Back in 2002, I wrote a pioneering story on DNA testing for racial admixture based on the work of geneticist Mark Shriver: "How White Are Blacks? How Black Are Whites?"
Now, in The Root, Harvard African-American studies professor Henry Louis Gates continues on with his interest in ancestry testing, providing some updating for the preliminary data in my 2002 article. Gates writes:
* According to Ancestry.com, the average African American is 65 percent sub-Saharan African, 29 percent European and 2 percent Native American.
* According to 23andme.com, the average African American is 75 percent sub-Saharan African, 22 percent European and only 0.6 percent Native American.
* According to Family Tree DNA.com, the average African American is 72.95 percent sub-Saharan African, 22.83 percent European and 1.7 percent Native American.
* According to National Geographic's Genographic Project, the average African American is 80 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 1 percent Native American.
Presumably, the National Geographic project is trying harder than the commercial projects to get a representative, non-self selected sample, so that sounds like the best set of numbers to use as a rule of thumb.
By the way, the notion that African Americans are about 1/5th white was an assumption of physical anthropologists back around 1950. DNA testing has just confirmed what your lying eyes tell you.
* According to AfricanDNA, in which I am a partner with Family Tree DNA, the average African American is 79 percent sub-Saharan African, 19 percent European and 2 percent Native American.
And for our African-American male guests, there has been still another astonishing fact revealed about their paternal ancestry -- their father's father's father's line -- through their y-DNA: A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality.
We can be confident of that because no woman in history was ever attracted to a higher social status man.
I find two things quite fascinating about these results. First of all, simply glancing at these statistics reveals that virtually none of the African Americans tested by these DNA companies is inferred to be 100 percent sub-Saharan African, although each company has analyzed Africans and African immigrants who did test 100 percent sub-Saharan in origin. Ranges, of course, vary from individual to individual. Spencer Wells, director of National Geographic's Genographic Project, explained to me that the African Americans they've tested range from 53 percent to 95 percent sub-Saharan African, 3 percent to 46 percent European and zero percent to 3 percent Native American.
So, in the National Geographic sample, every single self-identified African-American is majority black by ancestry, and thus is blacker than President Obama. In my article, the estimate was that 90% of self-identified African Americans were no more than 50% white. Gates ups that to 100%, which seems implausible.
And second, these findings show that the common claim that many African Americans make about their high percentage of Native American ancestry is a myth. Joanna Mountain broke down to me our low amounts of Native American ancestry in this way: "Eighty percent of African Americans have less than 1 percent Native American ancestry. Over 2.5 percent have between 2 percent and 3 percent. And of all African Americans who have at least 1 percent Native American ancestry, the average is 2 percent Native American." So much for all of those putative Cherokee roots on just about every black person's family tree, fabricated to explain why your great-grandmother had "high cheekbones and straight black hair"! Why there is such little evidence of genetic mingling between African Americans and Native Americans deserves a column of its own.
Shriver hadn't found any American Indian admixture in self-identified African-Americans, so what Gates reports sounds more plausible.
One possibility is that people of mixed black-Indian ancestry these days try to identify as Indian to get their cut of casino money. A hundred years ago, it was better to be Indian than black, then it became better to be black than Indian, but the casino law of the late 1980s may have shifted the balance again.
For example, I used to read that the first black man to play in the U.S. Open golf tournament was John Shippen in 1896, a caddy at Shinnecock Hills. But, recently, the Obama Administration declared the Shinnecocks an official Indian tribe, and they've been pursuing a casino ever since. The Cherokee Tribe recently kicked out thousands of members for being the descendants of the Cherokees' black slaves.
The results for Latinos, however, are quite different: "In our experience," Mountain says, "people who have both African ancestry [at least 10 percent, according to genetics] and a lot of Asian/Native American ancestry [at least 10 percent, according to genetics] are more likely to consider themselves Latino than African American."
George Zimmerman?
And what about the percentages of "black" or sub-Saharan ancestry in the white American community? That will be the subject of another column. But suffice it to say here that, according to Mountain, "The bottom line is that 3 percent to 4 percent of people likely to consider themselves as all 'white' have some African ancestry -- between 0.5 percent and 5 percent."
In 2002, Shriver estimated that only 70 percent of American whites had no black ancestors, but now Gates says the consensus is over 95 percent of whites have no black ancestors. I'm not sure which number I find more likely.
If you do math on Gates' figures, that comes out to a tiny percentage of black ancestry among self-identified white Americans. Let's calculate the upper limit: 4% of white individuals times 5% black ancestors = 0.2% black ancestry among whites. That's basically nothing. And that's the upper limit.
If you do the math on the midpoints -- 3.5% of individuals times 2.75% ancestry -- you get just under 0.1% as the best guesstimate of self-identified white Americans' black genes. That's extraordinarily negligible. I'm shocked by what a small number less than 1/1,000 is.
Of course, when Gates goes to write it up, he'll probably emphasize the exact opposite. People don't reason comfortably with numbers, just with absolutes.
""The bottom line is that 3 percent to 4 percent of people likely to consider themselves as all 'white' have some African ancestry -- between 0.5 percent and 5 percent."
ReplyDeleteIn 2002, Shriver estimated that only 70 percent of American whites had no black ancestors, but now Gates says the consensus is over 95 percent of whites have no black ancestors. I'm not sure which number I find more likely."
My white American father in law is half Finn, yet he tested 5% African (also 4% east-Asian, due to non-Swedish Finns being ca 25% east-Asian). So my son is at least 1.25% African, probably more like double that (likely some on maternal grandmother side too); dunno if that's good for an Affirmative Action claim. >:)
I find the 95% no-black-ancestry figure incredibly unlikely, at least for the US South; for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%.
Both Cory Booker and Condi Rice are 45% European according to Henry Louis Gates's "finding your roots" documentary IIRC.
ReplyDeleteSo what will be considered cool in the future? The closer to 100% you are or the more mixed? Will african americans brag about being 95% black vs those who are only 70? Will whites be proud of being 100% or ashamed?
ReplyDelete"I find the 95% no-black-ancestry figure incredibly unlikely, at least for the US South; for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%."
ReplyDeleteUh no... for the simple reason that blacks in the south have the least amount of European DNA compared to blacks in other areas. Segregation worked.
Doubt it Simon. The image of the southern belle running off for trysts with the verile slaves is just another liberal fantasy. Or if it did happen I imagine the infant was probably quietly put to death and a miscarriage claimed.
ReplyDeleteAlmost all of the people that I know who are from the South, or who's families are from the South, claim to be part American Indian. Mostly Cherokee, but some Shawnee, Pottawatomie etc.. It isn't a black thing, it is a Southern thing.
ReplyDeleteAs resilient as black facial features are over generations, I suspect Dr. Gates' number is likely far more accurate than Shriver's.
ReplyDeleteTo the extent that Barry O is black, he comes from east African stock rather than the west African most American blacks come from. Thus his black ancestors are far more likely to have been slave traders rather than slaves. Why does no one poin this out?
ReplyDeleteEvery time Barry has gotten it on with an American black woman (my bet is there has been only one), it's like those slave women have been raped all over again.
What percentage of African Americans would have been classified as Black in South Africa, what percentage Coloured, and what percentage White?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, there are 4 types of African Americans:
(1)Pure Blacks, those with at least 95% sub-Saharan ancestry. Average IQ 80.
(2)Blacks, those with between 75% and 95% sub-Saharan ancestry, average IQ 85
(3)Afro-multiracials, those with between 25% and 75% sub-Saharan ancestry, average IQ 90
(4)Whites, those with less than 25% sub-Saharan ancestry and at least 75% European ancestry (Mariah Carey is an example of a white African American), average IQ 95
So even WITHIN the African American population, you have a 1 SD IQ gap between the pure black African Americans and the white African Americans. This huge diversity is one reason why African Americans are not as ethnocentric as some other minorities (i.e. Ashkenazi Americans)who perform better economically, even after accounting for IQ.
Of course there are no PURE White African Americans, because these must self-identify as European American (average IQ 100) or look really foolish (i.e. Michael Jackson's pure white kids trying to claim they are his biological offspring).
*Note, I am using the Richard Lynn IQ scale, where IQ 100 is the pure white mean, not the Ameican mean, because the American mean is too genetically unstable (demographic changes)to serve as a useful reference point. It's difficult enough to have to consider the Flynn Effect without adding in demographic effects.
It'll be fun to see what Truth, the Sailersphere's resident race hustler, has to say about this. In the past couple of weeks, I've seen Truth talking trash about "NY dagoes" and "crackerz" ....... but the second Troof thinks Steve or some reader isn't deferential enough of the black man (or worse, challenges the black man as all powerful master race of Nubian kings narrative), Troof gets all kinds of butthurt and comes on here to take it to the crackkkerz like the keyboard jockey version of Django Unchained.
ReplyDeleteSo how long will it be before Troof pulls himself away from building his Chris Dorner shrine and jerking off to Django fantasies to stick it to Tha Man up in this muthafukka?
C'mon champ, the bat signal is shining in the night sky to alert you to the presence of another "race" article at iSteve.
The Sailersphere waits for your response.
Don't disappoint.
The amount of admixture varies from person to person and also geographically. My lying eyes used to tell me that the blacks over at Cabrini-green were some real pure-bloods. Ditto for some of the other housing projects. Outside of those places not so much.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be confusing years ago when I heard light-skinned blacks, when asked why they were so light, would claim to be part Native American. Since one hardly ever saw a real live one, just here and there and at the Indian bar in the Uptown neighborhood, it seemed that somehow they must have really gotten around in the years gone by. Later I realized what it was: blacks did not want to state they were part white. Anything but that. To avoid that they claimed a part Native American heritage. Sounds more romantic and exotic that way.
"In 2002, Shriver estimated that only 70 percent of American whites had no black ancestors, but now Gates says the consensus is over 95 percent of whites have no black ancestors. I'm not sure which number I find more likely."
ReplyDeleteShriver's numbers are wrong, for reasons that were obvious at the time: he was attempting to estimate individual admixture using very small numbers of markers (a few dozen to a few hundred), introducing error at levels that would for practically all white Americans overwhelm any real signature of admixture.
In contrast, 23andMe's estimates use hundreds of thousands of markers, which makes possible accurate individual-level estimates. The numbers from Mountain are without question closer to reality than those from Shriver. The additional noise in Shriver's estimates also explains the greater number of AfrAms with over 50% white admixture as determined by him.
>>Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete>>Doubt it Simon. The image of the southern belle running off for trysts with the verile slaves is just another liberal fantasy. Or if it did happen I imagine the infant was probably quietly put to death and a miscarriage claimed.<<
Southern belles weren't getting pregnant by black men, at least until recent. Black women were getting pregnant by white Southern men in honky-tonks, and before that when they were slaves. Contra Gates, these liaisons were usually consensual. After a couple generations they led to a lot of Passing, with 25%-black 'whites' Passing themselves as white. Incidentally I have a 25% black in-law who's indistinguishable from white.
When I said 'Old Stock' I did not mean Aristocrat. The Upper class Southerners are probably the least likely to have any black ancestry. Most Passing was into the lower class, and in cities where everyone didn't know each other. A poor white labourer of few marriage prospects might marry a pretty 'white' girl, at least a girl he could convince himself was white.
>>Dahinda said...
ReplyDeleteAlmost all of the people that I know who are from the South, or who's families are from the South, claim to be part American Indian. Mostly Cherokee, but some Shawnee, Pottawatomie etc.. It isn't a black thing, it is a Southern thing.<<
Yeah, and when they DNA test, those 'Cherokee' ancestors usually turn out to be black.
Maybe Johnny Cash really did have Red Indian ancestry, he certainly looked it, but in most cases That Ain't It.
Anyway My 40-60% guess may well be much too low, but for Colonial-descent Southerners I'd be amazed if it was over 80% had no black ancestry.
ReplyDeleteAfrikaners are similar, BTW. >:)
Chicago mentions "the Indian bar in the Uptown neighborhood"
ReplyDeleteOn the corner of Sheridan and Lawrence, right?
When I moved in to Uptown in 1988 there was a performance by an American Indian band called "Thunder Country" at that bar, with a huge Navajo-looking bouncer out front with waist-length hair. But then I never saw a hint of American Indians in Uptown after that.
n/a points out:
ReplyDelete"The additional noise in Shriver's estimates also explains the greater number of AfrAms with over 50% white admixture as determined by him."
Okay, makes sense.
Still, the sample would ideally have some individuals with one white parent and one black parent, like the President. They would likely be 50% white or more.
"Yeah, and when they DNA test, those 'Cherokee' ancestors usually turn out to be black.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Johnny Cash really did have Red Indian ancestry, he certainly looked it, but in most cases That Ain't It."
Cash found out he did not have any Indian ancestry. It was all British Isles.
It is indeed curious phenomenon that so many southerners claim to have some Native American blood. In Harry Crews' "Childhood," his autobiography about his sharecropping roots in Bacon County GA, he makes note of how absurd it was that everyone he knew (black and white) had a Native American grandmother/great aunt but that it was a point of pride and benign in most respects so there was no reason to question whether or not anyone actually was Indian.
ReplyDeleteWhy does this persist?
"One possibility is that people of mixed black-Indian ancestry these days try to identify as Indian to get their cut of casino money."
I doubt it's so intentional. Seems to me that to have some Native American blood is, simply, sexy. Essential wisdom, kinship to Mother Nature, etc. It's exotic but not threatening. In short, chicks dig it.
To the extent that Barry O is black, he comes from east African stock rather than the west African most American blacks come from. Thus his black ancestors are far more likely to have been slave traders rather than slaves. Why does no one poin this out?
ReplyDeleteBecause it's an internal family feud; in the context of all the genetic diversity in America, the genetic difference between these groups is trivial so it's in the genetic interest of East Africans and West Africans to stick together, regardless of past betrayals.
Also Obama was politically savvy enough to make sure he had a West African ancestry wife.
But someone should analyze Richard Lynn's data to see if there's an IQ difference between East Africans and West Africans. Given that East Africans were the most respected sub-Saharans, looked the most caucasoid, are the most elongated, and at least in the horn of Africa, have caucasoid (Arab) admixture, one might expect them to have higher IQ's, especially if they were smart enough to be slave traders instead of slaves. And given how rare East Africans are in America, it's interesting that America's first African American president was of East African ancestry.
Are East Africans the missing link as negroids evolved into caucasoids? They presumabley needed higher IQ than other blacks to figure out how to get out of sub-Sahara 70,000 years ago and evolve into non-Africans. I wonder how much of the black-white IQ gap can be explained by the fact that figuring out how to get out of sub-Sahara was an IQ test, given that there was a desert to the North and the red sea to the east.
Every time Barry has gotten it on with an American black woman (my bet is there has been only one)
My bet is there has only been one woman period, regardless of race. He was smart enough to know he couldn't run for president without a wife.
OT Steve are you trying to get rid of your older commenters? If even I have trouble reading the small digits needed to prove I'm not a robot, I can't imagine how readers over 40 feel.
I never met Mariah Carey but because we have mutual interests we have mutual acquaintances, plus her behavior is well documented. I'm guessing she has Mesoamerican indigenous and black ancestry in roughly equal proportions. She's nuts, and that's pretty typical of these admixtures from what I see in the workplace.
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is that these women can be strangely compelling to young White men: they marry and have kids with them, who are nuts too, and they wonder what happened. They often are quite curvaceous and like sex a lot, and when they bleach their hair blond, guys don't notice their used-brake-fluid skin tones.
Ava Gardner is probably another example. Great actress, and a self centered nut who went through Artie Shaw, Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra like the proverbial goose excrement through a tin horn. She never bred, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.
the descendants of the Cherokees' black slaves ...
ReplyDeleteThat's a good topic for an iSteve column.
... for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%
I'd more than guess that you're wrong, Simon. You claim to be some sort of academician, don't you? You have just completely discredited yourself.
" A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality."
ReplyDeleteThe article does not mention source information about the Y-chromosome data. R1b has long been considered Eurasian only, but R-V88 is a subclade found to have a high frequency in west-central Africa. I know that a significant percentage of African-Americans have this. It has skewed ancestry mixture estimates in the past.
There was a YSTR data base on the web that used scientific sampling to determine the STR signatures of different races for the purpose of identifying the race of a blood sample for criminology. I figured that 23% of African-Americans had European Y-chromosomes. I later interpolated the STR signature for the known R-V88 and this revised my percentage for Afro-Americans to 17% European ancestry.
The 35% mentioned in the article must have been a skewed sample and assumed that R-V88 was recent European.
Andrew
"It'll be fun to see what Truth, the Sailersphere's resident race hustler, has to say about this..."
ReplyDeleteJeez, Bro, is this whole Charade really necessary?
I mean, just admit to being a fan, and desiring my unique, and generally viewpoint, and I'll answer your question; maybe even send you an autographed poster if I get a self-addressed stamped parcel
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete...But to answer your question; oh wait, you never asked one...
ReplyDeleteI think that old stock white Americans, ie whites whose ancestors were in North America before there was a US are much more likely to be a bit Native American than Black African. Races vary, and so the patterns that people notice vary. Not a lot of race-ists think blacks are good at math and Chinese love to sing and dance. Whites may not have been fond of Natives overall, but they were at various times fearsome competition, trading partners...Natives weren't a monolith, and various tribes had different relationships with different groups of whites at various times. Contrast that with blacks: whites thought they were little better than animals, just beasts of burden.
ReplyDeleteWhite-native mixing took place both directions, with white men taking Indian brides, and Indians taking white ones. A Native American wife could be a good. Black women and white men are pretty indifferent to each other, and black women don't expect men to help raise their kids-they don't make very good wives.
Consider the situation of a black woman's half-white kids: they're raised by a strong single mom among blacks. Chances are the father provides more for them than black fathers do for their kids. Now think about the half-black kid of a white woman: men are averse, sometimes to the point of murder, to raise children who aren't theirs. A white guy who can't figure out that a mulatto was a cuckoo's egg wouldn't be capable of investing much in the kids. Either the mom raises the kid alone, which wasn't a particularly successful strategy or she/baby joined the blacks- Gates' mitchondrial DNA was European. Almost all half-blacks ended up ethnically black and in the black breeding pool, or dead before maturity. Finally, judicial and extrajudicial punishment for black men who had sex with white women discouraged blacks from trying to get up in dat with white women.
Look at some Native Americans in old photographs. Just look. Do they look black? Do you think mulattos and white/native crosses could ever be confused? Does Obama look Native American?
One more reason why Black Americans aren't very Native: Native/black mixes are extremely ugly. Google about for some pictures of Shinnecock Hills Indians. When I was at Southampton High School there was a 'Mo***ian' kid nicknamed Frog. It was confusing because they all looked like frogs. I'd bet Half-black natives and half-native blacks were genetic dead ends pretty frequently.
" A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality."
ReplyDeleteShouldn't this read more like 100% of african amnerican men have 35% of their genes from a white ancester? Its not that 35% have a white ancester and 65% don't, as the quote implies.
My bet is there has only been one woman period, regardless of race. He was smart enough to know he couldn't run for president without a wife.
ReplyDeleteLOL, Obama had white girlfriends before Michelle. She's probably the only black woman he's ever dated.
It must have been a sad day for Obama when he decided that he wanted to be President and knew that he couldn't mess around with white women anymore. (black politicians look like sellouts and can't gain broad support if they're married to a white woman - see Harold Ford, Jr.)
I don't like Obama's economic policy at all, but you gotta admire his conviction and willingness to sacrifice for his politicial - having to go home to that wookiee is certainly punishment enough.
I find the 95% no-black-ancestry figure incredibly unlikely, at least for the US South; for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the wisdom from way over in London, but those of us who actually live Down South know that this is a very dumb comment.
"One possibility is that people of mixed black-Indian ancestry these days try to identify as Indian to get their cut of casino money."
A huge percentage of Southern whites I meet do claim to have an Indian or part-Indian granny or great uncle. It's pretty predictable.
I don't know why this has become such a cool thing for Southerners to claim, but in most Southeastern areas it's not due to angling for any casino money. There's actually zero to no casinos in the vast majority of the SE - Georgia, SC and TN have none. NC has 1 relatively new (Cherokee) casino in the far western mtns., and Alabama has a tiny little crappy (Creek) casino that only has electronic slots and no table games, so it can't be that profitable. I don't really consider Florida part of the South.
The low percentage of black ancestry for self-identified whites makes perfect sense; half black kids tend to identify as black, and due to the low frequency of interracial marriages, will therefore tend to pair off with more blacks. See Barack and Michelle. It takes 3 or 4 generations of mulattos sticking with mulattos or whites to lighten the skin tone enough for the kids to fit in with whites (and to feel that they SHOULD fit in with whites when they look at themselves in the mirror). So the tendency is for the genes to go one way, from white to black.
ReplyDelete"who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality."
ReplyDeleteor money or a nice hat or booze or a compliment or etc.
.
"I find the 95% no-black-ancestry figure incredibly unlikely, at least for the US South; for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%."
Dunno about that. In environments like that where it's a big deal i think mixture is much more likely to be downwardly mobile than up with mixed race people becoming more black.
.
"it was a point of pride and benign in most respects so there was no reason to question whether or not anyone actually was Indian.
Why does this persist?"
Warrior cultures are cool but only *after* they've been defeated.
Apaches, Vikings, Highlanders, Samurai - same thing.
"Almost all of the people that I know who are from the South, or who's families are from the South, claim to be part American Indian. Mostly Cherokee, but some Shawnee, Pottawatomie etc.. It isn't a black thing, it is a Southern thing." - Its a get a special hunting license thing.
ReplyDeleteDavid Davenport:
ReplyDelete"I'd more than guess that you're wrong, Simon. You claim to be some sort of academician, don't you? You have just completely discredited yourself."
I seem to have caused a lot of offense. Which would support the thesis that white Americans are hostile to the idea of black ancestry and so tend to under-report it. I recall I was actually a bit flabbergasted when my Southern father in law just announced* the DNA test said he was 5% black, meaning my son (who I think had just been born) was part black, although we don't really have one-drop-theory in the UK, not to the US level anyway.
*He is pretty left-liberal and iconclastic though.
BTW my academics have nothing to do with population genetics, I just find Americans & race an interesting topic, and obviously relevant to my own life.
Steve,
ReplyDelete"Still, the sample would ideally have some individuals with one white parent and one black parent, like the President. They would likely be 50% white or more."
What I probably should have said is that I believe the greater noise in Shriver's numbers is the main explanation for the difference. Obviously, samples may differ for other reasons, and white admixture in American blacks can vary between regions.
Whether one would want to include people like Obama I guess depends on if the goal is to assess the ancestry of the historical American black population (in which case I'd expect researchers to only include individuals whose parents were both American blacks) or to survey the genetic makeup of anyone who currently identifies as "African American".
Simon,
"my Southern father in law just announced* the DNA test said he was 5% black"
I have a pretty good guess, but what company was this DNA test from?
"I seem to have caused a lot of offense. Which would support the thesis that white Americans are hostile to the idea of black ancestry and so tend to under-report it."
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time also support the thesis that hostility to black ancestry may have limited it because in that environment it guaranteed downward mobility.
There's probably a parallel in environments where religious differences were treated the same way. The level of admixture in the direction that would have imposed downward mobility would be lower than the other way round.
Or in standard class terms there'll be a lot more rich men having kids with poor women than the other way round.
jimi hendrix is the most famous black american who actually was part american indian. hendrix was also part irish, like cassius clay.
ReplyDeletei'm buying the claim that a very high percentage of self identified european americans have almost zero african genetic heritage. maybe it's not 95% of them but i'd be willing to bet it's higher than the 70% figure from the other study. there are various mechanics, effects, and reasons i believe this, but i don't want to make a long post longer.
"Why does no one poin this out?"
i have. i have pointed out that obama's ancestors were never slaves anywhere let alone in the US, that he has nothing in common genetically or culturally with the africans living in the US, and that he's only half east african himself.
"In my opinion, there are 4 types of African Americans:"
it is certainly true that the more european a black american is, the higher they will score on pencil and paper intelligence tests on average. they seem to inherit mutations which change how their brains develop. maybe paul thomspon at UCLA can speak to which genes specifically are different between the groups.
the mean IQ scores of self identified africans in the US is actually 82 or 83, not 85. it is expressed as 85 in most media discussions because that makes it an nice even 1 standard deviation difference. but technically it is larger than that. the IQ score difference is about 17 or 18 points not 15 points as frequently claimed.
on a seperate tangent, a similar situation exists among the european americans. there is a 7 or 8 IQ point score difference between the smartest european groups in the US and the dumbest european groups in the US.
"Afrikaners are similar, BTW"
no way. in fact the government in south africa even keeps a seperate official, bureaucratic category for people who are mixed race.
"The low percentage of black ancestry for self-identified whites makes perfect sense"
i agree, for various reasons.
In general, having an affair with a man of a different race than her husband is a maximum-risk behavior for a woman--the husband might buy the idea that his son looks a lot like his best friend or the poolboy by chance, but not that his kid is black by chance.
ReplyDeleteI have no data here, but it sure seems like passing would have been easier someplace with a lot of genetic diversity from immigration and not a lot of blacks, and especially someplace where the whole social system wasn't designed to keep blacks and whites separate, which I think describes the North and West a lot better than the south.
jody:
ReplyDeleteAs an extra check on the South African number, look at the HIV rate among black and white South Africans--it is quite different. Wikipedia gives 13% among Africans and .3% among whites and Indians in South Africa. Some of that may be due to greater black susceptbility to HIV, but it seems pretty clear that these numbers aren't really consistent with a huge amount of casual sex across the races there.
NOTA,
ReplyDeletePassing would have been easier in the North, cities, and especially Northern cities. Additionally, while blacks who looked white enough to pass anywhere at all were 100% ethnically black, they were genetically much less black. I'd guess probably 1/4 or less to even pretend to be Italian or 'black Irish.'
Yet
i have. i have pointed out that obama's ancestors were never slaves anywhere let alone in the US, that he has nothing in common genetically or culturally with the africans living in the US, and that he's only half east african himself.
ReplyDeleteNonsense, African Americans have TONS in common with Obama genetically. Both come from the sub-Saharan gene pool, both have genes for dark skin, broad nose, wooly hair. While it's true that one can make a clear genetic distinction between West Africans and East Africans, this distinction is trivial in the context of the vast genetic diversity in America, let alone the world. Not only has there been gene flow between East Africans and West Africans for as long as both groups have existed, both have genes and gene frequencies selected for very similar climates and environments.
"A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality."
ReplyDeleteBut was it rape rape? Was it legitimate rape?
Were I black I would be downplaying the whole "slavemasters raped my ancestors" meme. After all, the rapists were also their ancestors, and not necessarily the ancestors of many American whites, since most white Southerners did not own slaves, most white Americans lived in the North, and many whites came here after slavery was ended.
The fact is that people mostly accept the fate that life has dealt them if there seems no realistic way to change it, and they learn to try to find happiness within it. Slavewoman sleeping with the slavemaster was quite often a voluntary and even enjoyable thing - I'd wager that in the vast majority of cases a slavemaster slept with his slave with no coercion and no sense whatsoever that he was raping her. Besides, we know that black women are sticklers for virtue and monogamy...
"I find the 95% no-black-ancestry figure incredibly unlikely, at least for the US South; for old stock Southerners I'd guess it's more like 40-60%."
I don't, at all. In fact I'd wager that Southerners who consider themselves white are more likely to have some Native American ancestry than black ancestry. In the slave era it seems mulattoes were inevitably pushed into the black community, and there hasn't been much mixing since.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been a sad day for Obama when he decided that he wanted to be President and knew that he couldn't mess around with white women anymore. (black politicians look like sellouts and can't gain broad support if they're married to a white woman - see Harold Ford, Jr.)
I don't like Obama's economic policy at all, but you gotta admire his conviction and willingness to sacrifice for his politicial - having to go home to that wookiee is certainly punishment enough.
lot of obots here since the electyion. I guess the rest of us are just resigned until he goes away.
Anywy, I think the commenter with whom you are in dispute was referring to ....
B.
o. and Rahm Emanuel were members of "Man's Country" a bath house in Chicago. Barry was well known among Chicago circles, and in his church, for his down low activity. He was good friends with the openly gay choir master-teacher Donald Young, who murdered Dec. 2007. no, Barry was not known as a ladies' man, ever. Only in the mostly fictional-ghost-written-by-Ayres-autobio, did he have white girlfriends. FCOL, LOOK at him!
Interesting.....I would like to see what would happen if this same test was conducted along the NC/Va borderline. I guarantee you that the Blacks with high percentages of Native blood are descended from an ancestor who lived around that area in the 18th and 19th century. I know MOST slaves and Native Americans never crossed paths , but this was a HUGE problem at the beginning of slavery because Soooooooooo many Native Americans were kidnapped into slavery around Nc/Va.http://www.kegleybooks.com/Section_Home.asp?SID=74 There was a unique relationship here between Native Americans and slaves. There were whole tribes of Native American widowed by colonist and left as suitable wives for many Free Blacks in the area such as Granville and Halifax early in the 18th centuries......http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/CHAPTER1colonial.htm
ReplyDelete1790
In 1790 a petition was submitted form Gates County to the North Carolina Legislature, which read:
“The petitioners request the legislature to pass a law validating acquisition by a group of descendants of Indians and blacks. In 1724 the Chowan Indians received 11,360 acres of land in Chowan County, later Gates County. The Indians sold most of the land. The Indian men all died, and the women mixed with Negroes. The fee blacks and their mixed-blood children served as soldiers for the colonials in the Revolution. Supported by William Lewis, Samuel Harrell, and other white men, they seek title to small remnants of the aforesaid tract of land.”
We know who we are around here no matter what Gates or anybody says or at least African Americans do. Hell, come to find out, some of our "Native Americans" recognized by the state of NC and some in Va. have more Black ancestry than Native American. Don't forgeet the Melungeons to Which Pres. Obama's MOTHER MOTHER MOTHER(3 times) is descended from Free Blacks from this area. I traced my family to Guion Miller Cherokee rolls(Fultons of NC/Va border) where they were promptly turned away because they were descended from Africans but not obviously(have photos).
That's funny, cuz many black Americans have done DNA tests and have found themselves to have quite substantial amount of Native American in them.
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU!!!!! These people are stupid and very uneducated and in denial about heritage. POINT BLANK PERIOD
Deletequote-
ReplyDeleteYet, from another perspective, a sizable degree of racial mixing is highly unusual. There simply aren't many African-Americans or European-Americans who are mostly white but also substantially black. Shriver pointed out, "There is a very small degree of overlap in the population distributions." In America, most of the whites are extremely European and most of the blacks are quite African.
quote
Among self-identified whites in Shriver's sample, the average black admixture is only 0.7 percent. That's the equivalent of having among your 128 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (who lived around two centuries ago), 127 whites and one black.
It appears that 70 percent of whites have no African ancestors. Among the 30 percent who do, the black admixture is around 2.3 percent, which would be like having about three black ancestors out of those 128.
In contrast, African-Americans are much more racially mixed than European-Americans. Yet, Shriver's study shows that they are less European that was previously believed.
So it seems that some african americans do not have any other race admixture while some white do have recent admixture,of course whites have african genes anyway, all of them since humans come from africa but what we talking about is recent african admixture and 30% of white americans have it.
MOST AFRICAN AMERICANS DO NOT HAVE NATIVE AMERICAN DNA AND SOME ARE SAYING THAT MOST AFRICAN AMERICAN MAY NOT BE MIXED OR JUST ONLY SLIGHTLY LIKE 51% AT MOST.By the wy black who have 75% recent european dna are not bi-racial,they are still black.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about other Blacks, but I tested 9% Native American and 16% European. At 75% Subsaharan 15% was East African and 4% Central sooo
ReplyDeleteAlso, there are a WHOLE LOT of Whites on 23andme crying because no Native American showed up in their DNA. I've seen no less than ten threads of Whites whining because of their results, but swearing that gramma was 1/4 Cherokee. My results may be skewed somewhat since I came from the Mountains of NC/Va, but many Blacks I share with also have some NA, but not very much. What is rather common though is that gramma turned out to be another tragic mulatto rather than a Cherokee princess. I didn't really need the DNA test since I knew for sure that my NA ancestry was real, but that it came from Va. Amerindians rather than Cherokee. Its documented in an affidavit by a prominent White citizen on behalf of my grandfather in the Guion Miller app
ReplyDeleteWinston Churchill believed he was 1/16th American Indian and liked to dress up in an eagle feather chief's war bonnet.
ReplyDeleteHe probably wasn't, though.
Winston Churchill believed he was 1/16th American Indian and liked to dress up in an eagle feather chief's war bonnet.
ReplyDeleteHe probably wasn't, though.
Maybe he was 1/64 Armenian and 1/4096 India Indian?
I'm not surprised by the stat of 35% of black American males having a white paternal ancestor who fathered a child with an enslaved mother. That is my exact story for all four of my paternal great-great grandfathers who were white. But it seems that it's always assumed that the union with the enslaved mothers was negative. I remember stories of my grandparents stating that their parents, the children of these unions, were raised and educated in the same home as their half brothers and sisters who were white. On another note, everyone should see Spencer Wells' The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Fascinating!!!
ReplyDeleteI am black and I am ABSOLUTELY SICKENED and DISGUSTED with your obsession over genetic race. You whites CONSTANTLY tell black people to "get over it" and here you freaking are, literally MORE obsessed with our genetic ancestry, our skin color, and how we identify then WE are. This just proves racism is a WHITE PROBLEM that WHITE PEOPLE need to fix. Furthermore, I don't BLAME black people for saying they had "some Indian in the family." Would you want to claim ancestry from a bunch of disgusting white RAPISTS with a sick and phony racial hierarchy based on white supremacy? Would you want to be descended from animals who thought the more a slave looked like she was the product of RAPE, the more intelligent and RAPEABLE she was? Unfortunately a good deal of my family is pretty light skinned and for a long time we tried to say that we were CUBAN or somehow something other then descended from white pigs who systematically raped black women--unfortunately my father found some paperwork that says we're descended from white French rapists.
ReplyDeleteThank you !!! And then whoever wrote this very IGNORANT post has proven to be VERY uneducated, maybe their jealous of melanin skinned people who are blended with more than just African...don't be so intimidated by us that you write a whole post lying full of ignorant and untrue information about who we are..HATERS I SWEAR, WE KNOW WE'RE BEAUTIFUL ESPECIALLY IN THE SUN SINCE WE DON'T NEED TANS WEDON'T WORRY ABOUT SUNBURN BUT PLEASE PEOPLE STOP THE HATE AND LET IT GO. I AM INDIAN, HISPANIC AND AFRICAN, I SPEAK ENGLISH AND SPANISH LANGUAGE AND I HAVE VERY GOLDEN BROWN SKIN AND SHORT CURLY THICK HAIR. NOT BLUE EYES WHITE SKIN AND LONG STRAIGHT HAIR...I AM ALMOST 40 yet I still look 27 so just get over yourselves with this pettiness! Quit listening to your dead statistics its bull, trust me
DeleteLol. Emme D. Rapist pigs that created the modern world as we know it.
Delete"While it's true that one can make a clear genetic distinction between West Africans and East Africans, this distinction is trivial in the context of the vast genetic diversity in America, let alone the world."
ReplyDeleteNot true at all. Check out the wikipedia article for "human genetic variation." You'll see that what you're talking about is precisely the opposite: Africa in general and East Africa in particular has the most human genetic variation in the world. Even among East Africans; one East African could be more closely related to a white person from America... than another East African! Mind blowing.
If you want to talk about genetic differences; Out-Of-Africans (including white people and asians) are a small, small, small subset of humanity. The real differences are differences are among Africans in Africa.
What about the people who are mostly white but maybe 1/5 black? Where are they placed?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the people who are mostly white but maybe 1/5 black? Where are they placed?
ReplyDeleteYou know I'm a self identified African american woman who is mixed with Native American.. specially Amiisakpii Pikanii also know as Blackfeet from Montana. I have paperwork from the enrollment office that says so. But also, my family up on the rez knows who I am and accepts me as their blood. Which is really all that matters. I wish Dr. Gates would travel up to the reservation and look at the black/native admixtures up there. Most people think that I say I'm part native because my great great great grandmother was a Cherokee. princess. That's unfortunate because all the people on my mom's side are either full native or part native. And the majority still live on the reservation. With the dwindling population of natives there is a lot more mixture.
ReplyDeleteWhere is East Africa exactly? The African Horn or Kenya and Sudan?
ReplyDelete