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"Pure" is a strong word to be thrown around, especially in the context it's being used in here. But I would say Whites having 100% European ancestry in the U.S. is pretty prevalent. Usually when someone is mixed with White and anything else, whatever they're mixed with shows up and dominates their White genes.
In Iowa, most are Germans and Scandinavians. They have no problems intermarrying one another because they see each other as truly white.
Anyone with black hair even with pale skin would not be considered white enough.
I agree with most of this statement.
But black hair with pale skin to me would still be white enough actually, it has got to be the features which stand out as well as hair colour and skin tone.
"And due to the one-drop rule, the white race has been extremely distinct from the black race. A recent study led by Joanna Mountain of Stanford using 23andMe genetic data estimated that only 3 to 4 percent of self-identified whites have even one black ancestor out of the 1,024 slots in their family tree ten generations ago."
The average African American is 73 percent sub-Saharan, 24 percent European and only 0.7 percent Native American. So, most of us have quite a lot of European ancestry and very, very little Native American ancestry. And if this Native American DNA came from exactly one ancestor, it surfaced in our family trees quite a long time ago—on average, perhaps as many as 10 generations, or 300 years, ago, which means about 1714. (This date is very important in terms of the numbers of Africans who had even arrived in the United States by then, and I will return to this point when I try to explain why most of us don’t have much Native American ancestry.)
Here’s how Scott Hadly reported Kasia Bryc’s findings on the 23andme website on March 4, 2014: “Bryc found that about 4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more of African ancestry, known as “’hidden African ancestry.’”
“Although it is a relatively small percentage,” Hadly continues, “the percentage indicates that an individual with at least 1 percent African ancestry had an African ancestor within the last six generations, or in the last 200 years [meaning since the time of American slavery]. This data also suggests that individuals with mixed parentage at some point were absorbed into the white population,” which is a very polite way of saying that they “passed.”
The average White American isn't mixed at all, unlike some Latin American countries like Brazil where interracial sexing was/is much more common...Resulting in more mixed babies. The average "White" Brazilian has Native American and African lineage which contributes to their not so European look.
I think, as a country, we will have to either a) start changing our perception of what 'White" entails in the States, or b)create more categories on our census that better fit the growing amount of mixed peoples, especially Latinos/Hispanics.
My family, which in looks is closer to the pictures of Italians posted by cloxias (in my family I am the least white looking, and there is a pic of me on my profile), would never identify as 'white' in America - we are Mexicans. This with my mom being pale as a ghost, my niece (as well as some uncles and aunts) being natural blondes and my sister always being compared to a young Brooke Shields in looks (except with light brown eyes.) For many Latin American Americans, including a light skinned red headed Venezuelan I dated, 'white' in America is as much a cultural definition as it is a racial definition. Latinos are Latinos, no matter the color/shade of your skin, hair or eyes.
Also, in Latin America, the term inter-racial dating isn't really used among the already highly mixed peoples. So you wouldn't really call a mulatta and a green eyed light skin mestizo an interracial couple. They would probably both just see each other as Puerto Rican (or whatever other nationality/ethnicity they are most closely aligned to culturally). The term tends to be reserved for people that are on opposite ends, not only racially but culturally. Such as pure indigenous Mayan from Chiapas and a Mexican of Spanish-German blood from the north. Replace the indigenous Mayan with an olive skinned, brown hair, dark eyed mestizo from Mexico City, and people wouldn't see them as a mix couple.
I mention this, because the Latino population, though no longer immigrating in as strong numbers as before, continues to grow. So either we re-evaluate what it means to be 'white' in America, or we start acknowledging that a lot of these new Americans don't see themselves as a racial category, just a cultural one - despite whether they are black, brown, white or any other hue in between.
To illustrate my point that the average American just doesn't get it, I'll share two personal anecdotes:
1) Sitting for standardized testing in high school, in a classroom that was 90% Latino, many students raised their hand to ask what 'race' they should put down. My 'white' (she looked like a Scot-Irish blend), insisted they should just put 'white'. This to a class that, overall, looked more like the average Native American.
2) At a clinic, after a I had filled out a form, a nurse (looked East Asian) looked over my form with me, and when she got to the race category (I had checked Other, as I usually do), she erased it, checked white, and looked at me and said "for our purposes, you would be considered white, silly." I was too bewildered to say anything, plus worried about other issues to say anything...later I realized I was a bit offended.
White people hide their heritage basically. If they have curly hair, they just call it bad hair, and style it, or shave it off. If they have skin discoloration or see it in their family, they stay out of the sun as possible, and even give the alternative Vitamins.
In fact Sammy Sosa, went from being black to whiter then the word itself. Their is no Hybrid or dominance gene. That is for nature to decide. Sometimes it is recessive, other times it is dominate. Some parents might say, "how come my child is soo light/dark, where you cheating on me??? Stupidity like that, but everybody grows up and morphs into something else, whether they like it or not.
Basically whatever the trends people will follow. If it was 1971, you would see White people with hair that they could blow over, and the curly fries hair. These could of any culture or creed. Now they go to special barbers, and such. I mean it is amazing to see the transformation process.
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