mall wearing FUBU clothes and talking like "gangstas"?

"We mics can dance, baby!"

Maybe, but we can't jump. We'll drink 'em under the table though!

"Why, by the way, is it that people are ashamed to walk in on people having sex, but not ashamed to watch people hurting each other while, say, boxing?"

Because the boxers aren't ashamed, either. And I'd say more embarrassed than ashemed, unless it's your spouse that's walking in on you.

"The term African American is actually a poor descriptor for all American blacks"

Well, since anthropologists are pretty convinced that humanity started in Africa, we're all African American! Yo, momma!

As I work in a big pack of rednecks here in SC - although you can find them worldwide - I have a good time with this line of conversation:

"So, you're telling me that that if you were stranded on a desert island with Vanessa Williams and, say, Roseanne Barr, you have to pick Roseanne?" "Well," my target says, "no, but I'm not thinking with my brain." "Oh, really. Then, when you had kids, you would be ashamed of them and call them names?"

It takes people a long time to forget that.

Hey Rad-

Lenny Bruce used the same line, except with Ethyl Merman and Lena Horne.

Really, he did.