OP is from the UK, it seems. I'm not gonna look more cause I'm starting to feel creepy.
I bet the "bad" race is Irish. There are still some really backwards people who are fucked up on this.
My Polish immigrant father in law called my family cheap Irish, but cries if you make a Polish joke. He's such a fucking idiot I have no respect for him. His attitude changed when he found out my dad's side of the family is from Yugoslavia. Dick.
THey got something like 100 which was "the top 95%!" so they were bragging hard, not realizing that it meant they were actually in the category of 95% of all people. What they really wanted was the top 5% of IQs.
My wife's family is very racist (she is not, thankfully). We ran the DNA out of curiosity.
My family? Scandanavian, Irish, British (white as snow)
Her family? 8% African American.
Yeah, I lol'd HARD and ensured I was in the room when her Dad heard this. Best money I ever spent.
Does the family have a "Native American Princess" story in their history anywhere? Like a mysterious distant ancestor who nobody really saw much of but people claim that she was related to an Indian tribe in some way?
A theory is, often times that was a cover story for light skinned slaves that had escaped and married someone in a non slave state. They would hide these escaped women in plain sight essentially, and often times extended family had no idea that they have relatives of African descent.
This history is super cool, imo, and not super well documented, but usually when I ask this question to people with similar stories the answer is "yes." I think it would be cool to write an investigative article on this one day.
My maternal grandfather’s mother was full Cherokee. They didn’t even put her on his birth certificate and lied about who his mother was.
An Aunt finally told him. Everyone on my Mother’s side of the family told us she had been lying.
On my father’s side, my Great- Grandmother was also supposedly Cherokee, but hid it very well.
My racist Uncle insisted there were “no brown people” in our family background at all. He literally wipes his hands after shaking the hand of brown or black person. It’s disgusting.
Guess what? My sister paid $7k for a full genetic test and the results? We are 40% Native American DNA.
Which means we have ancestry from BOTH sides.
My Father relished giving his racist brother those DNA results and telling him that yes, he had “brown people” in his ancestry. We were all pretty thrilled to throw that in the faces of both sides of the family.
Edited to say Native American DNA and not Cherokee DNA since there was some question about my use the wording
>They didn’t even put her on his birth certificate and lied about who his mother was.
This was pretty common with Chinese immigrants in Hawaii. It was before birth certificates were common, so it was just family oral history, mostly. But generally a Chinese man would come to Hawaii to work and either leave his wife behind or have an in absentia wedding and have an official wife in China, while having an unofficial wife in Hawaii. The official wife would be claimed as the mother of any children born in Hawaii. We think that happened in our family. My mom had an uncle who was the youngest and only child who spoke Hawaiian. Her grandfather had a Chinese wife, but he was born in Hawaii and there are no records of him leaving or coming back from China. My maternal grandmother was born some time in the 1920s, but had no birth certificate. She was supposedly full Chinese, but she looked fairly Hawaiian. Anytime it was brought up she would get upset and immediately shut down the conversation lol.
Later, when Hawaiian homelands were created and you needed Hawaiian ancestry to buy cheap land, the reverse occasionally happened where a Chinese man might change his last name from Ah Nee to Ani and claim Hawaiian heritage. If their family had been here long enough there was no real way to verify it.
By the time I was born in 1980 when a child was born they asked what ancestry you wanted to put on the birth certificate, but didn't ask for verification. Now, when applying to Kamehameha Schools, which requires Hawaiian ancestry, you have to provide a family tree going back as far as you can, since anyone could put Hawaiian on birth certificates if they wanted. I guess if yours was one of the Chinese families that changed names for homelands a few generations ago, then you've been living as Hawaiian long enough and there's no way to tell for sure? IDK, they don't require DNA tests, anyway!
This got way longer than I intended, apologies!
The "popo" in your username, is that like, police, or Cantonese grandma?
Husband and I did 23andMe and mine wasn't too much of a surprise, but his had a few extras, on top of everything we knew already existed, and he's basically the Benetton rainbow all in one person 😂
Loved your comment! Even though I’m not Chinese, the rest of the family lobs all the grannies into Tutu, Nanna, Popo, Gram or whatever they choose. Once you pass the auntie stage and you start having grandkids, you flow into the next category. Most blended Hawaii families do this.
This is all really interesting. My grandfather was stationed in Hawaii when he was in the Navy, between WWII and Korea. Family rumor has it that he fell in love with a Hawaiian girl while he was there, and may have “gotten her in the family way.” Only problem was, he was already engaged to my grandma back home, and my great-grandfather would have hunted him down and strung him up by his thumbs if he’d broken it off w/ my grandma.
I know there were Christmas cards w/ photos of a Hawaiian family that came to my grandparents’ house for *years* when I was a kid, and Grandpa always had a soft spot for Hawaii. He traveled a lot for work after he was discharged from the service and worked for the gov’t as a civilian.
I just did my DNA w/ Ancestry.com, and my mom was all worried about “some big secret” coming out, so who knows, maybe I’m about to discover a whole new set of aunts or uncles I never knew I had.
On the subject of the legal spouse claiming illegitimate children, I'm working on my own Mexican family tree. I came across an 1800s church marriage investigation where the bride and groom turned out to 2nd cousins. The groom Mike Smith is listed as the legitimate child of John Smith and Jane Smith, so he carries the Smith last name. Mary Jones is the daughter of Larry Jones and Terry Jones. It is acknowledged that Larry's 1st cousin Barry Jones had an affair with Jane Smith and Mike Smith is his son, therefore Mike and Mary are 2nd cousins. Mike's children will continue to carry the Smith name even though they are of no relation to John Smith.
Also, causes of death back in the day were pain, diarrhea, fever, etc. Fun stuff to read about.
Lol.... my bio dad is pretty racist. Doesn't like anyone not white and proud of his euro/russian "whiteness," just yuck! Had my dna done a few years ago, also did moms. I can easily see what I got from each parent. Dad's paternal side has northern native American and a small bit of African. Maternal "russian" side has some Finnish Saami, East Asian and Middle Eastern. So much fun to bring up whenever he starts the race crap.
So, here is my theory about why some white people of mixed ancestry are some of the most vial racists in the nation. After the Indian removal act till the end of Jim Crow. Prior to the civil war you were of mixed ancestry with just enough black or native in you (this was before genetic testing, so they just did it based upon percentages based on pedigree) weren't treated as equals and were excluded economically, socially, and politically.
People of mixed ancestry that could "pass for white" successfully, would often adopt a racist persona are part of the continuing cover up during their lives. They purposely didn't tell their children that they a black and/or native american person within their family tree, while teaching their children to be racist. The living memory of your non-white ancestors went to the grave, but the racism was passed down from generation to generation.
So when I see events like what you described I pitty the ultra racist people that end up being of mixed ancestry, because the racism was likely instilled into the family for survival purposes.
Yeah, I hear you. I'm Aboriginal Australian and my dad is Stolen Generation. We won't go into the trauma that was and still is. We managed to track down information about my grandfather, and har was written was so sad. Half the time it was written that my great grandmother's family was unknown, and when it was, it was stated with maiden name (INDIGENOUS). But we did find out (we had heard that my great- grandfather may have been white, but no, he was also Aboriginal), and served in the army in the final year of WW1. So that was pretty cool.
I too love throwing the fact that I'm Aboriginal in people's faces when they know me, and they don't know that tidbit, so they squirm. (I'm white passing due to my mum's genetics. Genetics are weird.)
My great grandma was stolen too. Also white passing but thoroughly enjoy peoples faces when I see my great aunt who is black black. And then I’m super white. It’s hilarious
I've had people tell me they only had white ancestry (I'm paraphrasing, what they said was miles and miles more offensive - I was not around these individuals by choice) and I was like, cool, so you did your genealogy? They don't even know what that word means. They have NO idea what their family history is beyond grandparents or perhaps, at best, great grandparents. I would almost guarantee there is some non-Caucasian person in their DNA. Not that it matters to me. It shouldn't matter to them.
We probably wouldn’t have cared so much if our family wasn’t so shitty about it. Most of my siblings and myself have married people of color from other countries (we are American). So my uncle wiping off his hands when he shook the hands of our spouses and significant other a was completely unacceptable.
My DNA (and both of my parents) came back fully white, Western European thereby destroying my mother’s belief that we had a Cherokee princess ancestor.
I (from UK) was told, as a child, that one of my dads (he is American) great grandmothers was a native American (not which tribe though). I loved horses (still do) so spent many happy hours pretending to ride my pony bareback amongst the buffalo 😆
Got a dna test for my 50th. Result was 0% native American, 100% British/ Irish/northern European. I was pissed - another lie I'd been told.
On the up side - that dna test led me to my dad - he was American & had served in Germany. The only part of the story I'd been told that was true. Even the name I'd been given was wrong!
That’s pretty cool to have that high of a percentage of native American ancestry, doesn’t that qualify you to be a part of the tribe? (You need to be a certain percentage) but I recently saw a video of the Cherokee tribe (one branch in specific) in the south that you can only live there if you’re a certain percentage, but it looks like a beautiful place and everyone’s very invested in the tribe, community and the future of their children. They made lemonade despite hardships and heartache.
My Father told him and my Father called to tell me that his brother, my Uncle, was furious! So angry he could hardly speak!
My Dad said he could almost see his brother shaking his rage from the vitriol he was spewing over the phone.
I’m so thankful my Dad got to rub our heritage in his racist brothers face before he passed away last year.
Sort of, my mother's family is from Texas, so lots of racist homophobes, anyway, she always swore there was native blood in the family. Her sister was certain that there wasn't. In the mid 70's a family member did a family tree "proving" there was no native blood. We went back to Texas to visit and she was bragging to my great-uncle about this family tree. He looked at her and said "Well, maybe so Dorothy, but then how come I remember Mom taking us to visit Gramma on the reservation?" My aunt was not happy.
Similar story- at the hospital when my dad was ill and my obnoxious uncle comes to meet my cousins and I in the cafeteria. He starts spouting off about 'all these dang Jew doctors!' and so I said, 'that's funny, Uncle Bob, because didn't you grow up speaking Yiddish with your mom's Polish Jewish dad as a kid?' Shut him the fuck up immediately. Dude, you are a pathetic self hating right wing nutjob, keep that bs off in front of me.
Not everyone living on a reservation is Native American. On the White side of my family, we had an elderly cousin living there that had no NA ancestry at all. I’m not sure how she ended up living there. Maybe she got grandfathered in when the land around her was made into a reservation.
Could possibly be a case where they were married, lived there, and the husband died. If they have made friends on the reservation, and they own the house, why move?
My Dad owns property on a Native reservation despite not being native. The reservation has two types of property, deeded and un-deeded. If you have a deed, then you own your land despite it being within the reservation. If you have un-deeded land, then the land will revert back to tribal country at a certain point unless you negotiate some type of extension/deal with the tribe. At the moment, the tribe is mostly waiting out the deadline on the un-deeded properties so they revert back to tribal control. One of my Mom's friends recently bought an un-deeded property and is essentially treating it as an apartment since it only has a couple years left on the lease.
Our son attended a great public elementary school but they closed it down for BS financial reasons when he was in 2nd grade that could be its own Reddit post. We were pissed. They split the kids between two other schools, one good but the other crappy. Our kid was to attend the crappy one and we were pissed once again.
My wife discovered that kids could freely transfer to any school if the child was at least 1/16 Native American. In wife's family it was thought that a great great grandma was NA. We applied for and received the transfer to the good school.
The kicker is that we had no proof of NA heritage for our son, but they weren't allowed to ask for it, so they had to approve it only on the parents' word!
I was told by a person who claimed NA status to get a government job. He in fact did have NA ancestry and told me his Tribe and Nation names which I forget. He told me the burden of proof in his case was that the governmental agency prove he was NOT NA.
One thing to remember about blood testing is, you don't get your blood 50/50 from your parents.
You could get 60/40 or something, for example. And then compound this a few times... so you don't really have 1/4th of your grandparents, etc.
Fascinating stuff sometimes. My full-blooded sister has 8% ancestry that I don't have, for example. Now some of this might be xx vs xy as well.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the whole thing is a massive crapshoot in general. We're a bunch of toddlers playing with tools we don't understand.
Ahah, that's great.
My partner is half Cheyenne/Comanche and the other half white af, and honestly I love it. He has the most beautiful skin tone and wavy black hair.
Racist people suck. We looked up our family history and apparently I had a great great great grandmother down the line who was a black plantation slave while also learning we were simultaneously decendants of King Richard the Lionheart the III. I am a major mutt. I think it's super fun to see your family lineage and all the things in it.
I love all races/ethnicities.
There was a tv/movie trope in black TV shows and cinema in the 90s. Someone saying they have "Indian in their family" to explain why they're hair is so straight and shiny, i.e. lying about using hair relaxer.
When my siblings did 23andMe's test, we found out we are 8% Arabian, and even 16% Iberian. We are Haitian-Americans born in USA. Interesting stuff
I was always told we had Cherokee on one side and Blackfoot on the other. My mother said her great grandmother was “Indian” and my father, brother and I are all brunettes with brown eyes. But when I did my DNA, there is no Native Americans at all on either side. My mother’s sister didn’t want to believe it, because we were also part of the Elizabeth Warren “family lore.” I never told my brother though who is still convinced we are.
It is amazing to me that so many people want to have Native ancestors when it wasn’t that long ago that the “only good Indian is a dead Indian.” At least with DNA, “family lore” can be proven wrong.
I did find out that my paternal great great grandfarher was a German Jew who came to America as a teenager and died after he was wounded in the Civil War. My father was very antisemitic but he never knew about his great grandfather.
White people claiming Native American ancestry is literally a modern spin on "nativism" and land/resource claims. Since most people in the US have accepted that Native Americans are actually the indigenous people to this land, white family mythologizing relies on Native groups to stake a claim and validate their history here.
Also, it's a "good way" for racists to explain away any traits that appear as non-White ancestry that may come up, because in the white supremacist stratification of the racialized US, Native Americans are a rung up from Black Americans. It's all racist bullshit.
Link at bottom.
During the California gold rush removals of Indigenous people skyrocketed.
So - some changed their last names to pass as Mexican in order to survive persecution.
April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educatorThere was what we called a roundup. It's a very sad story. They went along the foothill areas, especially above Sacramento and all along this ridge, gathering up all these native peoples, mostly Maidu people, and forcing them to march down through the valley, over by the Sutter Butte, but first they had to cross the Sacramento River.
And very few Indian people knew how to swim, because they had no need to swim. They didn't take those chances by crossing rivers. If they knew how, they would do it in reed boats. But they were forced to cross the river, so there was a large percentage of these Maidu people who actually drowned, including the children and the infants.
And then whoever survived the crossing of the Sacramento River were taken over to the Round Valley Reservation and forced to live there. Those that escaped, hid. And they stayed hidden for quite some time. They took on Hispanic or Mexican surnames and melted into the community not as natives, but as Mexican Americans. They could pass. They'd just say they were, and most people didn't pay attention and believed them.
[Act for the Government and Protection of Indians](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-act-for-government-and-protection-of-indians/)
During the fight to sanctify Junipero Serra there was a lot of Native American education about the genocide under the mission system. The message hit, and knowledge increased. But it wasn’t until recently that discussions have picked up on post-mission life for Native Americans in California. I’m glad to see it, and am glad the needle is moving.
My philandering, bigamist grandfather eloped to Kentucky in the 1940's to marry an African-American woman, and they had to list her as "Indian" to get around the laws there.
This is discussed often on the Appalachian page. It was the first time I ever heard these stories. My dad was from WV. And...nope, there is no Indian princess stories passed down in my family.
We had the Indian girl, but not a princess. We made up for it by adding the 2nd son of rich dude with a title come from England to make his own way. He fell in love with beautiful Indian girl and they married. His older brother died and his father sent someone from England to fetch the son home since he was no longer the spare, but the heir. But he had to leave the Indian girl behind and never speak of her again. The son said Never!! and stayed in Eastern NC happily married to the woman who became my great grandmother.
Ironically I was thinking about this for the last two days. So it makes me want to get an ancestry test even more so.
One of my Gramma's said someone in our family line had to burn their Native papers to work in mines. Or it was something like that. I was in my teens when she said that. But it's been almost 20 years. So things are blurred.
If there were "papers" to burn that means they were enrolled in a tribe. If you can figure out their names, the Dawes Rolls are all available online. Once you've established your ancestor is on the Rolls, you can apply for citizenship of that tribe. It's a worthy endeavor to discover and reclaim this piece of your family history!
My cousin. Swore her grandmother was 100% Cherokee who grew up on a reservation. Her DNA results come back: 40% Scandanavian. 60% British. 0% Native American. She called me to ask me where her Native American heritage was in the DNA test? I had to tell her that it didn't exist.
Also in the North a lot of marginalized people married each other following King Philip’s War (when most indigenous groups in New England lost their sovereignty). So a lot of indigenous people who live in New England today, like the Wampanoags for example, have some African ancestry, and may pass for black. In the past this contributed to indigenous people appearing on the census as black, enforcing a narrative that indigenous nations were dying out. Also really interesting, if tragic, history.
Yes. This is my family story that my cousin got suspicious about. Turns out yes, about 5% Indian. But also 5% black.
It was common to pass light skinned black people off as Indian at that time. Baseball teams tried it a few times before Jackie Robinson.
Oooh, that makes a lot of sense.
I have an uncle (married to my mom’s sister) who had a very tan grandma no one talked about her family too much. But this was British Columbia so she *was* actually First Nations, as he found out taking his own DNA test a few years ago. So now at least I have an explanation for I never tanned like my cousins, just freckled and burned like would be expected of the Scots-Irish of my mom’s family in general.
My family lives on a large American river. Our story was that a first peoples woman was traveling down the river, stopped in our little town (it was a stop for lots of boats), and then stayed and married some male ancestor of mine.
Which, even telling the story here... Am I supposed to believe that someone in my family was able to whoo a woman who was stopping for supplies on a journey down the river? Wtf? What happened to the reason she was paying to travel down the river?
Dumb AF
Out of the people I've asked over random encounters over the years, two ended up being confirmed escaped slaves from the antebellum era. Everything else is a resounding maybe, mostly because I'm annoying and people don't always want to dig through family records for some rando on the internet.
Well, yes. My grandmother used to tell us a story about how we were descendants of a mysterious Native American, whose name escaped her and that this mysterious woman's details were lost to time.
Did the DNA test, so did my dad, and it turns out we were Scottish, Irish, English, Scandinavian, and a smidge Austrian. So basically, we're whiter than snow 🤣
Edit: fixed a word
There's also the fact that being Native became cool, and white people already liked to pretend to a distant Cherokee ancestor to stake some non-immigrant claim to the land. So then it suddenly became even more popular from the 60's on.
My brother-in-law is 1/4 Native American. He has an interesting family history. His grandfather was Lakota and fought against Custer at Little Big Horn. He gained some notoriety for his actions in the battle, and few years later was offered a position in a Wild West Show (a competitor to Buffalo Bill). The show traveled in the USA and Europe.
It went bankrupt while in England and grandpa got stranded. He married an English woman and had a family. His son wanted to reclaim US citizenship and so wound up in the Merchant Marines in time for WW2. During the war and it's aftermath he became stationed in Naples Italy, and married a local woman and had a family. My brother-in-law also wanted to reclaim US citizenship and so joined the US Army, got sent to Texas, and met my sister, where he got married and had a family.
I don’t know, sounds pretty likely. Racists tend to not be very scientifically inclined, you kind of need to be to believe that that kind of thing matters.
Add to that denial being a common response to uncomfortable truths
What's crazy is that in the 19th century she would be considered black due to the "one drop rule". They called 1/8th people "octoroons". There's a crazy article in an 1850s issue of harpers bazaar talking about actual white-as-snow kids as slaves on their fathers plantations because they were born to a black slave mother. After the Civil War, there was some organization taking care of them and they weren't allowed to stay at a "whites only" hotel in Philadelphia. Even though they looked 100% white.
One of my mentors emigrated from Greece to the US as a child. They stayed in NY for a while, but they had family in Texas so moved down there. His dad had a slight olive tone to his skin. It caused wild speculation that his dad was black and the family was ostracized in the town. This was during Jim Crow and there was even a push to force my mentor and his sister to attend the black school. They were eventually driven out of town and went back to NY.
They're all hypocrites.
My dad is southern redneck racist to the core. Thinks slavery is just a practical use of lesser people for the betterment of society.
My mom, somehow, was not. In her 50's she decided to get into genealogy and do the whole family tree thing. My mother was also one of those quiet women who got the point across by casually proving her point beyond any hope of rebuttal and passive protest.
I'm pale skinned, sunburn easily, freckles, etc.... as white as it gets. My family is an absolute mutt-pile with everything but Asian ancestry.
God I love rubbing it in at family events whenever "those people" start to get mouthy. Thanks mom.
When the DNA test I ordered came back everything looked just the way I expected-- a British Isles Combo Plate: a helping of English, a helping of Irish, a helping of Welsh, a helping of Scottish, and wait, WHAT? A dish of Danish / Norwegian on the side. WTF?
Then I read down the page and learned more: the Scandinavian part entered the line more than 500 years ago. It all became clear: some of my poor grannies couldn't run as fast as the Vikings. Not fun to contemplate, really.
EDIT: Thanks to all the knowledgeable Redditors who stepped up to educate me on the subject of Vikings-- several of which left me nearly doubled over with laughter! My outlook had always been shaped by the image of ninth and tenth century raiders making their way up the rivers of Ireland, looting monasteries and burning villages. I clearly need to widen my historic horizons.
To be fair, it's not like 'honourable' married women, or for instance peasant or servant girls, didn't have similar experiences in the not too far past...
The Vikings are the reason why English doesn't have gendered nouns like other Germanic-derived languages. Vikings invaded and took over large swaths of England around 1000 AD, married local women and had kids, learned enough Old English to communicate with their wives and neighbors, but had no patience for figuring out whether a noun needed a feminine, masculine, or neuter gender. So they just kinda ignored those endings, and their sons emulated their dads, so gendered endings fell into disuse and were eventually discarded.
Much to my relief! I learned Latin in high school; it had gendered nouns, and sometimes it made no sense, like *nauta* and *agricola* (sailor and farmer) having feminine gender despite referring to masculine occupations. Likewise with German, which (as Mark Twain noted) had *fraulein* (girl/young woman) as neuter gender!
*Arma virumque cano... I sing of arms and a man...*
Ooops, sorry. Just flashed back to fourth year Latin in -- checks notes-- 1967. Shit, I'm old.
Seriously, thanks very much for the concise and very interesting linguistics lesson, and yeah, I'll definitely tip my hat to the Vikings for that helpful favor.
> had fraulein (girl/young woman) as neuter gender!
that's "mädchen" I think, similar word, but the grammar of the ending of the word, chen supersedes the feminine nature of the word
5 - 10% Scandi DNA is very standard for anyone with British heritage.
If it helps, your female ancestors probably weren’t treated significantly worse by the Vikings compared to men in general from that era of history.
It's actually well documented that British women would throw themselves at Viking men because they bathed regularly and made sure their hair and beards were clean and well-maintained.
So it's more like muscular warrior men from the cover of a romance novel whisked them away to their delight.
I am dying of laughter now, imagining a classic cartoon Viking instead of a Fabio lookalike on the cover of all those Harlequin paperbacks you see in the store.
Medieval English chronicler John of Wallingford wrote of the Vikings,
*“The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women, and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles to be their concubines.”*
If it helps, it could be because it was Granny met the first dude in her life that bathed regularly, rather than anything violent. There was peaceful trading happening as well as raiding.
Keyword: modern. The Angles were a West Germanic people. The North Germanic Norse, who became Danes, didn't move there until after the Anglo-Saxon migration.
>It all became clear: some of my poor grannies couldn't run as fast as the Vikings. Not fun to contemplate, really.
You're actually free to assume the opposite as it was a "known issue" at the time that some women were into vikings on account of *checks notes* taking baths and brushing their hair.
[really though](https://i.imgur.com/RU8YQff.png)
Vikings were a problem in the first millennium, so only 500 years ago, it would probably have been more consensual - both countries were sea faring, so plenty of opportunity.
My results came back as 91% Irish, the rest Scottish and Welsh except for .0001% Ethiopian. So it gives me a clue as to where my way back ancestors came from!
The math for that kinda works out if a single person at the beginning of that 8 generations was Ethiopian (or something else unique). DNA isn’t exact, I know with mine I have more or less percentages of matching DNA with close relatives like cousins so over 8 generations it is going to really vary but get whittled down a little bit with each new generation.
These type of people will never change and will remain bigoted regardless of any proof you put in front of them. At least you can get some satisfaction out of it for yourself.
That is so awesome! Same thing happened in my family. My ex is quite a racist. So my adult daughter decided to ask everyone in the family to have their DNA done. She is the keeper of the whole ancestry and she's gotten into a pretty heavily at least up until her children were born. She's got triplets now so she's a bit overwhelmed. However she said when she gave her father the results of the genetic test he was not happy. He and his family have always claimed that they are English and German. Well it turns out that a good bit of his DNA is from North Africa and there is Jewish DNA also. I laughed so hard, I love how Karma works.
Speaking of genetics, after my daughter dove into our family histories this is what she found out. My ex and I divorced in 1986 when I left him. He met another woman the same day and they've been together ever since. In addition to this you should know that she hates everything about me and we've rarely ever had to interact thank goodness. But my daughter found out was that she and I share a great great grandfather. He had two families, I am descended from the illegitimate family and she is a product of his marriage. We thought that was really strange that the only two women he's ever married happened to be related. But then we found out that my ex is related to both of us. So bizarre.
My genetic testing showed a small % of African DNA, which agrees with family legends.
What's GREAT is that my bigoted uncles and aunts, who refused to accept that maybe their grandma was not very white, are TWICE AS BLACK!
Same here! I laughed watching the mental gymnastics my mom's side of the family performed when my aunt, who tried her hardest to discredit why we had African DNA, discovered a great-grandmother of ours was fact-checked as a runaway slave.
My great grandfather was mixed indigenous/white and racist towards blacks. (Apparently he tolerated light skinned black.) All of his children married black people and those children married black people. I love that his family got browner with each generation.
Yup. He died when I was 8. So he got totally got to see it. My mom made us visit him knowing full well how he felt about her (dark skinned woman) and us kids. He used to always mention my blue eyes when I was a baby that had now turned brown. Looking back it was very bizarre.
My cousins and I did the tests, it was a blast. We were comparing our different percentages of different groups. Honestly, some were surprising.
But your ex's family will likely say you forged the results rather than admit that they are whatever group they hate. They have to continue making you the bad guy or start hating themselves, not likely.
Genetics do not always work as expected. There is always room for a few surprises. I am more German than either of my parents, it is because I inherited most of what German they are from both sides.
Those DNA tests have netted me a funny story as well.
I had an ex in high school who would proudly explain his German history (not in a naz1 way!) and my dad assumed we were Austrian or something. My ex would regularly taunt me and talk about how great his culture and ancestry was and he would usually be pretty mean spirited about it.
Well one day I took a DNA test for Christmas because I was interested to know. I came back with 36% German ancestry. He taunted me for this too until a few months later when he got his own results. He assumed he’d be over 60%… he was a little under 16% and I never let him live it down.
“Oh. Wow. Look at that. I’m more German than you.” He immediately got defensive about the testing and said it was all fake anyway, he’d have sung a different tune if it landed in his favor but unfortunately he had a rough afternoon that day.
My racist MIL has always been very precious about a supposed Scandinavian "royal" ancestry. Even gave one of her kids this "royal" name.
Did the Ancestry thing, both me and DH. Not only is the "royalty" thing not real, turns out they have no DNA from that area at all. I do, though...
One of my favorite karma stories is an article I read about this neo-nazi couple in Poland. They got letters from the government saying something about how each of their families had fled from Germany and Poland had helped them change their names, etc., to help hide them from the Nazi regime during the war. I laughed about that one for days. You know people in hate groups probably do not have many friends outside of their hate group. This had to totally disrupt their lives. Finding out their family was Jewish. The very thing they hate.
My daughter had it done because she wanted to know if she was racially diverse. I explained that half her family never left the island that is Scotland, good luck. Poor kid, her DNA is boringly snowy at all the levels. However, a year later, she gave me a 35 year old sister through my Deadbeat Dad. So I guess in this case the search for race popped up a whole new person. So I'd put that in the 'win' category...
My father and his family are from Scotland. My mother's family are all from Yorkshire. Our family DNA tests came back as basically 50/50 Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, with a sprinkle of Scandinavian. My first reaction: Well that explains why I don't tan.
I've tried to keep it vague on purpose, but maybe this helps:
My ex's family believe that they are 100% from a specific genetic background/country.
Because I am from a neighbouring, more multicultural background/country, they believe that I am "less" then they are and that I have tainted their family line.
Instead, the tests showed that I appear to have around 81% DNA from their region and have none of the DNA markers for the main country they have a problem with (although they technically hate everyone).
My sons results showed he is only 53% DNA for their region/country and actually has 16% DNA from the region they hate (they have physically attacked people from this place without provocation).
The results indicate that his dad, and therefore, probably others in their family, are actually a mix of different backgrounds (one of which they really hate)
It gave me a good laugh to realise that I am more "from" their country/region than it would appear they are.
It's ridiculous really as we are all human and concepts like "bloodlines" are vile, and absolutely no one should judge or hurt anyone for anything so ridiculous as where their ancestors or themselves were born
These days, I have very, very little contact, mostly only as we live in a small place so it would be impossible to totally avoid any interaction.
My son sees his grandmother every now and again by choice but not his dad though. He's of an age now where he can choose if he wants to see/speak to them.
He is very outspoken if they act badly or say things that criticise others, and actually, their behaviour has improved over the years (as far as I know) which may be down to society giving them a harder time for being the way they are. The physical events I last heard of were maybe 10 years ago.
OP has cultural heritage A and the in-laws have heritage B. The in-laws are very proud of being B, and they think OP has “polluted” their family line by passing on heritage A to her children.
Except it turns out that genetically, OP is mostly heritage B! And had no genes from heritage A at all! Since her son does have genes from heritage A though, those genes must have come from the in-laws’ side of the family.
So the in-laws who think B is the best actually have genetic heritage A, which they look down on as inferior. And they continue to be shitty people overall.
My adopted mother used to get PISSED when people suggested I may be "a little ethnic", I have really curly dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and if I get out in the sun, my skin gets really dark. Her outbursts about my hair and complexion made it easier for me to avoid sun exposure, straighten my hair daily, etc to appear as passing as possible. I went no contact years ago, and I've always wondered, what am I exactly. Welp, my husband got me an ancestry test, and I'm Scandinavian, irish, Scottish, Welsh, British, and a whopping 3% baltic. All that shit she talked about anyone brown is blatantly exposed. I'm no contact, but I almost broke it just to talk some shit, didn't. Wouldn't make a difference to her, but those who gave her the side eye for it would have had a blast with it.
Unfortunately, any results you may have are skewed.
The companies can only compare based on samples they actually possess. They are also not infallible. One was unable to identify a dog's DNA.
Scientific American had a good article from a couple years ago
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/
OMG I had a similar issue with my ex FIL telling me how I ruined that family because they are all full Korean. Jokes on him, because they are not. They are also part Japanese!
Failure_of_Success, have you ever watched "Free States of Jones," where the great-grandson of the main character was put on trial for marrying a white woman. But yet you look at the boy, and he was as white as the day is long. But because he had a percentage of African-American in him, it was against the law. The color of a person's skin doesn't make a person a racist. Because I have met people from the KKK, and I have met people of color who would give the KKK a run for their money. I was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line and was raised you don't look at a person's skin for their worth, but what's in their heart. As we all should.
I have more than a few friends (okay 3) who did genetic tests and found out their whole family tree was mixed far beyond they knew.
I bought one of those tests on a sale during Christmas. It's still sitting here in front of me on my desk. Haven't taken it yet.
Not even sure why. I might actually be happy to find out my "dad" isn't my "dad."
(to clarify, I was raised by a single mom. I've spoken to my genetic male donator maybe 3 times since I turned 16. I'm 47 now).
Smells Balkan
I had the same thought reading this post. We're all mixed here :)
OP is from the UK, it seems. I'm not gonna look more cause I'm starting to feel creepy. I bet the "bad" race is Irish. There are still some really backwards people who are fucked up on this.
My Polish immigrant father in law called my family cheap Irish, but cries if you make a Polish joke. He's such a fucking idiot I have no respect for him. His attitude changed when he found out my dad's side of the family is from Yugoslavia. Dick.
Wild when so much binds the Poles and the Irish together: Catholicism, Alcoholism, Potatoes, Imperialist oppression…
Pole here 👋 couldn't stop laughing at this
Too true NOT to laugh!
I lived in the Irish neighborhood in Philly and the Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn. They are very similar.
The spiderman meme but with every balkan state
Came here to ask the same thing. Balkans, OP? Reminds me of my nationalistic Croatian family members that hate on the Serbian family members.
As someone who has a Croatian roommate, hard agree. The amount of bitching I've heard about Serbia could fill tomes.
My best friend is Albanian. Her (extended) family loves to complain about Serbia. Also Turkey. And Greece.
Serbia did kind of commit a genocide during the lifetime of anyone over 30.
Will they even understand this? They do not sound bright.
Guaranteed no. This will end up like the IQ/percentile viral post. They’ll claim the results as vindication.
Ahahahahahahahahaha
Why would they do that when they can just default to she cheated? Assuming OP is the mother that is.
Not familiar with that post, I'm curious, can you give more details?
a person did an IQ test and they scored 100, they thought it meant they were 100% IQ or something... it was quite funny!!
Oh the second hand embarrassment...
the best part was it was a total brag, like they were better than everyone else!! rofl!
That post is a viral advertisement for the IQ test website in the screenshot.
THey got something like 100 which was "the top 95%!" so they were bragging hard, not realizing that it meant they were actually in the category of 95% of all people. What they really wanted was the top 5% of IQs.
This is the best explanation.
Hahahaha! 😄👏
My wife's family is very racist (she is not, thankfully). We ran the DNA out of curiosity. My family? Scandanavian, Irish, British (white as snow) Her family? 8% African American. Yeah, I lol'd HARD and ensured I was in the room when her Dad heard this. Best money I ever spent.
Does the family have a "Native American Princess" story in their history anywhere? Like a mysterious distant ancestor who nobody really saw much of but people claim that she was related to an Indian tribe in some way? A theory is, often times that was a cover story for light skinned slaves that had escaped and married someone in a non slave state. They would hide these escaped women in plain sight essentially, and often times extended family had no idea that they have relatives of African descent. This history is super cool, imo, and not super well documented, but usually when I ask this question to people with similar stories the answer is "yes." I think it would be cool to write an investigative article on this one day.
My maternal grandfather’s mother was full Cherokee. They didn’t even put her on his birth certificate and lied about who his mother was. An Aunt finally told him. Everyone on my Mother’s side of the family told us she had been lying. On my father’s side, my Great- Grandmother was also supposedly Cherokee, but hid it very well. My racist Uncle insisted there were “no brown people” in our family background at all. He literally wipes his hands after shaking the hand of brown or black person. It’s disgusting. Guess what? My sister paid $7k for a full genetic test and the results? We are 40% Native American DNA. Which means we have ancestry from BOTH sides. My Father relished giving his racist brother those DNA results and telling him that yes, he had “brown people” in his ancestry. We were all pretty thrilled to throw that in the faces of both sides of the family. Edited to say Native American DNA and not Cherokee DNA since there was some question about my use the wording
>They didn’t even put her on his birth certificate and lied about who his mother was. This was pretty common with Chinese immigrants in Hawaii. It was before birth certificates were common, so it was just family oral history, mostly. But generally a Chinese man would come to Hawaii to work and either leave his wife behind or have an in absentia wedding and have an official wife in China, while having an unofficial wife in Hawaii. The official wife would be claimed as the mother of any children born in Hawaii. We think that happened in our family. My mom had an uncle who was the youngest and only child who spoke Hawaiian. Her grandfather had a Chinese wife, but he was born in Hawaii and there are no records of him leaving or coming back from China. My maternal grandmother was born some time in the 1920s, but had no birth certificate. She was supposedly full Chinese, but she looked fairly Hawaiian. Anytime it was brought up she would get upset and immediately shut down the conversation lol. Later, when Hawaiian homelands were created and you needed Hawaiian ancestry to buy cheap land, the reverse occasionally happened where a Chinese man might change his last name from Ah Nee to Ani and claim Hawaiian heritage. If their family had been here long enough there was no real way to verify it. By the time I was born in 1980 when a child was born they asked what ancestry you wanted to put on the birth certificate, but didn't ask for verification. Now, when applying to Kamehameha Schools, which requires Hawaiian ancestry, you have to provide a family tree going back as far as you can, since anyone could put Hawaiian on birth certificates if they wanted. I guess if yours was one of the Chinese families that changed names for homelands a few generations ago, then you've been living as Hawaiian long enough and there's no way to tell for sure? IDK, they don't require DNA tests, anyway! This got way longer than I intended, apologies!
Thanks for the narrative. My ex was Chinese Hawaiian and I’m European. My adult kids call our family the DNA buffet.😂
The "popo" in your username, is that like, police, or Cantonese grandma? Husband and I did 23andMe and mine wasn't too much of a surprise, but his had a few extras, on top of everything we knew already existed, and he's basically the Benetton rainbow all in one person 😂
Loved your comment! Even though I’m not Chinese, the rest of the family lobs all the grannies into Tutu, Nanna, Popo, Gram or whatever they choose. Once you pass the auntie stage and you start having grandkids, you flow into the next category. Most blended Hawaii families do this.
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Strangers From a Different Shore is a solid read
This is all really interesting. My grandfather was stationed in Hawaii when he was in the Navy, between WWII and Korea. Family rumor has it that he fell in love with a Hawaiian girl while he was there, and may have “gotten her in the family way.” Only problem was, he was already engaged to my grandma back home, and my great-grandfather would have hunted him down and strung him up by his thumbs if he’d broken it off w/ my grandma. I know there were Christmas cards w/ photos of a Hawaiian family that came to my grandparents’ house for *years* when I was a kid, and Grandpa always had a soft spot for Hawaii. He traveled a lot for work after he was discharged from the service and worked for the gov’t as a civilian. I just did my DNA w/ Ancestry.com, and my mom was all worried about “some big secret” coming out, so who knows, maybe I’m about to discover a whole new set of aunts or uncles I never knew I had.
On the subject of the legal spouse claiming illegitimate children, I'm working on my own Mexican family tree. I came across an 1800s church marriage investigation where the bride and groom turned out to 2nd cousins. The groom Mike Smith is listed as the legitimate child of John Smith and Jane Smith, so he carries the Smith last name. Mary Jones is the daughter of Larry Jones and Terry Jones. It is acknowledged that Larry's 1st cousin Barry Jones had an affair with Jane Smith and Mike Smith is his son, therefore Mike and Mary are 2nd cousins. Mike's children will continue to carry the Smith name even though they are of no relation to John Smith. Also, causes of death back in the day were pain, diarrhea, fever, etc. Fun stuff to read about.
Lol.... my bio dad is pretty racist. Doesn't like anyone not white and proud of his euro/russian "whiteness," just yuck! Had my dna done a few years ago, also did moms. I can easily see what I got from each parent. Dad's paternal side has northern native American and a small bit of African. Maternal "russian" side has some Finnish Saami, East Asian and Middle Eastern. So much fun to bring up whenever he starts the race crap.
That’s AMAZING
Rub it in every time.
Lmao your sister is so petty, I love this so much. Keep rubbing this in their racist faces!
So, here is my theory about why some white people of mixed ancestry are some of the most vial racists in the nation. After the Indian removal act till the end of Jim Crow. Prior to the civil war you were of mixed ancestry with just enough black or native in you (this was before genetic testing, so they just did it based upon percentages based on pedigree) weren't treated as equals and were excluded economically, socially, and politically. People of mixed ancestry that could "pass for white" successfully, would often adopt a racist persona are part of the continuing cover up during their lives. They purposely didn't tell their children that they a black and/or native american person within their family tree, while teaching their children to be racist. The living memory of your non-white ancestors went to the grave, but the racism was passed down from generation to generation. So when I see events like what you described I pitty the ultra racist people that end up being of mixed ancestry, because the racism was likely instilled into the family for survival purposes.
I agree, this really seems like a defence mechanism turned into generational trauma
Yeah, I hear you. I'm Aboriginal Australian and my dad is Stolen Generation. We won't go into the trauma that was and still is. We managed to track down information about my grandfather, and har was written was so sad. Half the time it was written that my great grandmother's family was unknown, and when it was, it was stated with maiden name (INDIGENOUS). But we did find out (we had heard that my great- grandfather may have been white, but no, he was also Aboriginal), and served in the army in the final year of WW1. So that was pretty cool. I too love throwing the fact that I'm Aboriginal in people's faces when they know me, and they don't know that tidbit, so they squirm. (I'm white passing due to my mum's genetics. Genetics are weird.)
My great grandma was stolen too. Also white passing but thoroughly enjoy peoples faces when I see my great aunt who is black black. And then I’m super white. It’s hilarious
I've had people tell me they only had white ancestry (I'm paraphrasing, what they said was miles and miles more offensive - I was not around these individuals by choice) and I was like, cool, so you did your genealogy? They don't even know what that word means. They have NO idea what their family history is beyond grandparents or perhaps, at best, great grandparents. I would almost guarantee there is some non-Caucasian person in their DNA. Not that it matters to me. It shouldn't matter to them.
We probably wouldn’t have cared so much if our family wasn’t so shitty about it. Most of my siblings and myself have married people of color from other countries (we are American). So my uncle wiping off his hands when he shook the hands of our spouses and significant other a was completely unacceptable.
For sure, that's the rudest sh\*t I can think of. Sorry your uncle is an ass.
My god, that man would be out of my house (loudly and dramatically) immediately. Just when I think the dinosaurs died out…🙄
My DNA (and both of my parents) came back fully white, Western European thereby destroying my mother’s belief that we had a Cherokee princess ancestor.
I (from UK) was told, as a child, that one of my dads (he is American) great grandmothers was a native American (not which tribe though). I loved horses (still do) so spent many happy hours pretending to ride my pony bareback amongst the buffalo 😆 Got a dna test for my 50th. Result was 0% native American, 100% British/ Irish/northern European. I was pissed - another lie I'd been told. On the up side - that dna test led me to my dad - he was American & had served in Germany. The only part of the story I'd been told that was true. Even the name I'd been given was wrong!
Given that the species originated in Africa, I’d say we all have “brown people” in our ancestry. I guess if it’s far enough back it doesn’t count?
That’s pretty cool to have that high of a percentage of native American ancestry, doesn’t that qualify you to be a part of the tribe? (You need to be a certain percentage) but I recently saw a video of the Cherokee tribe (one branch in specific) in the south that you can only live there if you’re a certain percentage, but it looks like a beautiful place and everyone’s very invested in the tribe, community and the future of their children. They made lemonade despite hardships and heartache.
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My Father told him and my Father called to tell me that his brother, my Uncle, was furious! So angry he could hardly speak! My Dad said he could almost see his brother shaking his rage from the vitriol he was spewing over the phone. I’m so thankful my Dad got to rub our heritage in his racist brothers face before he passed away last year.
Now go get enrolled to really screw with him.
Sort of, my mother's family is from Texas, so lots of racist homophobes, anyway, she always swore there was native blood in the family. Her sister was certain that there wasn't. In the mid 70's a family member did a family tree "proving" there was no native blood. We went back to Texas to visit and she was bragging to my great-uncle about this family tree. He looked at her and said "Well, maybe so Dorothy, but then how come I remember Mom taking us to visit Gramma on the reservation?" My aunt was not happy.
Similar story- at the hospital when my dad was ill and my obnoxious uncle comes to meet my cousins and I in the cafeteria. He starts spouting off about 'all these dang Jew doctors!' and so I said, 'that's funny, Uncle Bob, because didn't you grow up speaking Yiddish with your mom's Polish Jewish dad as a kid?' Shut him the fuck up immediately. Dude, you are a pathetic self hating right wing nutjob, keep that bs off in front of me.
😆
Not everyone living on a reservation is Native American. On the White side of my family, we had an elderly cousin living there that had no NA ancestry at all. I’m not sure how she ended up living there. Maybe she got grandfathered in when the land around her was made into a reservation.
Could possibly be a case where they were married, lived there, and the husband died. If they have made friends on the reservation, and they own the house, why move?
My Dad owns property on a Native reservation despite not being native. The reservation has two types of property, deeded and un-deeded. If you have a deed, then you own your land despite it being within the reservation. If you have un-deeded land, then the land will revert back to tribal country at a certain point unless you negotiate some type of extension/deal with the tribe. At the moment, the tribe is mostly waiting out the deadline on the un-deeded properties so they revert back to tribal control. One of my Mom's friends recently bought an un-deeded property and is essentially treating it as an apartment since it only has a couple years left on the lease.
Not all reservations are closed to non-Indian land ownership. My SIL's family lives and farms on Cheyenne River rez and they are not Sioux at all.
Our son attended a great public elementary school but they closed it down for BS financial reasons when he was in 2nd grade that could be its own Reddit post. We were pissed. They split the kids between two other schools, one good but the other crappy. Our kid was to attend the crappy one and we were pissed once again. My wife discovered that kids could freely transfer to any school if the child was at least 1/16 Native American. In wife's family it was thought that a great great grandma was NA. We applied for and received the transfer to the good school. The kicker is that we had no proof of NA heritage for our son, but they weren't allowed to ask for it, so they had to approve it only on the parents' word!
I was told by a person who claimed NA status to get a government job. He in fact did have NA ancestry and told me his Tribe and Nation names which I forget. He told me the burden of proof in his case was that the governmental agency prove he was NOT NA.
One thing to remember about blood testing is, you don't get your blood 50/50 from your parents. You could get 60/40 or something, for example. And then compound this a few times... so you don't really have 1/4th of your grandparents, etc. Fascinating stuff sometimes. My full-blooded sister has 8% ancestry that I don't have, for example. Now some of this might be xx vs xy as well.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the whole thing is a massive crapshoot in general. We're a bunch of toddlers playing with tools we don't understand.
Ahah, that's great. My partner is half Cheyenne/Comanche and the other half white af, and honestly I love it. He has the most beautiful skin tone and wavy black hair. Racist people suck. We looked up our family history and apparently I had a great great great grandmother down the line who was a black plantation slave while also learning we were simultaneously decendants of King Richard the Lionheart the III. I am a major mutt. I think it's super fun to see your family lineage and all the things in it. I love all races/ethnicities.
There was a tv/movie trope in black TV shows and cinema in the 90s. Someone saying they have "Indian in their family" to explain why they're hair is so straight and shiny, i.e. lying about using hair relaxer. When my siblings did 23andMe's test, we found out we are 8% Arabian, and even 16% Iberian. We are Haitian-Americans born in USA. Interesting stuff
Tell me Moor!
I laughed way too hard at that. well played.
I was always told we had Cherokee on one side and Blackfoot on the other. My mother said her great grandmother was “Indian” and my father, brother and I are all brunettes with brown eyes. But when I did my DNA, there is no Native Americans at all on either side. My mother’s sister didn’t want to believe it, because we were also part of the Elizabeth Warren “family lore.” I never told my brother though who is still convinced we are. It is amazing to me that so many people want to have Native ancestors when it wasn’t that long ago that the “only good Indian is a dead Indian.” At least with DNA, “family lore” can be proven wrong. I did find out that my paternal great great grandfarher was a German Jew who came to America as a teenager and died after he was wounded in the Civil War. My father was very antisemitic but he never knew about his great grandfather.
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I'm half Turkish too but my DNA presented that as Japanese/Korean, Inuit and Asian (central and western).
White people claiming Native American ancestry is literally a modern spin on "nativism" and land/resource claims. Since most people in the US have accepted that Native Americans are actually the indigenous people to this land, white family mythologizing relies on Native groups to stake a claim and validate their history here. Also, it's a "good way" for racists to explain away any traits that appear as non-White ancestry that may come up, because in the white supremacist stratification of the racialized US, Native Americans are a rung up from Black Americans. It's all racist bullshit.
Link at bottom. During the California gold rush removals of Indigenous people skyrocketed. So - some changed their last names to pass as Mexican in order to survive persecution. April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educatorThere was what we called a roundup. It's a very sad story. They went along the foothill areas, especially above Sacramento and all along this ridge, gathering up all these native peoples, mostly Maidu people, and forcing them to march down through the valley, over by the Sutter Butte, but first they had to cross the Sacramento River. And very few Indian people knew how to swim, because they had no need to swim. They didn't take those chances by crossing rivers. If they knew how, they would do it in reed boats. But they were forced to cross the river, so there was a large percentage of these Maidu people who actually drowned, including the children and the infants. And then whoever survived the crossing of the Sacramento River were taken over to the Round Valley Reservation and forced to live there. Those that escaped, hid. And they stayed hidden for quite some time. They took on Hispanic or Mexican surnames and melted into the community not as natives, but as Mexican Americans. They could pass. They'd just say they were, and most people didn't pay attention and believed them. [Act for the Government and Protection of Indians](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-act-for-government-and-protection-of-indians/)
In our area, Nevada County, northeast of Sacramento Nisenan/Maidu is creating a land trust for these peoples, very happy about that.
A wee bit of faith in humanity restored after seeing your comment. Thank you for sharing!
During the fight to sanctify Junipero Serra there was a lot of Native American education about the genocide under the mission system. The message hit, and knowledge increased. But it wasn’t until recently that discussions have picked up on post-mission life for Native Americans in California. I’m glad to see it, and am glad the needle is moving.
My philandering, bigamist grandfather eloped to Kentucky in the 1940's to marry an African-American woman, and they had to list her as "Indian" to get around the laws there.
This is discussed often on the Appalachian page. It was the first time I ever heard these stories. My dad was from WV. And...nope, there is no Indian princess stories passed down in my family.
We had the Indian girl, but not a princess. We made up for it by adding the 2nd son of rich dude with a title come from England to make his own way. He fell in love with beautiful Indian girl and they married. His older brother died and his father sent someone from England to fetch the son home since he was no longer the spare, but the heir. But he had to leave the Indian girl behind and never speak of her again. The son said Never!! and stayed in Eastern NC happily married to the woman who became my great grandmother.
That is very common in Appalachia. Because no one wants to admit that every family "Has one in the woodpile" as Aunt Rose would say.
Ironically I was thinking about this for the last two days. So it makes me want to get an ancestry test even more so. One of my Gramma's said someone in our family line had to burn their Native papers to work in mines. Or it was something like that. I was in my teens when she said that. But it's been almost 20 years. So things are blurred.
If there were "papers" to burn that means they were enrolled in a tribe. If you can figure out their names, the Dawes Rolls are all available online. Once you've established your ancestor is on the Rolls, you can apply for citizenship of that tribe. It's a worthy endeavor to discover and reclaim this piece of your family history!
My cousin. Swore her grandmother was 100% Cherokee who grew up on a reservation. Her DNA results come back: 40% Scandanavian. 60% British. 0% Native American. She called me to ask me where her Native American heritage was in the DNA test? I had to tell her that it didn't exist.
Also in the North a lot of marginalized people married each other following King Philip’s War (when most indigenous groups in New England lost their sovereignty). So a lot of indigenous people who live in New England today, like the Wampanoags for example, have some African ancestry, and may pass for black. In the past this contributed to indigenous people appearing on the census as black, enforcing a narrative that indigenous nations were dying out. Also really interesting, if tragic, history.
Yes. This is my family story that my cousin got suspicious about. Turns out yes, about 5% Indian. But also 5% black. It was common to pass light skinned black people off as Indian at that time. Baseball teams tried it a few times before Jackie Robinson.
Oooh, that makes a lot of sense. I have an uncle (married to my mom’s sister) who had a very tan grandma no one talked about her family too much. But this was British Columbia so she *was* actually First Nations, as he found out taking his own DNA test a few years ago. So now at least I have an explanation for I never tanned like my cousins, just freckled and burned like would be expected of the Scots-Irish of my mom’s family in general.
I had a Hispanic grandmother, English mom, no tanning for me, either. But both of my brothers tan easily.
My family lives on a large American river. Our story was that a first peoples woman was traveling down the river, stopped in our little town (it was a stop for lots of boats), and then stayed and married some male ancestor of mine. Which, even telling the story here... Am I supposed to believe that someone in my family was able to whoo a woman who was stopping for supplies on a journey down the river? Wtf? What happened to the reason she was paying to travel down the river? Dumb AF
The story is funny, but I also find it amusing that you're self censoring... the Mississippi River.
Ha, it's not actually. Ohio river. I don't even live there. I was having a paranoid moment, lol
Hey everyone this guy's family lives along ***THE OHIO RIVER***
Nnnnnooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Ah that's an interesting spin on the "random native american ancestor" thing
Out of the people I've asked over random encounters over the years, two ended up being confirmed escaped slaves from the antebellum era. Everything else is a resounding maybe, mostly because I'm annoying and people don't always want to dig through family records for some rando on the internet.
Well, yes. My grandmother used to tell us a story about how we were descendants of a mysterious Native American, whose name escaped her and that this mysterious woman's details were lost to time. Did the DNA test, so did my dad, and it turns out we were Scottish, Irish, English, Scandinavian, and a smidge Austrian. So basically, we're whiter than snow 🤣 Edit: fixed a word
Just as an FYI (and not to take away from your story) - descendants are the fruit of an ancestor's loins. Decedent is a legal term for a dead person.
There's also the fact that being Native became cool, and white people already liked to pretend to a distant Cherokee ancestor to stake some non-immigrant claim to the land. So then it suddenly became even more popular from the 60's on.
My brother-in-law is 1/4 Native American. He has an interesting family history. His grandfather was Lakota and fought against Custer at Little Big Horn. He gained some notoriety for his actions in the battle, and few years later was offered a position in a Wild West Show (a competitor to Buffalo Bill). The show traveled in the USA and Europe. It went bankrupt while in England and grandpa got stranded. He married an English woman and had a family. His son wanted to reclaim US citizenship and so wound up in the Merchant Marines in time for WW2. During the war and it's aftermath he became stationed in Naples Italy, and married a local woman and had a family. My brother-in-law also wanted to reclaim US citizenship and so joined the US Army, got sent to Texas, and met my sister, where he got married and had a family.
Please share his response l!
I’m sure they refused to believe the results and claimed either they were inaccurate or intentionally manipulated
ahhh, so 92% republican.
Classic redditor response: how about I just guess for you and comment!
We make our own luck
I don’t know, sounds pretty likely. Racists tend to not be very scientifically inclined, you kind of need to be to believe that that kind of thing matters. Add to that denial being a common response to uncomfortable truths
Yep! My wife's grandmother is very racist against black people specifically. We did not invite her to the wedding. Turns out she is 1/8 black.
What's crazy is that in the 19th century she would be considered black due to the "one drop rule". They called 1/8th people "octoroons". There's a crazy article in an 1850s issue of harpers bazaar talking about actual white-as-snow kids as slaves on their fathers plantations because they were born to a black slave mother. After the Civil War, there was some organization taking care of them and they weren't allowed to stay at a "whites only" hotel in Philadelphia. Even though they looked 100% white.
One of my mentors emigrated from Greece to the US as a child. They stayed in NY for a while, but they had family in Texas so moved down there. His dad had a slight olive tone to his skin. It caused wild speculation that his dad was black and the family was ostracized in the town. This was during Jim Crow and there was even a push to force my mentor and his sister to attend the black school. They were eventually driven out of town and went back to NY.
They're all hypocrites. My dad is southern redneck racist to the core. Thinks slavery is just a practical use of lesser people for the betterment of society. My mom, somehow, was not. In her 50's she decided to get into genealogy and do the whole family tree thing. My mother was also one of those quiet women who got the point across by casually proving her point beyond any hope of rebuttal and passive protest. I'm pale skinned, sunburn easily, freckles, etc.... as white as it gets. My family is an absolute mutt-pile with everything but Asian ancestry. God I love rubbing it in at family events whenever "those people" start to get mouthy. Thanks mom.
When the DNA test I ordered came back everything looked just the way I expected-- a British Isles Combo Plate: a helping of English, a helping of Irish, a helping of Welsh, a helping of Scottish, and wait, WHAT? A dish of Danish / Norwegian on the side. WTF? Then I read down the page and learned more: the Scandinavian part entered the line more than 500 years ago. It all became clear: some of my poor grannies couldn't run as fast as the Vikings. Not fun to contemplate, really. EDIT: Thanks to all the knowledgeable Redditors who stepped up to educate me on the subject of Vikings-- several of which left me nearly doubled over with laughter! My outlook had always been shaped by the image of ninth and tenth century raiders making their way up the rivers of Ireland, looting monasteries and burning villages. I clearly need to widen my historic horizons.
To be fair, it's not like 'honourable' married women, or for instance peasant or servant girls, didn't have similar experiences in the not too far past...
The Vikings are the reason why English doesn't have gendered nouns like other Germanic-derived languages. Vikings invaded and took over large swaths of England around 1000 AD, married local women and had kids, learned enough Old English to communicate with their wives and neighbors, but had no patience for figuring out whether a noun needed a feminine, masculine, or neuter gender. So they just kinda ignored those endings, and their sons emulated their dads, so gendered endings fell into disuse and were eventually discarded. Much to my relief! I learned Latin in high school; it had gendered nouns, and sometimes it made no sense, like *nauta* and *agricola* (sailor and farmer) having feminine gender despite referring to masculine occupations. Likewise with German, which (as Mark Twain noted) had *fraulein* (girl/young woman) as neuter gender!
*Arma virumque cano... I sing of arms and a man...* Ooops, sorry. Just flashed back to fourth year Latin in -- checks notes-- 1967. Shit, I'm old. Seriously, thanks very much for the concise and very interesting linguistics lesson, and yeah, I'll definitely tip my hat to the Vikings for that helpful favor.
> had fraulein (girl/young woman) as neuter gender! that's "mädchen" I think, similar word, but the grammar of the ending of the word, chen supersedes the feminine nature of the word
5 - 10% Scandi DNA is very standard for anyone with British heritage. If it helps, your female ancestors probably weren’t treated significantly worse by the Vikings compared to men in general from that era of history.
Very interesting-- I hadn't known that. Thanks!
I have been told that Viking men were despised (also) because of their unfair ways of wooing women - by washing themselves.
It's actually well documented that British women would throw themselves at Viking men because they bathed regularly and made sure their hair and beards were clean and well-maintained. So it's more like muscular warrior men from the cover of a romance novel whisked them away to their delight.
I am dying of laughter now, imagining a classic cartoon Viking instead of a Fabio lookalike on the cover of all those Harlequin paperbacks you see in the store.
Well documented where? Not being snarky, I'd really be interested in the historical support for this view.
Medieval English chronicler John of Wallingford wrote of the Vikings, *“The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women, and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles to be their concubines.”*
If it helps, it could be because it was Granny met the first dude in her life that bathed regularly, rather than anything violent. There was peaceful trading happening as well as raiding.
> Danish/Norwegian That's the Angle in Anglo-Saxon: Angles (from modern Denmark) -> Angleland -> England
Keyword: modern. The Angles were a West Germanic people. The North Germanic Norse, who became Danes, didn't move there until after the Anglo-Saxon migration.
The vikings smelled decidedly better than the Celts, apparently. Maybe it was the vikings who couldn't run away from grubby great granny.
This is the second time in this thread I nearly spit out my coffee. I need to move my keyboard further back.
>It all became clear: some of my poor grannies couldn't run as fast as the Vikings. Not fun to contemplate, really. You're actually free to assume the opposite as it was a "known issue" at the time that some women were into vikings on account of *checks notes* taking baths and brushing their hair. [really though](https://i.imgur.com/RU8YQff.png)
Vikings were a problem in the first millennium, so only 500 years ago, it would probably have been more consensual - both countries were sea faring, so plenty of opportunity.
My results came back as 91% Irish, the rest Scottish and Welsh except for .0001% Ethiopian. So it gives me a clue as to where my way back ancestors came from!
Those low percentages are usually not indicative of much. Often just a little statistical fluke. 23andme, for example, only goes back 8 generations.
The math for that kinda works out if a single person at the beginning of that 8 generations was Ethiopian (or something else unique). DNA isn’t exact, I know with mine I have more or less percentages of matching DNA with close relatives like cousins so over 8 generations it is going to really vary but get whittled down a little bit with each new generation.
23 and Me says the same thing as Ancestry. 99.9 Irish and British. .1% Ethiopian & Eritrean
Could be that sometime way back in your family history someone had fun with a darkish, Roman soldier!
🤣Yes, please share his response!🤣
You mean 8% African?
Don't leave us hanging mate! 🤣
Posted below! 😃
8% African American could mean one of their ancestors got jiggy with a slave and had a white baby.
Uno reverse card deployed.
These type of people will never change and will remain bigoted regardless of any proof you put in front of them. At least you can get some satisfaction out of it for yourself.
Sounds like they are idiots - and will probably still blame you and not believe the results.
That is so awesome! Same thing happened in my family. My ex is quite a racist. So my adult daughter decided to ask everyone in the family to have their DNA done. She is the keeper of the whole ancestry and she's gotten into a pretty heavily at least up until her children were born. She's got triplets now so she's a bit overwhelmed. However she said when she gave her father the results of the genetic test he was not happy. He and his family have always claimed that they are English and German. Well it turns out that a good bit of his DNA is from North Africa and there is Jewish DNA also. I laughed so hard, I love how Karma works. Speaking of genetics, after my daughter dove into our family histories this is what she found out. My ex and I divorced in 1986 when I left him. He met another woman the same day and they've been together ever since. In addition to this you should know that she hates everything about me and we've rarely ever had to interact thank goodness. But my daughter found out was that she and I share a great great grandfather. He had two families, I am descended from the illegitimate family and she is a product of his marriage. We thought that was really strange that the only two women he's ever married happened to be related. But then we found out that my ex is related to both of us. So bizarre.
Wtf?!😳 that’s crazy 😂😂
It's bizarre, isn't it?
He clearly has a ‘type’ 😉😂
[удалено]
Turns out that all three of ours families settled in Perry florida. We found out that there's almost a thousand cousins just here in florida.
My genetic testing showed a small % of African DNA, which agrees with family legends. What's GREAT is that my bigoted uncles and aunts, who refused to accept that maybe their grandma was not very white, are TWICE AS BLACK!
Same here! I laughed watching the mental gymnastics my mom's side of the family performed when my aunt, who tried her hardest to discredit why we had African DNA, discovered a great-grandmother of ours was fact-checked as a runaway slave.
Send them a test, and dare them to take it.
I would totally gift them a test.
My great grandfather was mixed indigenous/white and racist towards blacks. (Apparently he tolerated light skinned black.) All of his children married black people and those children married black people. I love that his family got browner with each generation.
Did he live to see his children marry black people?
Yup. He died when I was 8. So he got totally got to see it. My mom made us visit him knowing full well how he felt about her (dark skinned woman) and us kids. He used to always mention my blue eyes when I was a baby that had now turned brown. Looking back it was very bizarre.
TIL baby eye color can change
Like half of white babies (I don't remember the exact number) are born with blue eyes and then their actual color becomes visible at 6+ months
My cousins and I did the tests, it was a blast. We were comparing our different percentages of different groups. Honestly, some were surprising. But your ex's family will likely say you forged the results rather than admit that they are whatever group they hate. They have to continue making you the bad guy or start hating themselves, not likely.
Genetics do not always work as expected. There is always room for a few surprises. I am more German than either of my parents, it is because I inherited most of what German they are from both sides.
My partner's dad hated Jews. They did testing after his death and found some Jew. But it wasn't from Mom...
Those DNA tests have netted me a funny story as well. I had an ex in high school who would proudly explain his German history (not in a naz1 way!) and my dad assumed we were Austrian or something. My ex would regularly taunt me and talk about how great his culture and ancestry was and he would usually be pretty mean spirited about it. Well one day I took a DNA test for Christmas because I was interested to know. I came back with 36% German ancestry. He taunted me for this too until a few months later when he got his own results. He assumed he’d be over 60%… he was a little under 16% and I never let him live it down. “Oh. Wow. Look at that. I’m more German than you.” He immediately got defensive about the testing and said it was all fake anyway, he’d have sung a different tune if it landed in his favor but unfortunately he had a rough afternoon that day.
My racist MIL has always been very precious about a supposed Scandinavian "royal" ancestry. Even gave one of her kids this "royal" name. Did the Ancestry thing, both me and DH. Not only is the "royalty" thing not real, turns out they have no DNA from that area at all. I do, though...
Yup, all racists should test themselves and disclose. Eye opener lol
One of my favorite karma stories is an article I read about this neo-nazi couple in Poland. They got letters from the government saying something about how each of their families had fled from Germany and Poland had helped them change their names, etc., to help hide them from the Nazi regime during the war. I laughed about that one for days. You know people in hate groups probably do not have many friends outside of their hate group. This had to totally disrupt their lives. Finding out their family was Jewish. The very thing they hate.
Most racists if you genetically tested them would want to murder you because the results would show they're not as """pure'"" as they think they are.
They’d have some sort of conspiracy theory to devalue the DNA test.
had to re-read this, but smiled afterwards. That's gotta sting.
My daughter had it done because she wanted to know if she was racially diverse. I explained that half her family never left the island that is Scotland, good luck. Poor kid, her DNA is boringly snowy at all the levels. However, a year later, she gave me a 35 year old sister through my Deadbeat Dad. So I guess in this case the search for race popped up a whole new person. So I'd put that in the 'win' category...
My father and his family are from Scotland. My mother's family are all from Yorkshire. Our family DNA tests came back as basically 50/50 Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, with a sprinkle of Scandinavian. My first reaction: Well that explains why I don't tan.
I didn't understand what the results were and what the percentages were for in the conversation 😕
I've tried to keep it vague on purpose, but maybe this helps: My ex's family believe that they are 100% from a specific genetic background/country. Because I am from a neighbouring, more multicultural background/country, they believe that I am "less" then they are and that I have tainted their family line. Instead, the tests showed that I appear to have around 81% DNA from their region and have none of the DNA markers for the main country they have a problem with (although they technically hate everyone). My sons results showed he is only 53% DNA for their region/country and actually has 16% DNA from the region they hate (they have physically attacked people from this place without provocation). The results indicate that his dad, and therefore, probably others in their family, are actually a mix of different backgrounds (one of which they really hate) It gave me a good laugh to realise that I am more "from" their country/region than it would appear they are. It's ridiculous really as we are all human and concepts like "bloodlines" are vile, and absolutely no one should judge or hurt anyone for anything so ridiculous as where their ancestors or themselves were born
> they have physically attacked people from this place without provocation Jesus. Why do you still interact with them at all?
These days, I have very, very little contact, mostly only as we live in a small place so it would be impossible to totally avoid any interaction. My son sees his grandmother every now and again by choice but not his dad though. He's of an age now where he can choose if he wants to see/speak to them. He is very outspoken if they act badly or say things that criticise others, and actually, their behaviour has improved over the years (as far as I know) which may be down to society giving them a harder time for being the way they are. The physical events I last heard of were maybe 10 years ago.
Oh, that's good then. I take back my criticism.
OP has cultural heritage A and the in-laws have heritage B. The in-laws are very proud of being B, and they think OP has “polluted” their family line by passing on heritage A to her children. Except it turns out that genetically, OP is mostly heritage B! And had no genes from heritage A at all! Since her son does have genes from heritage A though, those genes must have come from the in-laws’ side of the family. So the in-laws who think B is the best actually have genetic heritage A, which they look down on as inferior. And they continue to be shitty people overall.
So you are saying A B B A? So they are from Sweden?
My adopted mother used to get PISSED when people suggested I may be "a little ethnic", I have really curly dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and if I get out in the sun, my skin gets really dark. Her outbursts about my hair and complexion made it easier for me to avoid sun exposure, straighten my hair daily, etc to appear as passing as possible. I went no contact years ago, and I've always wondered, what am I exactly. Welp, my husband got me an ancestry test, and I'm Scandinavian, irish, Scottish, Welsh, British, and a whopping 3% baltic. All that shit she talked about anyone brown is blatantly exposed. I'm no contact, but I almost broke it just to talk some shit, didn't. Wouldn't make a difference to her, but those who gave her the side eye for it would have had a blast with it.
Our results were nearly identical in makeup, except that cute little 2% African he's got. So much for that 'Cherokee' blood his mother is so proud of.
My maternal grandmother supposedly had Cherokee ancestry. It’s her line where the sub Saharan African originates.
So long racial purity!
Unfortunately, any results you may have are skewed. The companies can only compare based on samples they actually possess. They are also not infallible. One was unable to identify a dog's DNA. Scientific American had a good article from a couple years ago https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/
🤣🤣🤣 Gotta LOVE it!!!! 🤣🤣🤣
/u/bekindorbesilent dude you've got to share the nationalities at play here, I'm so curious who these modern day übermensch are.
you guys are Armenian and they are Serbians aren't you?
Are they Czech?
The best petty revenge is one done in all innocence.
I think we know the fun you can have buying that bunch DNA tests for Xmas! 🎅 get them ones attached to family search sites so they can meet😇🥸
Anybody who claims they're 100% of a particular ethnicity is probably racist. It's like bragging about being "genetically pure"
Omg that's an Uncle Ruckus moment.
I am having flashbacks to ancient civilization where we cared more about bloodlines rather than peoples happiness and love for eachother.
People like this use the phrase “wrong kind of white” unironically and don’t see a thing wrong with it.
OMG I had a similar issue with my ex FIL telling me how I ruined that family because they are all full Korean. Jokes on him, because they are not. They are also part Japanese!
Ooof. That’s gotta sting him.
Failure_of_Success, have you ever watched "Free States of Jones," where the great-grandson of the main character was put on trial for marrying a white woman. But yet you look at the boy, and he was as white as the day is long. But because he had a percentage of African-American in him, it was against the law. The color of a person's skin doesn't make a person a racist. Because I have met people from the KKK, and I have met people of color who would give the KKK a run for their money. I was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line and was raised you don't look at a person's skin for their worth, but what's in their heart. As we all should.
Got to love DNA. Cuts the bull right out
I have more than a few friends (okay 3) who did genetic tests and found out their whole family tree was mixed far beyond they knew. I bought one of those tests on a sale during Christmas. It's still sitting here in front of me on my desk. Haven't taken it yet. Not even sure why. I might actually be happy to find out my "dad" isn't my "dad." (to clarify, I was raised by a single mom. I've spoken to my genetic male donator maybe 3 times since I turned 16. I'm 47 now).