NYT columnist Brent Staples recently had his DNA tested to see where his bloodlines originated.
He found out that he was at least one-fifth Asian.
[...]Poring over the charts and statistics, I said out loud, "This has got to be a mistake."
That's a common response among people who are tested. Ostensibly white people who always thought of themselves as 100 percent European find they have substantial African ancestry. People who regard themselves as black sometimes discover that the African ancestry is a minority portion of their DNA.
These results are forcing people to re-examine the arbitrary calculations our culture uses to decide who is "white" and who is "black."
Those whites who find out that their antecedents may have been African or African American must realize that the opportunity for
passing was very strong, and that eligible light-skinned men or women who passed could call themselves Italians, Greeks, Spanish or Latinos, or even Jewish (Levantine) or half-breeds (Native American).
For the racial propagandists of the 19th century who wrote books about the 'mongrelization' of the white race, this was their worst nightmare.
It would be really interesting to see, for example, David Duke's true antecedents.
Staples is submitting to yet more testing so he could find out where his Asian ancestry originated.
[...]It comes as a surprise, given that my family's oral histories contain not a single person who is described as Asian. More testing on other family members should clarify the issue, but for now, I can only guess. This ancestry could well have come through a 19th-century ancestor who was incorrectly described as Indian, often a catchall category at the time.
Native Americans have been thought to be Asians as well. But other people of color from what is now Pakistan or India, or those from Polynesia on whaling vessels may have provided that missing bloodlink. Many free blacks populated near seaports in the 19th century, as working on ships or near that industry provided an opportunity for ready employment for both men and women.
The test results underscore what anthropologists have said for eons: racial distinctions as applied in this country are social categories and not scientific concepts. In addition, those categories draw hard, sharp distinctions among groups of people who are more alike than they are different. The ultimate point is that none of us really know who we are, ancestrally speaking. All we ever really know is what our parents and grandparents have told us.
And vital statistics among people of color weren't gathered until much later, after the New Deal. I know my great-grandmother's name, and that she had had a couple of husbands, but little else beyond that. Beyond her is the curtain of slavery. And then there is the fact that the mother of my father, for example, was an orphan. The father of my mother was also an orphan.
I'm also thinking of having my DNA ancestry drawn up in the future. Having white or Native blood, however, doesn't bother me that much; because to me, like with many blacks, there is no such thing as racial purity.