Mixed Race Studies

DNA Ancestry Tests: Simultaneously Powerful and Limited

KQED QUEST
KQED: Public Media for Northern California
2013-04-08

Dr. Barry Starr, Geneticist-in-Residence
Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, California

Using a common DNA ancestry test, President Obama would be 100% Caucasian.

Sometimes genetic tests aren’t as useful as you think they will be. For example, if President Obama were to take a common ancestry DNA test, it would almost certainly come back as 100% Caucasian. Useful, huh?

This sort of test, a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test, can look into the deep past but it can only see mom’s side of the family. And it isn’t even really that powerful. It not only ignores dad’s side of the family, but in reality it can only see a sliver of mom’s as well…

…The other kind of test, the Y chromosome test, can go as far back along the paternal line as the mtDNA test can along the maternal line but it suffers from the same problems. In fact, a surprising number (35%?) of African-American men actually have Caucasian Y chromosomes (well, given plantation life, maybe not so surprising). None of these men will learn anything about their African heritage with this test.

So the bottom line is don’t put too much faith into DNA testing alone. It is kind of fun to trace back your history this way but you are really only following one strand of your ancestral web back in time. The rest of the web is invisible to DNA testing…

Read the entire article here.

Early America was far more ethnically and racially complex than we have been taught. Some whites were not northern European, some blacks were not sub-Saharan African, and some Indians and some mulattos were not Indians and mulattos… We Melungeons and, indeed, other mixed groups have irrefutable ties not only to northern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and early America, but also to the eastern Mediterranean, southern Europe, northern African, and central Asia.

N. Brent Kennedy, “Introduction,” in North From the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio, authors John S. Kessler and Donald B. Ball.  (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2001),  pp. ix-x.

Racially, I’m an African-Native American.  Culturally, I’m an aspiring Seminole Maroon descendant. But to the people of America who see me on the street, I’m just another flavor of Black.

Phil Wilkes Fixico, “Episode 225 – Phil Wilkes Fixico,” Mixed Chicks Chat, September 14, 2011. (00:09:12-00:09:28). http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-34257/TS-504952.mp3.

The peoples of Europe are of such mongrel origin that any attempt at classification according to only two characteristics (colour of eyes and hair) would exclude two-thirds of the population in any region studied; the addition of a third characteristic (cranial formation) would leave us with a still smaller fraction of the population presenting the required combination of all three characteristics; and with the inclusion of stature and nasal index, the proportion of «pure» types would become infinitesimal.

We may take it then that there are no pure human races; at the very most it would be possible to define a pure race in terms of the incidence of one selected somatic characteristic, but never in terms of all or even of the majority of hereditary traits. Nevertheless there is a widespread belief that there was a time in antiquity when racial types were pure, that miscegenation is of relatively recent date, and that it threatens humanity with a general degeneration and retrogression. This belief lacks the slightest support from science. The mixing of races has been going on since the very beginning of human life on earth, though obviously the improvement of communications and the general increase in population has stimulated it in the last two centuries. Migration is as old as the human race, and automatically implies cross-breeding between groups.

Juan Comas, Racial Myths (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 1951), 12-13.

W.Va. historian to talk on pre-Civil War slave economy

The Charleston Gazette
Charleston, West Virginia
2013-04-09

Douglas Imbrogno

CHARLESTON, W.Va.—Ending slavery was a moral question that haunted early American history, but it was one inextricably tangled up in economics.

While West Virginia was a state born in 1863 out of the tumult over slavery and the political disputes that erupted in the Civil War, slavery long had a toehold in the Kanawha Valley. Consider the salt mining industry in this area, a slave-powered enterprise from the 1820s onward, said Greg Carroll.

“Here in the Kanawha Valley, we had upwards of 2,000 slaves working in the salt industry,” said Carroll, a retired historian with the state’s Archives and History Section.

Yet slaves were not just a subjugated labor force, but a commodity often even more valuable to their owners as property chips to be sold into other slave economies.

“Here in West Virginia, for instance, before the Civil War, you can see in the state archives newspapers advertising slaves to be sold down the river. These slaves were being sold into the cotton and sugar-producing areas of mainly Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas,” Carroll said.

Before he retired last October, Carroll was a Culture and History staff historian for 23 years, mostly focusing on American Indians, black Americans and Civil War history. He’ll combine a couple of those specialties in the free talk “Slavery in Virginia: 1619-1860,” at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Archives and History Library in the Culture Center.

He’ll describe the different slave economies across North and South America and the missed opportunities for ending slavery in the lead-up to the Civil War.

 Consider, for instance, the slaves who worked Caribbean sugar plantations or in the rice fields of the Carolinas. Yellow fever, malaria and other hazards kept slave owners away from their plantations, Carroll said.

Yet in the tobacco plantations and farms of Virginia and farther south, slave owners lived closely with their slaves—sometimes very closely.

“That also led to a paternalism that we see in the way Virginia slave owners referred to their slaves as ‘their people.’ Slaves became very valuable as the tobacco crop became valuable,” he said.

The result was a stronger slave and family culture, one that was not as Afrocentric as Caribbean and South American slave societies with their constant infusions of new slaves, Carroll said. Yet the proximity of owner to slave had other implications.

“White slave owners took sexual advantage of their female slaves,” Carroll said. “That produced a very mixed-race people that we see in the Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland slave cultures—a lot of mixed-race people.”…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Myths

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
UNESCO Publication 891
1951
51 pages

Juan Comas (1900-1979), Professor of Anthropology
Mexican School of Anthropology

CONTENTS

• I. General observations on racial prejudices and myths
• II. The myth of blood and of the inferiority of cross-breeds
• III. Colour prejudice: the Negro myth
• IV. The Jewish myth
• V. The myth of «Aryan» or «Nordic» superiority Origin of the Aryans
  • Doctrine of Aryanism and Teutonism .
  • Anthroposociology and social selection
  • The «Aryan» thesis of contemporary nazism and fascism
  • The alleged «Anglo-Saxon» type
  • «Celticism»
  • Criticism and refutation of these theories
• VI. Conclusion
• Bibliography

…II. THE MYTH OF BLOOD AND OF THE INFERIORITY OF CROSS-BREEDS

Human miscegenation has been and is the subject of infinite debate. Opinions on the subject are conditioned by the views of the disputants on race and racial differences, the opponents of miscegenation starting from the assumption of racial inequality, whereas its defenders take the view that the differences between human groups are not such as to constitute an objection to cross-breeding between them. Hence the first thing needed in the study of the problems raised by human inter-breeding is a clear definition of what is meant by race and the selection of criteria for deciding whether or not any pure races exist.

Even under the loosest definition, race implies the existence of groups presenting certain similarities in somatic characteristics which are perpetuated according to the laws of biological inheritance, allowing for a margin of individual variation.

The peoples of Europe are of such mongrel origin that any attempt at classification according to only two characteristics (colour of eyes and hair) would exclude two-thirds of the population in any region studied; the addition of a third characteristic (cranial formation) would leave us with a still smaller fraction of the population presenting the required combination of all three characteristics; and with the inclusion of stature and nasal index, the proportion of «pure» types would become infinitesimal.

We may take it then that there are no pure human races; at the very most it would be possible to define a pure race in terms of the incidence of one selected somatic characteristic, but never in terms of all or even of the majority of hereditary traits. Nevertheless there is a widespread belief that there was a time in antiquity when racial types were pure, that miscegenation is of relatively recent date, and that it threatens humanity with a general degeneration and retrogression. This belief lacks the slightest support from science. The mixing of races has been going on since the very beginning of human life on earth, though obviously the improvement of communications and the general increase in population has stimulated it in the last two centuries. Migration is as old as the human race, and automatically implies cross-breeding between groups. It is quite possible that the Cro-Magnon type of the upper Paleolithic interbred with Neanderthal man, as seems to be indicated by the discovery of remains displaying intermediate characteristics. Moreover the existence of Negroid and Mongoloid races in prehistoric Europe is a further proof that cross-breeding is not a recent phenomenon, and that the oldest populations of Europe are no more than the product of such miscegenation over thousands of years. Yet they show neither the disharmony nor the degeneration which many writers believe to result from racial interbreeding.

History shows us that all the areas in which a high culture has developed have been the scene of the conquest of an indigenous race by foreign nomadic groups, followed by the breaking down of caste divisions and the creation of new amalgams; these, though regarded as racially homogeneous nations, were in fact no more than new  nationalities comprising different races.

Those who, like Jon A. Mjöen, consider miscegenation dangerous for the future of mankind, assert that it is a source of physical degeneracy and that immunity against certain diseases diminishes. They allege that prostitutes and vagrants are commoner among half-bred than among purebred races, while an increased incidence of tuberculosis and other diseases is observable among the former group, with a diminution of mental balance of vigour and, an increase in criminal tendencies (Harmonic and Disharmonic Race Crossing and Harmonic and Unharmonic Crossings, 1922). These data are not valid because the writer does not specify the types of individuals studied nor the general characteristics of the races which have interbred; he ought also to prove that the specific families whose interbreeding produced the half-breeds examined were physically and mentally healthy and free of any sign of degeneracy or disability. Mjöen also entirely overlooks the influence of the social background on the subjects’ behaviour.

C. B. Davenport also demonstrates (in The Effects of Racial Miscegenation, 1917) the existence of disharmonic phenomena in half-breeds-relatively small digestive organs in a bulky body, well developed teeth in weak jaws, large thighs out of proportion to the body, etc. It is not disputed that there are individuals displaying such characteristics, but it has not been shown that the phenomena are due to miscegenation; similar cases are found among old families while generally speaking crossbreeding between black and white produces well proportioned individuals…

…The notion of humanity as being divided into completely separate racial compartments is inaccurate. It is based on false premises, and more particularly on the «blood» theory of heredity which is as false as the old racist theory. «Of one blood» is a phrase without meaning, since the genes or factors of heredity have no connection whatever with the blood, and are independent elements which not only do not amalgamate but tend to become most sharply differentiated. Heredity is not a fluid transmitted through the blood, nor is it true that the different «bloods» of the progenitors are mixed and combined in their offspring.

The myth of «blood» as the decisive criterion regarding the value of a cross persists even in our own day and men still speak of «blood» as the vehicle of inherited qualities, «of my own blood», «the voice of blood», «mixed blood», «new blood», «half blood», etc. The terms, «blue blood» and «plebeian blood» have become a permanent part of everyday speech as descriptions of the descendants of aristocratic and plebeian families respectively, the last being used in a depreciative sense. «Blood» is also to mean nationality: «German blood», «Spanish blood», «Jewish blood», etc. The criterion reaches the nadir of absurdity in such cases as the classification in the United States of those individuals as «Negroes» or «Indians» who have one-sixteenth part of Indian blood» or «black blood»—that is, when one of their sixteen direct ancestors (great-great-grandparents) was a Negro or an Indian…

…Accordingly we can sum up the position more or less as follows: (a) miscegenation has existed since the dawn of human life; (b) miscegenation results in a greater somatic and psychic variability and allows of the emergence of a great variety of new gene combinations, thus increasing the range of hereditary characteristics in the new population group; (c) speaking biologically, miscegenation is neither good nor bad, its effects being dependent in every case on the individual characteristics of the persons between whom such crossbreeding takes place. As, in general, miscegenation occurs more frequently between individuals on the lower social levels and in unsatisfactory economic and social circumstances, the causes of certain anomalies observable must be sought in this fact rather than in the fact of miscegenation as such; (d) examples of «pure races» or of isolated human groups having developed a high culture independently are the exception; (e) on the contrary the great majority of areas of high civilization are inhabited by obviously cross-bred groups….

Read the entire book here.