arrived in 1870, my dad was youngest of ten kids.

While I celebrate my percentage of Irish heritage, I also celebrate the English and Crow heritage too.
As should people from Uganda and Haiti and Indonesia and Japan and Mongolia and any-fucking-where.
My point is that we are all one, the differences should not be hated, but enjoyed and celebrated.
In a century or two, the differences will be minimized.

Unless, of course, there might be a little English in there, or possible a bit of Spanish, or maybe someone else who went tromping through Ireland.

On the other side... well, there it gets complicated. I was told, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. I've got an Ancestry account, and from what I can find the Irish, one ancestor from Scotland I haven't been able to track back any further. But I found a lot of English... going back and back and back (with as much confidence as you can on Ancestry, basically, not much, but it's fun). But following the hints back far enough on the English side, I got to Vikings!

Anyway... in the midst of all of this.. people mostly from the British Isles moving to NY and NJ, and mixing genes willy-nilly, I found that one of my great great grandfathers apparently married a woman from South Carolina. Again, I can find nothing about her with any reasonable degree of certainty, but of the Jennie Jackson's (that's her name) in the 1870 census still living with their parents... well all the ones I could find were black. Now this is probably not true. Every member of my family that I ever knew was northern European pale, with typically Irish looks, and I did find a couple of young married women who are listed as white, and it's possible that Great Great Grandpa married a widow, I can't rule it out.

So I am sure both my kids are just about 100% Irish

a typical quote from the wonderful E.M. Forster, who also wrote a wonderful piece on tolerance as a great virtue.

or as I've often said:

We all have more in common than that which separates us- though that which separates us can seem vast, indeed.

All four of my grandparents were from what is now the Slovak Republic. Two were from the same village.

You may be able to go back 5 or 6 generations, but beyond that, unless your the British Royal Family or something akin, your ancestors are lost in the mists of history.

back to the Palatine Germans in the Rhine Valley in 1684. Both clans came to the new world in 1710. They have both stayed in the same area for centuries. I know of no other genetic influences in my family lines.

over the last 5000 years.

and very proud of not being from dur master race , creed or religion .

My grandfather on my dads side was half Mexican and half Arkansas/Missouri hillbilly aka 'Heinz 57'.
My Grandmother on my Moms side was pure Irish, "Pig in the parlour Irish" as she would say. My grandfather on my Moms side was half English and half Heinz 57.

My wife is pure Croatian. My children are half Croatian. Life is fickle sometimes.

mutts are always the longest lived. . Probably the happiest, too!

100 percent alien.

But this thing in Charleston, this racial hatred from this stupid kid, just BLOWS my mind.
Why can't people see, as cali said above, that we have more in common than we have difference.

the racist kid is probably aware that as humans we have a lot in common. He simply needs someone to blame for his shortcomings.

If you take a look at an ethnographer's map of Romania, it looks like just about everybody passed through at one time or another, and there was no doubt a whole lot of begattin' goin' on.

Since I was born in Pittsburgh, I'll claim 57 varieties.

I'm all American, though.

passed through that part of the world from the Romans era onward. Romans, Turks, Bulgars, Hungarians, Italians, Serbians, Croatians, Czechs and Slovaks, Germans, Romanians, Jews, and probably a few Mongols to boot. One of the original world crossroads.

There were Gauls who invaded Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece in the third century BC and wound up founding kingdoms in what is now Turkey.

The Vikings probably didn't make it to the Balkans, though they did have a kingdom at Kiev and served as mercenaries in Constantinople.

Somewhere between Eurasia and what is now the Southeastern US, my Tsalagi ancestors picked up some genetic markers from the Middle East, as well as some we share with the Ainu. I'm pretty sure there's at least one Choctaw in more recent generations. Other "isolated" populations have similar genetic histories.

I'm part Indian from India (my birth mother) and English (my dad). I'm fair-skinned and fair-haired, and sometimes people ask if I'm Swedish. Well, they used to when I was younger. One acquaintance said when I replied that no, I wasn't, "Are you sure you're not? You're the epitome of Swedishness!"

Her father came over from East Prussia when he was just a lad. Her mom's family got her from Germany one generation earlier.

Dad thought he was mostly German with maybe a bit of Scots somewhere along the line.

But yup, the human race is slowly homogenizing. Then the bigots will have to find some space aliens to hate on.

The whole thing of racial bigotry goes "whoosh" over my head.

Last edited Sat Jun 20, 2015, 03:28 AM - Edit history (1)

Then I went to college and I quickly figured out that the people of the world are divided into only three categories

Smart, interesting people
Ciphers
Assholes

The Sub Genius crowd divides humanity into Larrys, Moes and Curlys in a similar fashion.

And those divisions cross EVERY other false divide.

that the human race is slowly homogenizing. Well maybe a little more quickly than 'slowly'. My extended family is a perfect example of that. Within 3 generations we've gone from 100% white to representing half a dozen ethnicities. And even though my maternal grandparents were both white, when they were married it was a big deal because it was during WWII and my french Canadian grandfather was marrying a *gasp* German instead of a 'nice French girl'. So maybe they set the tone for their family.

ETA In keeping with some of the replies, I thought I'd put it out here that I'm French Canadian and German on one side, and Ukrainian on the other. Apparently though the German side may have some Roma, and on my Ukrainian side my great great grandmother was Jewish. And we can trace our French Canadian roots back into France and so that part of my family came to Canada quite early on, and I've been told it's rare that there is no Aboriginal blood in those who came that early, so I may have that as well. I'd like to do one of those DNA tests to see. Humans have always mixed it up to a certain extent - it's just easier now with air travel.

I know my heritage, and it's all Northern European: English, French, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, German, and Swedish.

Now, my kids are a whole nother ballgame!

sarcasm, right?

I'm 99% Caucasian. That other 1% is possibly Mohawk, but haven't been able to prove that. My hobby is genealogy.

The English fought the Germans. The Irish fought the English. The Swedes were Vikings. Yeah, all white skinned, but quite different.

And they associate with Italy, Spain, and Portugal as they are all likely descendants of the Roman empire. If you have ever been there, you typical French man looks a lot like your typical spanish man who looks a lot like your typical italian. Unless you are talking the Basque French. They are a different group all together.

I believe that the original humans arose in Africa. White people and everyone in between, are a mutation.

We are all made of the same stuff. We all live on the same planet.

We are connected with love. But too many of us forget this.

We could be evolving so that we don't have wisdom teeth or gall bladders anymore (I just had mine removed last week. Ouch!), but instead we are hung up here now with made up things.

It would have been great if when we saw the photos of the earth when we first went to space that we were reminded of how we are all connected.

Check my sig line.

But my grandmother prided herself on the fact that there were no Lithuanian Jews in the family.

Prejudice takes funny forms.

So, what's wrong with Lithuanian Jews? ... not that I am one: I'm another mixed Ashkenazi Jew - Latvian, "Austrian", and Russian.

Just that they were called Litvaks and were at the bottom of the pecking order.

Nationality, race, religion... all are a part of your mix. My dad was Catholic, mom was Protestant, I'm atheist.
Nationality, race and religion are closely tied. Religion seems to be fading among the younger generation.
National heritage in the USA is increasingly diverse. Races are blending.
The past, the days of strictness in regard to race, etc., is evaporating.
People like the Charleston shooter are anachronisms.

Take that back!

99% Ashkenazi, according to 23 And Me. Whatever that means.

Since I found that out, I've been convinced my grandmother was full of it.

My Lithuanian grandfather was active in the labor union movement - I'm told he once helped sabotage a factory during a strike.

That will bamboozle them.

I refuse to get pulled into the notion that we are different "races". We all come from the early humans in Africa, and became mutated and culturally divided over time. But still one race. Homo sapiens sapiens.

Personally, I can claim a mostly Scottish (paternal) and German (maternal) heritage, with small doses of Irish and English ancestors, and quite a bit of Native American blood (according to my mother, at least Blackfoot from her family and Cherokee on my father's side-- for some reason, she's talked about this lately).

It should be irrelevant.

A few years ago, a radio commentator in the greater Chicago area suggested we stop with all the black/white stuff and just call people pink and brown. Interesting idea.

My people were sailors, scholars and itinerant musicians (male side) and women who didn't want lives just like their mothers (female side). They all got around and my family tree branches far and wide.

We Americans are all likely mixed in some sense.

And if you go back further, some Basque. My British sensibilities are offended.

Bullworth has the answer:

Why hate someone for the color of their skin, when if you spend 5 minutes talking to them, you'll find plenty of valid reasons to hate them?

It is beyond my ability to understand the racial hatred, the mental lapse and the moral vacuum of that kid.
We are all one and share this planet. We should celebrate that joy, that unity, and not hate it.

But yeah, I'm a bit that way too. (bricklayer)

My father's family were protestant Irish. Boy, were both families disappointed in that marriage. Don't know much any further back.

Don't know of any other on either side.

Heading for a Latvian St. John's day midsummer weekend in Michigan as I write. Bonfires, beer, cheese.

😄😄😄

Sometimes I ask "different" people where they are from, their heritage. I find it fascinating.
I saw women at the local swap meet dressed in ankle length skirts and realized they were some sort of religious group.
I had to stop and talk to them--I'm a curious person.

I'm something like 98% Irish, 1.???% English and a fraction of a percentage point of "undetermined." So, I'm nearly 100% Northern European.

English and Italian the most. In the distant future, I'm sure most of us will be of mixed heritage. Racism will hopefully die before then though.

Neither my parents nor I were into genealogy, but although I call myself "white" based on appearance, I assume I'm mixed. It would be really unlikely if I wasn't. I just have no idea how much or of what.

It was pretty cool and you can find out quite a bit about your ancestry in an afternoon..
After the free trial, I think it's $19.99 a month.

I'm not really that interested in knowing my ancestry, though. I prefer to identify with people that I picked out myself.

English, Irish, Scottish, German and French round me out.

(Born in San Francisco)

... and in fact through most of my school years until a sophomore in high school, I lived in areas where white people were a minority (DC, Hawaii, and overseas).

It gave me a real good appreciation for how odd the white privilege was when I moved back to the states and really felt bad for a black girl who was the only one of her race in my high school classes then in a small town school. It was pretty clear why she was being forced in effect to hang out with the drug crowd then. I think in a different environment, she could have been so much more than what opportunity allowed her to be there then!

I loved it. I had friends of different races. My best sweetie was Korean. But all I cared about was surfing.
Same school as Obama.

Where he was born in Hawaii and then went on to live in Indonesia as a kid, I was born in Indonesia and then spent time in Hawaii as a kid...

Near the Fiume di Po. A valley apart, la citta di Canavese. One from Palazzo Canavese and one family from Romano Canavese. I always tell my parents I am likely inbred as hell.

hate the Nazi's of that day and even spent much of my life feeling guilty. DU has helped me get over that but I can claim a single heritage. My children, grandchildren and great grand children cannot.

I probably would not have thought anything about it if my hobby was not genealogy. Got started looking for my civil war era ancestor who was a Union soldier.

My maternal grandmother was full blood Cherokee, so I guess that makes my mother half and I would be 1/4? 1/8th?... I'm not too sure how that works... I just tell people that I'm a "Mutt" lol, or just another member of the human race...

Peace,

Ghost

Well, almost all of them ...

I've got genes from Loyalists to the Crown and Revolutionaries/Patriots.

One of my ancestors, who ran a tavern...was a supporter of the Whiskey Rebellion no they did NOT fly the stars and bars

But, my genes were shared by Rebels and Blue-bellies.

Mostly those genes aren't shared with the famous or important ... but I've got a US Ambassador in there nominated by a DEMOCRAT!!!! And, it must be admitted, one of Americas most famous mentally ill celebrities...Zelda (Sayre) Fitzgerald, bad luck with those genes... really.

I've got mostly WASPY working class relatives, but DNA says a Jew was in there 5-ish generations ago,
Worse for most of "my people" records show I have a CATHOLIC!!!!!!! as a grandfather. How does one deal with that??????

Those Prussian princes Grandma talked about? No, think poor Serbs and Polish Slavs and one very very angry 48er from Baden Baden

The Montauk we proudly thought we had in the lineage apparently never was anything but a pirate of Portuguese origins. Please don't knock pirates of Long Island, they were centuries ahead of their time...their gift has MADE Wall Street.

My puritan ancestors? Forget religion...they came here pursuing coins. They quickly realized the indigenous people had none of thse. But that guy made a little, spent almost all he had, and died with items of value that didn't even include the home he built (but which was one of the oldest wooden colonial structures in existence in New York in 1925). So passed a few pounds, 40 acres, a pewter pitcher, and a heifer. He gave the pitcher and the heifer to his daughter as dowry...daughters couldn't be given away without a bribe...ya know? She did OK, it was HER great grandson that was an ambassador

It's pretty clear that most of those folks favored the idea of a government established not on bloodlines graced by God, but on an investment of blood they shed at Ticonderoga and Monmouth, on lives lost freezing to death at sea in the war of 1812.
Those were lineages that enshrined struggle, including taking as a surname the placename of a skirmish facing Napolean's army south of Berlin.

They anted up their investment in freedom in coal mines, and in sweat shed in turning reclaimed post-office hardware into the basilica of St Josephats and the Milwaukee Old Soldiers' Home... and in failed dreams of yeomanism in the malaria infested wet farmland of post civil war south central Illinois.. btw .congrats to Peabody Coal...you found the real treasure that was under those fields!

I have held the hands of relatives who RIOTED for rights of workers, and watched a brother abuse his part-time workers. It goes on. I'm pretty white, but I've got black and Hispanic and Hmong in-laws I've got racist rightwing relatives, and some more or less tolerant liberal cousins, and a couple of hair on fire progressive family members.

If I had to guess. I'd say part of my family would suffer to move progressive agendas for tomorrows children, and part of my family is actively fighting against all things progressive.

This is an American life.

The embracing of our cultural history, out heritage, is part of the big picture.
My intent with the OP was to try to understand how someone could massacre nine black people, when we are all so interconnected.
Genealogy unites us all, and that union continues to get closer. So sad thinking about Charleston.....

I am mostly English with some Tuscarora and some Lumbee mixed in, but not the official Tuscarora Nation. They hate those of us in the Carolinas because we are too mixed race for them. Plus, they still see us as traitors because our ancestors didn't go to NY. A lot of (definitely not all, but a lot of) the Tuscarora and Lumbees here in the Carolinas hate pretty much everyone and will literally cut your throat if you point out that some of us are part African.

My biological family are some of the worst when it comes to that particular form of racism. My biological grandmother sat around every day talking about how much she hated black people, only she didn't say black people. She used disgusting slurs. She was so full of hatred that it was like a poison. Even as a child, I got tired of her really quick.

I didn't even go to my biological grandmother's funeral a couple years ago, because I just wasn't sad when she died. I wasn't close to her. A lot of the reason I don't know more about my genealogy is because of her and her racist bullshit. Every time I tried to ask her about the family history on her side of the family, all she ever said was "We got shit in our blood." then she would go back to complaining about black people. I kept on asking her what she meant by that until one day she said were were part black and to never ask her again. So, that ended that. And I still don't know any more about it than that. So, yeah, I'm a little of this and a little of that, but I don't know how much of each and don't care. I have finally given up on trying to find out more. I don't really care any more.

My biological grandmother said we are part black, but she spent most of her life literally sitting around hating black people, actively, daily, all day, every day. It's fucked up. She would literally sit on her front porch and seethe with hatred for black people. She might have had shit in her blood, but that shit was her obsessive racism, as far as I am concerned. Most of my biological family is like that and I don't spend any time with them.

When my mother was young, my biological grandmother took her and some of her other least favorite children (she kept some of her favorites) and dropped them off at the welfare office and told them they weren't her problem any more. My mother spent most of her childhood in an orphanage. My adopted grandmother adopted my mother later.

After my mother was grown, she tried to make up with my biological grandmother. She spent most of her life trying to make up with my biological grandmother, actually. I'm glad my mother had a falling out with my biological grandmother and we stopped going to her house while I was still very young. From then on, we went to the adopted grandmother's house and I spent more time with the adopted part of the family that didn't hate people. To me, that is my family, not the racist assholes I am related to by "blood."

My adopted grandmother was part Cherokee and part German. She loved people of all races and stood up against the KKK routinely. My aunt also once shot a KKK member when they tried to burn a cross in my adopted grandmother's yard. They were pissed off because my aunt invited a Japanese friend from her host family in Japan that she stayed with when she was in the Army, to visit her here in Rockingham. This was in the 60s. My aunt told them to leave or else and they did not. She shot one of them and they all ran away.

Also, in the 60s, here in Rockingham, my adopted grandmother warned a black family she was friends with that the KKK here was going to burn their house down. She took them in. The KKK went after her then, but she told them they had best back down. She somehow managed to back them down. She fed all of the kids in the neighborhood and knew things about who was KKK and who wasn't. So, I think that is how she did it.

From then on, Miss Rosa and her children lived with my adopted grandmother. She took care of Miss Rosa when she started getting sick. She took care of her until the day she died. I didn't get to spend much time around Miss Rosa, because she died when I was still fairly young, but I remember having the most fun with them when I was a kid. I also remember Miss Rosa and my adopted grandmother telling me they were sisters and blowing my little fucked up kid mind. I wasn't used to that kind of love. All I had ever heard from my shitty biological family was racist hate. I remember that day they told me that like it was yesterday.

Sometimes, you are better off NOT knowing much more about your heritage, if all you are going to hear is hateful racist slurs from most of your biological family.

Sometimes, you are better off being adopted by people from other races who can change your life for the better.

Blood/biological family means nothing to me. "Heritage" means nothing to me. When you have a biological family like mine, you thank your lucky stars you have an adopted family where you can feel loved and learn what love really is.

Yeah, "Sometimes, you are better off being adopted by people from other races who can change your life for the better,"
Good for you that you see this. I have never been able to comprehend racism.
Thanks for the reply.

grandmother was sisters with a black woman. They used the Bible to explain it to me, but I don't remember all of the details. I do know it is in there somewhere that we are all really brothers and sisters.

Before that, I was a very messed up kid. I was used to hearing racist hatred from the biological family, then heard that. It did change me from the path I was originally on. By blowing my mind they way they did, they freed me from the poison of racist hate. I'm glad they did it too. That day is a major memory from my early childhood.

I'm with you. I hope the races do mix enough that we can finally become just the human race. I'm sick of all the racist hatred all around. It's too much and the violence messes me up every time something like this happens.

I'm glad you started this thread though, because I hadn't thought about that day in a long time. Remembering it made me feel better. I only know I'm a mongrel of a few different races, but not the specifics.

I just learned that one of the people in the SC government started a bill to take the confederate flag down from the statehouse. So, maybe there is hope. You know?

He made it as far as Spokane, Washington and took a job as a teacher at Eastern Washington University.
One of his students was an adopted Crow orphan, sent from Lodge Grass, Montana to learn to be white.
He married her. My mom was born in 1908 from that union. She later disappeared after a supposed affair
with a man closer to her age. She was never found. My grandfather, C.S. Kingston,(you can google) later became president
and has a large building named for him at EWU. I have an old photo of my grandmother, dressed as a white woman,
she was quite good looking. My uncle went to look for her during the Great Depression but never found her.

Please don't take offense. I am not very clever. I guess I was trying to say that people should love and respect people of all races and heritages. No exceptions.

when I intended it to be about my gut wrenching reaction to the shooting in Charleston.
I can't wrap my head around the hate in that kid. We are all one Katashi, you as Japanese (I assume) me as mixed breed Mick.
The racial stuff does not compute in my brain. Should not our differences be celebrated?

Of course this was before being Hafu (Half Japanese) became culturally cool.

But I agree diversity should be embraced.

I know it's just a theory, but given the clear biological tendency to hate those who are different from one's own group, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

Native Terran

(I don't know about that other stuff.)

Or more specifically I'm West Indian on both sides of my family (paternal side hail from Jamaica and my maternal side hail from Puerto Rico) with a bit of a trace to the Moors in northern Africa on my father's side (that's what I was told anyway, maybe my dad was exaggerating to connect our family to royals in that region lol).

And yes to your O.P., all of us humans are mixed in some way. Even the whitest or blackest person has different heritages mingled underneath their skin. To hate someone based on skin color is downright insane.

100% European, so far as I'm aware, and about 75% of that from the British Isles.

which is only about 3 generations, so who knows? I like to think I'm descended from Attila the Hun, or at least Genghiz Khan, and not a few tsars.

as well as Family Tree DNA analysis, my genetic heritage is from the British Isles, Western Europe, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, Eastern Europe, Finland/Northwest Russia, and the Middle East. And within that there's a good number of nationalities/ethnicities, so definitely of mixed heritage here.

We don't like to talk about the English/Irish quarter.

I'm hybrid, and I'm proud.