How white is white, and how black is black? (areas, roach)
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I ran into an article today that detailed a genetic study an Anthropologist from Penn State conducted. He basically tested the DNA of hundreds of self described white people in different areas of America to find out exactly how white they were. The results were fascinating:
"To Shriver, the most personally stunning of his findings involved one subject who reported himself to be completely white, yet whose genetic analysis showed that 22 percent of his relatively recent ancestors were African.
"I had the result for two or three years before I even looked up the ID number of the person whom we tested," a bemused Shriver recounted. "I looked at who it was and it was me! I checked myself and the rest of my relatives and tracked it through my family.""
"Is Shriver's 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. So, Shriver, at 22 percent African, is fairly close to the mean."
I don't know about you, but I find this fascinating. To me it offers further proof that in America, race is much more or an abstract and social concept than a biological one. If you look at pics of Shriver, he appears to be clearly white (or at least our definition of white) yet he has considerable black ancestry. It's also not surprising. America has experienced centuries of immigration to this country, voluntary and forced, from every corner of the globe, so this genetic variation comes as no surprise from a biological standpoint. But from a cultural perspective, it makes you rethink the boundaries of race.
So does this fascinate anyone else? Do any of you have any hidden ancestry that would surprise people? Discuss
I'm a light-skinned black man with white and Cherokee in me. That's common for south Louisiana but after all, this country was built on immigration, it should come as no surprise.
I'm not surprised at all, especially if you are a White person with roots that go back before the Civil War. I believe that somewhere around 70% of Whites are descended from people that came after the Civil War and 30% have African ancestry ranging from 2-20%.
There was an interesting Radiolab on this subject. One of guys they interviewed was certain he was black until a DNA test revealed he was actually 0% African!
I'm a light-skinned black man with white and Cherokee in me. That's common for south Louisiana but after all, this country was built on immigration, it should come as no surprise.
It seems that 70% of all southern blacks claim to be mixed with white and Cherokee.
This study is wrong on so many levels. I will agree that there are a few whites (maybe 5%) with slight African admixture, but I'm talking these people being less than ten percent black, and in most instances less than five percent. If they were any more, it would easily be seen that they had black in them, given the dominant/recessive nature of genes and traits.
On the other hand, a majority of blacks in the U.S. have white genes.
I know exactly what you are talking about. I bet many don't though.
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