Monday, May 19, 2014

wonder bread

I got my DNA profile yesterday. What a disappointment.

3/5ths of my ancestors were Hinglish.





The remainder were from western Europe (21%, mostly French), Ireland (11%), & Sweden (9%).

I was hoping to find at least one or two Mestizo, African, or Native American ancestors, but no such luck. The great thing about DNA profiles is they're completely truthful, since wishful thinking and 

ideology have nothing to do with reality.

I've heard that one American in four has African ancestors, and since numerous among my (English) forebears owned slaves, I always assumed I had a little bit of Ibo or Fulani blood. Assumptions can't compete with evidence, however, and it would require a comprehensive DNA record of US citizens to determine whether this country is truly a "melting 
Pot" or simply a collection of ethnicities living side by side -- "multi-cultural" as we say these days.

 The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski said that "When races meet, they sometimes fight, but they always breed." I'd say that's usually, but not always true.

Many of my ancestors were white supremacists. My paternal grandfather had a world history text on his shelf, published in the 1880's, which says "The only historic race is the Caucasian. The others have done little worth mentioning."

That's typical of the cultural blindness that informs the universal white attitude of that era -- a kind of racial "exceptionalism," dependent on a habit of studied non-observation -- which persists even today, and explains why my ancestors had no knowledge, carnal or otherwise, of nonwhite people.


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