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"Should they...?" Why not? It is part of them/us. I wouldn't deny any of mine, though if I had to pick a color to describe myself, I'd choose brown.
Heather Locklear is descended from the Lumbee people, and there are different opinions about where their origins came from. Some people say Africa, some say Native American, some say Portuguese, some say a combination of some or all of them. Interesting research.
The Portuguese (and Turkish, and, and ... ) theories about Lumbee / Melungeons / etc have been discredited. There is some Native American blood in many cases. In any event, these groups were essentially Mulatto folks who hid their black blood, for various reasons. I've got a bit of this heritage in me from the Appalachian ancestors.
My mother's family in the Midwest has always jokingly claimed Dakota ancestry, but the family culture was German. I joined Ancestry.com 5 years ago and traced everyone and found NO obvious Indians. But the phenotype is strongly visible; shortish, tending to plumpness, dark skin, high cheekbones, straight dark hair, brown and hazel eyes with a slight epicanthic fold, prominent straight nose. This branch of family came from the Baltic Sea area with the name of "Schwartz" (German for dark or black) and settled in Minnesota in 1860. Perchance i am seeing Finnish? Siberian? North Asian? Can't wait to find out. If it does show American Indian well than I lose my bet with my cousins!
It is possible that your dark "Prussian" forebears were actually descendents from the Mongol mercenaries from the Golden Hoard who got land grants from the Polish-Lithuanian Empire in return for soldiering in wars against Russia. Oh, and that group were Muslims to boot. That explains the mystery of the Mosques in today's NE Poland and Southern Lithuania (and the Polish Mosque in Brooklyn).
Correct me if I am wrong, I am sure someone will, didn't human kind originate in Africa anyhow???? So didn't all human kind start out with black skin?
I don't know about the skin (perhaps a light brown?). It's my understanding, that there's more genetic diversity amongst native Africans that what's contained in the rest of the world combined.
Most americans are mixed. Black americans are mixed with European, yet whites having african ancestry is often ignored. Do white americans embrace their African ancestry? Also, I just read something about Heather Locklear, who is blonde and blue eyed, having African ancestry.
I'm dark skinned Hispanic descent of white, black and native american. 2 of my 3 kids look 100% white (one has blue eyes), one of them looks hispanic, like Alex Rodriguez (has blue eyes) they all can easily go by as white Their great-grandmother looked very similar to Oprah.
I don't know about the skin (perhaps a light brown?). It's my understanding, that there's more genetic diversity amongst native Africans that what's contained in the rest of the world combined.
I would imagine due to the climate etc and adaptation of the human species to the environment.
The foundation of the pressure to pass as white is obvious, and certainly enough people managed to do so successfully that there are some folks who identify as white and have no idea that they have any African ancestors at all. However, that does not mean that there are a large number of whites who have hidden African ancestry. In the 23AndMe database it is 3 to 4% and the admixture is 0.5 to 0.75%, correspondig to an ancestor who lived about 200 years ago.
When people who identify as white are found to be related to people who identify as black, it is much more likely that the common ancestor will be European rather than African. Of course, the 23AndMe database is not likely to be representative of the entire population, but I think it is unlikely that we will find that the majority of the current US population that identifies as white will have hidden African ancestry.
Where do you get the idea that whites "demand" that blacks "own up to" having white ancestors and "pretend" that the number of whites with African ancestors is small? There are threads here exploring attitudes of both blacks with European ancestors and whites with African ancestors acknowledging their minority contribution ancestors. The fact is that the majority of African Americans have some European ancestors but a minority of white Americans will have African ancestors.
The consensus in both of the threads seems to me to be that we should acknowledge all of our ancestors, realizing that some of them, regardless of color, may not be nice folks we would want to socialize with, for example my ancestor who murdered his son in law.
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Where do I get that some white demand that blacks accept their white ancestry (this while they find all sorts of reasons why whites do noy have to reciprocate, where such ancestry exists? Just go to the thread about the topic. Lots of very opinionated accusations that blacks must be misguided, etc.
Given what I know about black history in the USA I really see no reason why people should be surprised that blacks are reluctant to embrace people who clearly show no deep desire to reciprocate.
One DNA study showed that more than 40% of the European ancestry found in African Americans comes from European women.
As for Dr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr, his matrilineal lineage ancestor goes back to Irish women lol.
Dr Gates roots are from Virginia (from his father for sure) and there were many Irish indentured servants and Irish slaves that had loving consensual relationships with African male indentured servants and African male slaves. There were also many white slaves as well.
Virginia had a high rate of miscegenational race mixing.
Indeed there was heavy miscegenation among Irish women and black men, both in early Virginia, and again in cities like NYC in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Which is why I find so many whites feelinbg "sure" that they do not have any African ancestry to be amusing. Given that such black ancestry came from people who were passing, clearly they would not know one way or the other. Though whites with black ancestry is way less common than blacks with white ancestry, it is not unusual.
In fact as recently as 1982 when I was in gard school some of the black told me about a girl who was "passing". She will be in her late 50s now, so this is not as old a concept as some might think. I saw the girl and asked some one if she was the one. I got a laugh in response, and the person asked how I knew. Clearly blacks are often more adept at deducing mixed ancestry than whites are. Indeed part of the reason why this girl would have kept away from blacks is to reduce the likelihood of her cover being blown.
Hmm, I thought that Gates had European Y and mtDNA haplogroups? Without at least one of his parents testing it would be very difficult to tell which genes he got from either of his parents.
One of the things that I learnt from Gates is the need to combine the results of these tests with family lore and with one's knowledge of teh social history of the times.
He knew that the matriarch of the family was a woman who had some sort of relationship with her master AFTER slavery ended, so presumably when she would have been able to end it. Given that light skinned "blacks" tended to marry each other, and not darker blacks, its most probably that he has Euro ancestry from both sides.
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