Matthew Yglesias (April 07, 2008) - Monday Harding Blogging (Miscellaneous)

It's hilarious how OH NOES this discovery is to white folks.

It's a good way to cut thru white folks' lies, and discover their true inner racism. Another is to ask them about a black man dating their lovely precious daughter.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | April 7, 2008 8:34 AM

sherifffruitfly- Whereas discovery by whites of their long ago geneology having roots of native american, hispanic, asian, or jewish ancestry is a source of pride...

Posted by chris ford | April 7, 2008 9:01 AM

I've heard this reasoning before, and it seems pretty implausible to me. The logic of racial mixing in antebellum American pretty much goes one way: persons of African descent get a mixing of European blood, but not the reverse.

If I'm an American white guy with that 'one drop of [Negro] blood' several generations back (let's say from pre-Civil War times), how exactly would that have happened?

It's pretty obvious: at some point, one of my ancestors would have had to be a full-blooded African American who had children with a white American (or colonial, depending on how many generations we're talking about). Things being what they were back then, almost certainly a white man conceiving children with a black woman.

The problem is that, barring some remarkable genetic fluke, that person's children would have been black enough that their mating options would have been restricted to blacks. Their children in turn would have been 3/4 black, with even less likelihood of their mixing with whites. And so on.

The only exception to that was French Louisiana, with its quadroons, octoroons, etc., creating the possibility of persons with African blood who could pass for white. But for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, that environment would have been its own little world, and wouldn't have had the opportunity, even by now, to spread that widely in the 'white' gene pool.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | April 7, 2008 9:06 AM

It's pretty obvious: at some point, one of my ancestors would have had to be a full-blooded African American who had children with a white American (or colonial, depending on how many generations we're talking about). Things being what they were back then, almost certainly a white man conceiving children with a black woman.

The problem is that, barring some remarkable genetic fluke, that person's children would have been black enough that their mating options would have been restricted to blacks.

Your second paragraph is in direct opposition to your first paragraph.

Also, read "Vanity Fair" (the book, not the magazine); Miss Swartz was mixed-race, and may not have been quite out of the top drawer, and certainly the horrible Miss Sharp never let her forget it, but she had a cartload of money and thus a pretty good chance of a good marriage. (Miss Swartz and Rawdon Crawley are actually about the only reasonably nice characters in VF, and Miss Swartz is far superior to Rawdon.)

Posted by ajay | April 7, 2008 9:15 AM

Almost all people of European descent are also descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Not only are we all African Americans, we're also all Muslims.

There are fewer relations of parentage (i.e. ancestry and descent) linking you to almost every other human being on the planet than there are family members at a medium-sized wedding.

Posted by mapantsula | April 7, 2008 9:16 AM

I think an important point that low tech bicyclist and many others miss is how quickly people of mixed race may appear phenotypically white. When combined with social conventions in which lighter skinned African-Americans intermarried, you can see how quickly visible evidence of African ancestry may disappear. Obviously, in many (perhaps most) cases, the children of black-white intermarriage have skin and hair that indicate african ancestry. Nonetheless, you might be surprised how quickly those traits may disappear through marriage with other mixed folks or whites. I know at least people who have african-american parents who most would identify as white on appearance. Two of these people married blondes and have blond children. In a mixed-race family I know, three kids are fairly dark, but the fourth appears white. The story of Anatole Broyard certainly demonstrates this possibility.

All this is to say that it makes sense that there is a lot more admixture in the white community than generally acknowledged. That said, I have no idea what the numbers are, but I suppose it's more frequent than rare, but certainly not common (how is that for wishy-washy).

Posted by hw | April 7, 2008 9:34 AM

This just shows how stupid the "one drop" rule is. And it's offensive in that it only seems to work one way. One drop of blood from an African descendant taints the precious white blood. But one drop of blood from a European descendant doesn't matter if the person still looks black. The whole thing is ridiculous.

Posted by Led | April 7, 2008 9:41 AM

The crux of the matter is that we have have a lot of ancestors once you start going four or five generations back.

Perhaps as many as 16 or 32.

Posted by Mike | April 7, 2008 9:44 AM

"Their children in turn would have been 3/4 black, with even less likelihood of their mixing with whites."

A well known example refutes this: Thomas Jefferson's liason with Sally Hemmings. Sally was actually the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, and was given to the wife as a personal slave. Jefferson (or another family member) is likely to have fathered a number of children with Sally Hemmings. They were freed upon Jefferson's death. Now being 3/4 white, it was easier for them to move and start new in another state.

This pattern was not uncommon, many African Americans know of relatives who passed for white in the 19th and 20th centuries, moving out of the state and starting a new life among whites.

Posted by CParis | April 7, 2008 9:44 AM

CParis:
Don't forget Strom Thurmond. His daughter by an interracial relationship died just a few years ago.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | April 7, 2008 9:49 AM

We already know that a certain small percentage of the children born to "black" people in the United States are capable of "passing" as "white", and there is a considerably higher percentage of such people in other New World countries where racial mixing has been more common. When you consider how long this has been happening in the Americas, and factor in the large-scale migration and immigration patterns over that time (which make "passing" a lot easier), it does indeed start to look quite likely that most "white" Americans have a "black" ancestor from some time in the last 500 or so years.

Of course if you go far enough back, we all have black ancestors. So I am never quite sure what the point of this is.

Posted by DTM | April 7, 2008 9:57 AM

Another addition to CParis, something I learned on a tour of Monticello years ago, is that Jefferson also allowed Sally Hemings's daughters (who appeared white) to leave the plantation while he was still living, with the idea that they would go somewhere where it wasn't necessary to have a past (further west, probably) and merge into white society. According to the tour, this was a common practice in thosae days for slaveowners with white-appearing black daughters.

I myself am descended from someone who appeared without a past, with a made-up name, in the West Indies in the early 18th century. I wonder if he was passing.

Posted by Tom from the Bx | April 7, 2008 10:02 AM

Just a followup on migration and "passing":

For most places Americans came from (which again would include other New World countries where racial mixing was more common) for most of the history the country, there was no one even trying to officially keep track of the ethnic ancestry of infants. So it usually wouldn't have taken much for the child of one or more black parents to "pass"--you could keep your papertrail (such as it was) and identity, and you just had to move to somewhere no one knew anything about your parents.

Posted by DTM | April 7, 2008 10:12 AM

Happy Confederate Heritage Month!

Posted by jack lecou | April 7, 2008 10:14 AM

Re CParis

Actually, there is no guarantee that Sally Hemings' mother was 100% of African descent. Thus the 3/4 Caucasian figure is a lower limit.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 10:21 AM

Statistically speaking, every human being alive today shares at least one common ancestor from less than 3000 years ago. If you go back a few 1000 more years, still speaking statistically, every human being alive today shares exactly the same set of ancestors.

We are all cousins, at least.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-09/yu-rc092904.php

Jake

Posted by Jakebnto | April 7, 2008 10:32 AM

Mike wins the thread.

Posted by right | April 7, 2008 10:32 AM

Okay, first thing is that the "evidence" that Harding was of mixed blood seems decidedly weak. Basically some journalist published a polemic in which he reported on "rumors" to that effect. That seems to be all there is. So far as I can tell, there's no independent evidence of such rumors at all, except that after the book was published, various Black people came forward to claim Harding as a relative. This all seems pretty dubious. It may be true, but it might just as well be true that Herbert Hoover was of mixed blood - there's no useful evidence of this that I can see.

Second, those studies that show everyone is descended from Muhammad, or whatever, are flawed because they assume random mating, which isn't true. We're a lot more inbred than those kind of studies imply.

Finally, it's perfectly possible for there to be a decent number of self-identified white people with Black blood in the US. The Sally Hemings thing provides an example, as mentioned before - the English Captain Hemings rapes an African woman, who bears Betty Hemings. Slaveowner John Wayles, Jefferson's father-in-law, sleeps with Betty Hemings, and has Sally Hemings. Hemings sleeps with Jefferson (or his brother, if you must) and has various children. Jefferson's children by Hemings would have been 1/8 Black. Three of Hemings' four children moved out of Virginia, passed as white, and married white people.

This guy was the son of Eston Hemings, who had married a mixed race woman, and apparently commanded a white regiment during the Civil War. So, from African to White (more or less) in five generations.

Posted by John | April 7, 2008 10:54 AM

Well there are a large number of more recent white immigrants who are much less likely to have black ancestry (especially if their homelands were never occupied by Romans). Personally I very much doubt I have any measurable amount black ancestry, but I think I have a good chunk of Central Asian ancestry...

Posted by Bosh | April 7, 2008 11:15 AM

Lots of local folks are proud to claim ancestry from one Deborah Sampson, who passed as a man and fought in the Revolutionary war. Many were upset when evidence (probably false) appeared that she may have also passed in another sense.

Even more extremely, a dark haired aquaintance of British ancestry was slightly taken aback when I noted that the Romans had left african legions behind there.

Posted by snoey | April 7, 2008 11:55 AM

I'm a white person with recent African ancestors, according to mtDNA. I don't know their story yet, but I'm hoping to find it.

If you looked at me, you'd never know. I am very fair-skinned, even for a white person.

Posted by h | April 7, 2008 11:57 AM

The only period of racial mixing in American history (prior to the current era) was the middle third of the 18th century on the Virginia and North Carolina frontier among a not large number of settlers and Native Americans. As it happens some of those Native Americans (mostly Cherokee, Creek, and mixed Cherokee and Creek) may have had not-distant ancestors who had been freed or runaway slaves but in my genealogical research (on behalf of myself and others) I have yet to come across any genetic evidence of African-American bloodlines in any of these people (although I have come across evidence of Sephardic Jewish YDNA evidence among these people). My own view is that there probably was some mixing taking place between Native-Americans and runaway slaves but that it was also fairly rare.

Many of these mixed race (white and Native-American) assimilated into white society (mostly in the mountains) over several generations (as things famously got bad between whites and Native Americans again after the Revolutionary War) but if you're going to make extraordinary claims about large numbers of white people in this country being descended from African-Americans you need to provide extraordinary evidence. I think the conventional about this is probably right: in the rare instances when whites and African-Americans had kids together in the south it was by rape and even more rarely by clandestine affairs and those kids married African-Americans. I think the number of these instances was probably even rarer in the north.

Posted by Linus | April 7, 2008 12:24 PM

Another issue is the sex of the offspring and the sex of the parents. For example, O. J. Simpson had two children by Nicole Brown Simpson, a boy and a girl. The boy, Justin, appears much more "African" then does the daughter, Sydney.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 12:37 PM

If the 1 percent rule says that I am 100% black when 1% of my ancestory is black, then the number of us not 100% black is vanishingly small.

Posted by hoi polloi | April 7, 2008 12:45 PM

If the 1 percent rule says that I am 100% black when 1% of my ancestory is black, then the number of us not 100% black is vanishingly small.

Posted by hoi polloi | April 7, 2008 12:48 PM

Linus,

What I find extraordinary is the claim, "The only period of racial mixing in American history (prior to the current era) was the middle third of the 18th century on the Virginia and North Carolina frontier among a not large number of settlers and Native Americans." Now, maybe you dropped a crucial qualifier somewhere in there, but as it stands, we actually know that is false: there are many other recorded instances of people of different races in American having children, and indeed genetic testing confirms it.

Incidentally, I again note that mixed race parentage was a lot more common elsewhere in the New World, and obviously people have since immigrated from elsewhere in the New World to the United States.

Posted by DTM | April 7, 2008 1:02 PM

And another point - if the out of Africa theory of modern human genesis is correct, then ALL our earliest ancestors were Africans. In all liklihood, those early modern humans were as black as (most of) the current inhabitants of Africa.

In other words, we're all black, now.

Jake

Posted by Jakebnto | April 7, 2008 1:20 PM

Snoey raises the issue of European populations mixing with Africans IN EUROPE, before the New World even comes into it. This seems especially probable for people in Mediterranean regions, and I know several Italian-Americans who have features and hair that look slightly African. Even the Russian author Pushkin is said to have had African ancestors. Europe and Africa are not that far apart, and people have been traveling practically forever.

I seem to recall a news story a few years ago about black Iraqis. And what about North Africans, who are generally considered white?

Posted by M.C. | April 7, 2008 1:22 PM

According to this (to me, very authoritative) study, african americans have way more european genes than the other way around.

http://backintyme.com/essays/?p=5

The mean African admixture among White Americans is low—roughly 0.7 percent African and 99.3 percent European admixture.16 To put this in perspective, this would have been the result if every member of the U.S. White endogamous group alive today had a single ancestor of one hundred percent African genetic admixture seven generations ago (around the year 1850). Of course, African alleles are not distributed evenly. Seventy percent of White Americans (like 5.5 percent of Blacks) have no detectable African genetic admixture at all. Among the thirty percent of Whites with African genetic admixture, the admixture ratio averages to about 2.3 percent, the equivalent of having a single ancestor of one hundred percent African genetic admixture from around the year 1880.17 Black Americans, on the other hand, have significant European admixture (averaging about 75 percent African and 25 percent European).

Posted by cw | April 7, 2008 1:28 PM

This really hits home with me. To look at me I am any other white American. I just had my DNA anayzed for my mother's line - that's the only line they can trace in women. I just found out a week ago that I am about 1/8 African myself. I had no idea - there is nothing in our family history to account for it. The markers cluster in the west - there is one for general "western Africa" and then markers for Ghana, the Congo and the Central African Repubic - and they are all within a reasonable distance of Benin, which is where 90% of the slaves were transported from.

Just as amazing for someone whose entire family are Protestant Christians, I am genetically more Jewish than anything else. I am predominantly Ashkenazi from eastern Europe, but I have two separate strains of Sephardi, as well.

These are all what they call "recent ancestry" - this is not my deep ancestry - that's another test and another $75. This is my ancestry in historical time.

I had no idea. I think the day I got the test results was probably the most fascinating day of my life so far.

Posted by Tena | April 7, 2008 2:43 PM

This really hits home with me. To look at me I am any other white American. I just had my DNA anayzed for my mother's line - that's the only line they can trace in women. I just found out a week ago that I am about 1/8 African myself. I had no idea - there is nothing in our family history to account for it. The markers cluster in the west - there is one for general "western Africa" and then markers for Ghana, the Congo and the Central African Repubic - and they are all within a reasonable distance of Benin, which is where 90% of the slaves were transported from.

Just as amazing for someone whose entire family are Protestant Christians, I am genetically more Jewish than anything else. I am predominantly Ashkenazi from eastern Europe, but I have two separate strains of Sephardi, as well.

These are all what they call "recent ancestry" - this is not my deep ancestry - that's another test and another $75. This is my ancestry in historical time.

I had no idea. I think the day I got the test results was probably the most fascinating day of my life so far.

Posted by Tena | April 7, 2008 2:43 PM

"Statistically speaking, every human being alive today shares at least one common ancestor from less than 3000 years ago. "

This isn't true, of course. Anyhow, the thrust of these arguments is that everyone is substantially genetically identical - which isn't true either.

Posted by gcochran | April 7, 2008 2:44 PM

A friend of mine told me the other day that so-and-so didn't like him because he was 'mixed-race.' I couldn't help it, I just sat there and blinked at him for a second before asking in which way this was so and if he thought that person had just guessed this fact, because with his very light skin and straight blond hair, I certainly wouldn't have. Turns out that person had met his aunt and uncle, who apparently appear black enough for his being mixed to be obvious. So...that would say to me that one of his grandparents or maybe great-grandparents was black (I didn't pry any farther, because I felt kind of bad for having just gone 'huh?' and stared for a second when he told me). That's not many generations for a person to 'look white.'

Posted by rabbit | April 7, 2008 2:45 PM

This really hits home with me. To look at me I am any other white American. I just had my DNA anayzed for my mother's line - that's the only line they can trace in women. I just found out a week ago that I am about 1/8 African myself. I had no idea - there is nothing in our family history to account for it. The markers cluster in the west - there is one for general "western Africa" and then markers for Ghana, the Congo and the Central African Repubic - and they are all within a reasonable distance of Benin, which is where 90% of the slaves were transported from.

Just as amazing for someone whose entire family are Protestant Christians, I am genetically more Jewish than anything else. I am predominantly Ashkenazi from eastern Europe, but I have two separate strains of Sephardi, as well.

These are all what they call "recent ancestry" - this is not my deep ancestry - that's another test and another $75. This is my ancestry in historical time.

I had no idea. I think the day I got the test results was probably the most fascinating day of my life so far.

Posted by Tena | April 7, 2008 2:45 PM

A friend of mine told me the other day that so-and-so didn't like him because he was 'mixed-race.' I couldn't help it, I just sat there and blinked at him for a second before asking in which way this was so and if he thought that person had just guessed this fact, because with his very light skin and straight blond hair, I certainly wouldn't have. Turns out that person had met his aunt and uncle, who apparently appear black enough for his being mixed to be obvious. So...that would say to me that one of his grandparents or maybe great-grandparents was black (I didn't pry any farther, because I felt kind of bad for having just gone 'huh?' and stared for a second when he told me). That's not many generations for a person to 'look white.'

Posted by rabbit | April 7, 2008 2:48 PM

I think DNA has brought us to a pragmatic solution for the reparations discussion. What has been missing from descendants of slaves in this country is a connection to ancestors more than 4-5 generations removed. This country should apply resources for geneologists and DNA projects specializing in connecting relatives for black Americans.

It is one thing that has been stripped that may be able to be reasonably made whole.

Plus, if all Americans see how interrelated we all are, some of the divide can be bridged.

Just a thought...

Posted by Gabriel | April 7, 2008 3:31 PM

gcochran:

I don't think that's the general thrust of anyone's comments here. There is far more genetic diversity within populations than there is between populations. I think that is the general point to be taken away from this discussion.

Posted by MAL | April 7, 2008 3:53 PM

By the way, philosopher Anthony Appiah, the star of various Afro-American studies depts. during his career, is actually the grandson of Sir Stafford Cripps, the famous Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain's late 1940s Labour governments.

Posted by Steve Sailer | April 7, 2008 4:53 PM

Former Congressman Bob Bar, who is thinking of running for President as a Libertarian is widely rumored to be part black. Black radio call-in shows in his area get lots of calls from people saying, "He's my cousin's cousin," and the like.

Posted by Steve Sailer | April 7, 2008 4:59 PM

It's little understood that the "one-drop" rule in America has served to widen the genetic gaps between blacks and whites. This is from a 2002 article, so the state of the art in genetic admixture analysis has advanced since then, but it will give some sense of the lay of the land:

Is mixed race ancestry fairly typical for an American? In two ways, it is. First, more than 50 million whites, according to his analyses, have at least one black ancestor.

Another way to approach the question is to group together all the whites and blacks in America and calculate their mean degree of admixture. Shriver's data shows that on average, they would be about 12 or 13 percent African.

Yet, from another perspective, a sizable degree of racial mixing is highly unusual. There simply aren't many African-Americans or European-Americans who are mostly white but also substantially black. Penn State geneticist Mark Shriver pointed out, "There is a very small degree of overlap in the population distributions." In America, most of the whites are extremely European and most of the blacks are quite African.

Despite the notorious arbitrariness of the "one drop" rule, the actual American population conforms to its strictures surprisingly closely.

Granted, the "one drop" rule would be laughed out of existence if anyone attempted to impose it on a land with a more genetically blended population, such as Puerto Rico (which Shriver has begun to study). Yet, it appears possible that the rule survives in the U.S. because it's not too wildly inaccurate. Only a small fraction of the population is more than half, but less than 90 percent European.

Among self-identified whites in Shriver's sample, the average black admixture is only 0.7 percent. That's the equivalent of having among your 128 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (who lived around two centuries ago), 127 whites and one black.

It appears that 70 percent of whites have no African ancestors. Among the 30 percent who do, the black admixture is around 2.3 percent, which would be like having about three black ancestors out of those 128.

In contrast, African-Americans are much more racially mixed than European-Americans. Yet, Shriver's study shows that they are less European that was previously believed.

Earlier, cruder studies, done before direct genetic testing was feasible, suggested that African-Americans were 25 or even 30 percent white. Shriver's project is not complete, but with data from 25 sites already in, he is coming up with 17-18 percent white ancestry among African-Americans. That's the equivalent of 106 of those 128 of your ancestors from seven generations ago having been Africans and 22 Europeans.

According to Shriver, only about 10 percent of African-Americans are over 50 percent white.

This genetic database is restricted to adults. Black-white married couples quadrupled in number between the 1960 Census and 1990 Census, so the admixture rates among children are no doubt higher than among adults.

Political conservatives have taken to denouncing the "one drop" rule -- George Will recently called it "Probably the most pernicious idea ever to gain general acceptance in America" -- perhaps because it is used to determine who qualifies for affirmative action for blacks. Many opponents of racial preferences now argue that it is absurd to award benefits based on this arbitrary definition. This view is embodied in Ward Connerly's upcoming Racial Privacy Initiative, which would partially ban the state of California from demanding citizens categorize themselves by race.

The number of mostly white but a little-bit-black young people -- the kind who cause confusion for affirmative action classification schemes -- is growing as interracial marriage becomes more popular. On the other hand, as Shriver's data shows, there aren't yet all that many adults who fall genetically in the "gray zone" between the races. Perhaps at present the "one drop" rule, for all its theoretical folly, still is indeed good enough for government work -- assuming that government work should include racial preferences, which are now illegal in California.

The admixture rates vary by region. The African-American populations with the highest average numbers of white ancestors found so far are those in California and Seattle. They average a little over one-quarter European ancestry.

In contrast, according to a recent article published by Shriver's team in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Gullahs of the long-isolated Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, who are famous for speaking a pleasantly African-sounding dialect, are only 3-4 percent white.

In the rest of the rural South, African-Americans tend to be not as black as the Gullahs, but still blacker than the national average. Shriver's team found that the white admixture percentage in four Lowland farm counties in South Carolina was 12 percent.

Cities, whether Northern or Southern, tend to be about average. In terms of white ancestry among African-Americans, New York is a little above the mean, while Philadelphia is a little below. Jackson, Miss., is near the norm.

The African-Americans of New Orleans average 22 percent white. This fairly high number reflects the influence of Spanish and French mores in Louisiana. Latin cultures have no "one drop" rule, so intermarriage was somewhat more socially acceptable there.

Advocates of the growing popular idea that race is merely a "social construct" with no biological reality point to the artificiality of the "one drop" rule as evidence for their view. Yet, it's possible that the "one drop" rule itself helped to construct the genetic reality that Shriver has uncovered.

Latin cultures, which lack the one drop rule, create more evenly blended populations, as Shriver has helped document among Mexican-Americans. He and his colleagues found that Hispanics in certain New Mexico and Colorado locales averaged 58 percent white ancestry, 39 percent New World Indian, and three percent African.

In contrast to the "bimodal distribution" of blacks and whites in America, Mexican-Americans clustered around their average admixture level of 58 percent European.

For centuries, however, American whites defined anyone with visible black ancestry as ineligible to marry a white. (It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme Court overturned the "anti-miscegenation" laws that were then still in force in 19 states.) This meant that mixed race people could seldom marry white people.

Unless, that is, they were white-looking enough to pass for white, and were willing to pull up their roots and move to a different part of the country where they could assume a white identity. This happened not infrequently in American history. For instance, one of the slave Sally Hemmings' one-eighth black sons (who, according to geneticists, was fathered by either Thomas Jefferson or one of his relations) moved to Madison, Wis., after he was freed and founded a family of socially identified whites. Nonetheless, Shriver's data suggests that well over 90 percent of the African genes in Americans are still found in people who call themselves black.

Over the generations, mixed-race lineages would tend to either pass into the white population and become more white with each generation's marriage to a white person, or stay in the African-American population. If the latter, the families would normally become more genetically African over time as their offspring married African-Americans.

Thus, the "one drop" rule helped make African-Americans and European-Americans into two social groups whose members -- despite sometimes being highly varied in ancestry -- are perhaps more distinct on average in their family trees than the arbitrariness of the "one drop" would lead you to initially assume.

http://www.isteve.com/2002_How_White_Are_Blacks.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | April 7, 2008 5:06 PM

Oops. "The one drop rule?" As it turns out all people have African (Aka black) ancestry. That "one drop" does not add much of a difference. Modern humans have only been around for a blink of the eye. Yet, we attribute such importance to small difference such as skin color that was highly selected as people moved north and into much less sun exposure.

Also, let's make sure we are clearer. Ancestry will describe ones genetic heritage while race in humans is a choice (the inbreeding subgroup that one chooses or not to belong within.)

Posted by George | April 7, 2008 6:39 PM

Well there are a large number of more recent white immigrants who are much less likely to have black ancestry (especially if their homelands were never occupied by Romans). Personally I very much doubt I have any measurable amount black ancestry, but I think I have a good chunk of Central Asian ancestry...

Well don't be so sure. I thought I knew my mother's family - she was all into that and spent quite a bit of time looking into it with her relatives.

I didn't expect much. Hahahaha! I only found out I'm so predominantly Jewish I could make a very good case for citizenship in Israel and I have about 1/8 of my total genetic makeup from Africa.