On that genealogy show on PBS they were able to trace Yo Yo Ma's ancestors back to 1217.

Wow, Ppen. What did they find out about his family? (I mean, what did you find interesting/relevant from the show?)

His cousin hid the family bamboo genealogy books in the walls of his house during the Cultural Revolution. Mao made a law that such things must be destroyed.

Decades and decades later he forgot he had done that and was remodeling his home when he discovered them. He was gonna trash them because they looked like shit but didnt. When they did the show they told him you can boil bamboo scrolls and restore them. So they got Chinese restoration specialists and were able to restore 50% of the book, and will probably be able to restore more in the future.

The women don't have names and are only called "female". Yo yo Ma's father was on the scrolls.

The Ma naming traditions start in the 1700s. That's why Yo Yo Ma's name starts with Yo. There is no explanation for the second Yo except that his parents had a sick sense of humor possibly naming him after a toy.

Ma means horse. The scrolls describe the personality of each ancestor.

Not all of the celebrity ancestry was interesting. Two that struck me were Eva Longoria's family came here in 1500s and was later given property by the King of Spain. They still own it. She is also distantly related to Yo Yo Ma.

The second is Wanda Sykes, who is descendent from an indentured Scottish female servant from the 1600s who fucked a black slave and got pregnant. She got severely punished, whipped 39 times and charged with a crime of basterdry. But due to being white female all her children were born free.

Overall my impression was that Hispanics and blacks were several disappointed when they found out they were like 70% white. One woman even refused to know the genetic results.

People are still under the impression if you look like x race your genes must be x race.

All of the people interviewed who were black or Hispanic were incredibly disappointed if in their case the majority of their genes are white.

Some were dumb on the subject. For example Michelle Rodriguez expected a large amount of native ancestry but she failed to remember Puerto Rican history (all of the natives were basically wiped out by the Spanish). Oprah wanted to be Zulu and said her spirit told her she was Zulu. Uhh...that's NOT the geographic location where we got our slaves. One black feminist poet (can't remember her name) found out she is 60% white and that fucked with her identity. A Native American woman refused the test, saying she prefers to believe the mythos of her family.

I'm not sure what people who were the result of European invaders expect.

Hipsters rarely identify with the savagery in their own bloodlines:

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

150-300 years ago, a several generations of black immigrants from stone-age cultures were savagely brought here as slaves. It was horrible and it would appear to have broken their families irrevocably.

But you go back another 150-300 years, and basically everyone was living in slavery. There was no economic growth and no hope for a better life. Without modern commerce you had no money. You were screwed nonetheless:

Slavery was common--in the 11th century, Dublin had Europe's largest slave market--but the difference between slavery and other conditions was not always dramatic. In 1000, before stone buildings and iron bars made prisons feasible, and when people had no money to forfeit in fines, their labor was what could be taken from them.

And an Anglo-Saxon code said that in time of famine "a father may sell his son aged under seven as a slave if necessity forces him to do so." But, Lacey and Danziger write, very few people were free, as we understand freedom: "Almost everyone was beholden to someone more powerful than themselves."

In recent years I've noticed how easy it to make friends with black people from outside the United States. They freely make eye contact, share intimacy with comfortable acceleration and patience, and don't give their hearts to patterns of suspicion and resentment. They use the best language they can find without worrying that they'll be seen as putting on airs.

The brutalization of blacks in America was a howling tragedy. It's compounded by the certainty that its angers and viciousness are virulent fashions which can readily infect those with no previous exposure. The tragedy exploits the weaknesses listed by Amy, which are given to us as babies and are difficult to overcome.

Even today! You call that grabby part of yourself "somebody."

People are very, very invested in their ideas about race and some display something called "covert narcissism" -- when you use some hurt, wound, or supposed disability for self-aggrandizement.

"8% of Asia’s nearly 4 billion people can claim descent from Genghis Khan. Overall, 0.5% of the world’s 7 billion people descend from the Mongolian warlord. It is doubtful that any other historical figure has more living descendants than Genghis Khan." ---The Examiner

Who knows Amy, maybe Khan saw one of your red headed ancestors and she have him a major boner, right after he killed everyone she ever loved.

Is it just me? Is anyone else seeing the irony: Amy belittles those who affirm a heritage of aggrieved victimhood, and then giggles in the comfortable misery of her heritage of aggrieved victimhood?

'Cause I think that's kind of awkward.

Oh.

Shatner looking up from the DNA test and shaking his fist skyward:

"Khaaaaaannnn!!"

"German Jews (of indeterminate status) and hard-scrabble Eastern European peasants"

Genghis Khan's grandson Batu conquered Ukraine and Russia, raided Poland, and besieged Vienna, so it is not impossible that Amy is descended from Genghis - but if one of her ancestors was raped by Mongols, it was far more likely to be one of the 130,000 nobodies that followed Batu.