[FRIAM] A Quantum of Ethnicity

[Steve Smith]

Will Glen Ropella be the next Henrietta Lacks?

I was reluctant to offer my DNA to the giant
commercial-profiteering-cloud-in-the-sky and only did so as a mild act
of "bravery", just as I do when I leave my wifi open and doors unlocked
and keys in my vehicle.   The big difference.  

I'm always interested in other's *honest* mystical
experiences/maunderings (in this case DaveW), not because I am seeking
mystical answers to questions, but rather because I find something
compelling about the mythopoetic wordview which mysticism seems to be a
part of. 

On 10/17/21 3:46 PM, ⛧ glen wrote:
> Dude. Have you written this up? You know I tend toward disdain in the mystical. But I'd love to read your story.
>
> Re: SteveS' question, I will never submit my dna to such a service. But my adoptive sister did; and thereby found her bio-mom and bio-sisters. She always cared about that, whereas I could not care less. But I am happy for her, because she is very happy about finding them.
>
> I did sign over the rights to take, keep, and use my dna for cancer therapy. So, maybe, 6 to one, half a dozen to the other.
>
>
> On October 17, 2021 10:06:54 AM PDT, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> Haven't done the DNA test, but did inherit an extensive genealogy simply because that is what Mormons do. Nothing particularly notable (the brother of William the Conqueror was an ancestor, the owner of most of the track across Nevada — Ogden to Reno — was a relative). I visited most of the villages in Netherlands, Western Germany, and the castle in England where ancestors once lived, but none of the ones in Ireland.
>>
>> The villages in Holland and Germany, at the time my ancestors lived there, were centers of radical / mystical Christian sects; maybe my mystical bent was genetically inherited?
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021, at 10:21 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>>> Barry wrote:
>>>> The author Isabel Wilkerson wrote two books which I’ve read in the
>>>> last year or two. The second one was “Caste, The Origins of our
>>>> Discontents.” In it, she looks at castes in three countries: India,
>>>> the US, and Germany. She notes the extent to which the Nazis, once
>>>> they had control of the government and needed to write laws supporting
>>>> their scourges, followed the template of the American south. At one
>>>> point, on the matter of who was to be considered a Jew, they looked at
>>>> the American definition of a negro as one having “a single African
>>>> American anywhere in your family tree”. For the Nazis that was a
>>>> bridge too far, so they stopped looking past the grandparents. The
>>>> American criterion was more than they thought they could sell to the
>>>> German people.
>>>>
>>>> The other book she wrote, “The Warmth of Other Suns” is a history of
>>>> the Great Migration, the flight of six million from the south to the
>>>> north in the US, was a real eye-opener for me. I had never understood
>>>> how brutal Jim Crow was.
>>> I took the plunge a few years ago for one of the ancestry DNA tests and
>>> was shocked but not surprised.   In spite of the family
>>> stories/folk-geneology tracing my roots back to mostly germany/poland
>>> with a schosch of Scottish, the DNA test claimed 95% Scandinavian and 5%
>>> North African.  Mary took the same test and got results much more
>>> aligned with her family story (Irish/English/Welsh).  Her father who
>>> could pass for native (heavily tanned from outdoor work, very dark
>>> hair/eyes) wanted to claim Native Ancestry but couldn't place it in a
>>> family tree (generations in Nebraska).   Mary's test came back as
>>> "clean" as Elizabeth Warren's. 
>>>
>>> My mother passed recently and with her passing I received a 3 drawer
>>> file-cabinet of the working papers she had from when she was tracing her
>>> geneology a few years ago.   While her mother emigrated from Germany as
>>> a child around 1900 with a full Polish mother, and full German father,
>>> her father's nameline (Graham) went back to pre-revolutionary days *IN*
>>> Kentucky, my great great great therefore being a contemporary of Daniel
>>> Boone I suppose.   That line mingled with that of a Scottish sea captain
>>> about 1800.
>>>
>>> The 95% Scandinavian isn't inconceivable from any portion of northern
>>> Europe.  The 5% north African was an interesting surprise.   The maps
>>> they offer up of "North Africa" leaves room for a wide range of ethnic
>>> origens with anything from Nubian to Arab to Moor to Berber to
>>> Harrarian.   I don't know that it relieves my ancestors of having
>>> included slaveholding.  My parents were both quite proud (for
>>> Kentuckians) of being "damn Yankees" which might have been an element of
>>> "protest too much"?   I don't know there is anything legitimate for me
>>> to feel proud or embarrassed about in my presumed 5% (less than a
>>> quantum?) but I felt both in passing.   My parents both considered
>>> themselves proud "mutts".
>>>
>>> A different genetic-marker database (different company, etc.) might well
>>> have given me different results.   I don't think these things are as
>>> bogus as astrology or palm reading, but I suspect that in spite of their
>>> scientific roots, they are more about vanity or confirmation bias than
>>> anything.  Throwing my DNA against a few different database walls and
>>> seeing what sticks might provide some parallax, but I'm not sure I care
>>> really.
>>>
>>> While I grew up thinking my parents were very progressive about
>>> racial/ethnic issues, by the time my sister was dating in earnest, they
>>> tried to call her off her first boyfriend whose family were Mexican (we
>>> lived on the border and his great grandparents had been born en-situ
>>> *before* the area shifted from MX to US) and a later one whose father
>>> was African American and (deceased) mother was Phillipina.   While they
>>> were gentle about it, I was shocked at the hypocrisy.   By the time my
>>> father was retired, he was listening to Rush Limbaugh and my mother
>>> voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and probably 2020.  I'm sure they voted
>>> (near) straight-ticket Republican most of their lives.   My sister and
>>> her husband lived/worked in Spain and Chile through their 50s and ended
>>> up not much less biased.  Go figure.
>>>
>>> Anyone else do the genetic heritage testing thing?  We know Sarbajit's
>>> status.   Who can claim a quantum of Native American, Neanderthal or
>>> Ghengis Khan?  Who cares?
>>>