To all outward appearances, my buddy Newt (he's not getting better) is black.
Turns out, he's not.
23 and Me says he's just barely 47% Nigerian.
He's got Finn and Ashkenazi Jew in his family tree as well.
Some Welsh (36%) for flavor along with English.
He's Welsh-Nigerian (Nigerian-Welsh?) by genetic markers.
The Ashkenazi Jew thing is amusing because I've been telling him he looks Jewish for decades.
The joke was he was an Ethiopian Jew because of his intense dislike for MREs (Meal Refused by Ethiopians).
It's interesting how it parallels my family's stated genealogy.
Mom's side is 1/2 Italian (for generations) 1/2 English (also for generations).
Dad's side.... Bring on the hybrid vigor!
The Scotland to England path includes all the Nordic rape you'd expect from Viking raids.
German and Norwiegian on Grandma's side.
Don't forget Japanese in living memory (Great-Grandma Kiko) on Granpa's side!
The McThags are a rutting (literally) mess!
Race is actually a social construct.
We can interbreed with any human, and the result will be a fully fertile specimen.
Skin color is no different than eye or hair color, and it should matter exactly as much.
Not at all.
Aesthetics are a personal preference, but it's not racism to prefer blondes.
FFS, I like 'em downright fat. Will weightism be next?
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A lot of people's family trees are more complicated than they know until they start doing genealogy or take a DNA test. Others sometimes less. A lot of people find out like that infamous politician that the family being 'part Indian' isn't true. My grandmother swore up and down that our family was part Cherokee, but genetic tests show it to be basically an impossibility. And I've got cousins who are 'black', well at least 25-30%. So I'd have to be a real schmuck to be racist against my own family. Not that a lot of people probably don't think I'm an @$$#013 in general, but that's a different story. As far as sizeism/weightism. Oh, hell yeah, it is a thing. Of course some people like it, but a lot of people are down right discriminatory towards anyone who isn't in their opinion 'fit', and for those who are by society's standards 'obese', they definitely face some serious discrimination. And that happens among all groups to some extent. Discrimination often stacks.
ReplyDeleteMy wife is 2ish% North African. Which she finds hilarious, as her father was actually kicked out of the KKK for being too violent (and messing with other members' wives.)
ReplyDeleteWife made me do a test. Which worked out exactly as my side of the family's history said. French/Acadian and German on dad's side, English-Irish-Scots on mom's side. I'm boringly Western European. Which suits me fine.
Sometimes your pie chart is complete circle. While I would never give these companies my DNA, a sibling did and got a result of 100% Ashkenazi, which was a reasonable outcome of centuries in the Shtetl and decades in insular communities here.
ReplyDeletePlanned orderly sex then?
DeleteActually yes, there was almost no intermarriage outside the Jewish community, although my great grandparents do cover a swath from the Black Sea to the Baltic
DeleteThe test I took turned out pretty much exactly like I expected given the genealogy research I've done. A little over 1/2 Germanic, a little over 1/4 Scandinavian and the balance mostly Scotch Irish. No Native American. Most of my relatives came to the US after the Civil War except for a few of my German ancestors who came through Pennsylvania. Pretty much most of them lived in the North. As far as I know none of them ever owned any slaves, and for that matter from what I've been able to find, most of them didn't often have two nickels to rub together, so they probably couldn't have afforded to if they'd wanted to and lived in states that permitted it. And some of my Norwegian ancestors came to the US as indentured servants too.
ReplyDeleteMy surname didn't come over until after the civil war.
DeleteMy mom's dad didn't come over until just before WW2.
Mom's mother's mom family was here longer; but were from New England.
Dad's mother's side is mostly nord-germanic and never ventured south of the mason-dixon.
And your last comment? I, too, like, as Louis McMasters Bujold puts it, women who can survive a small famine. Or a medium famine. Maybe a large famine. Skinny doesn't do it for me.
ReplyDelete