I must draw attention to a diary that is currently, for some reason, featured in the Community Spotlight, that is promoting pure fantasy, in direct contradiction to well established history and science.
The left should be the political side that bases our worldview and opinions, whenever possible, on evidence, science, reason, knowledge, and education. Without that, what are we, other than yet another patronage association?
Am I being a scold? Hell yes. As the cliche goes, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. When opinions contradict well founded historical and scientific facts, you need to adjust your opinions. If you think something is 'interesting', if it is then shown to be completely false, you must demote it from interesting.
The diary in question posits that the Scots-Irish people of America - who form a large part of the ancestry of the South, Appalachia, and the lower Midwest - are descended in significant part from Jews, specifically the Sephardim who resided on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries.
The route by which this fantastical connection is achieved is quite circuitous - and entirely, ridiculously, antihistorical. The diarist posits that the so-called Melungeon people, a distinct creole minority in the South, form a large part of the ancestry of the contemporary Scots-Irish. This is certainly not supported by any evidence, and is contradicted by mathematics, given that there are probably more than 50 million contemporary Scots-Irish in the United States and perhaps several thousand Melungeons.
The next supposition is that the Melungeons themselves are descended in significant part from crypto-Jews who settled Spain's American colonies and made their way to the Appalachian American frontier.
This is pure hogwash. Aside from the lack of any historical record of a significant movement from the Spanish colonies to the Appalachian frontier, there is the well established science on the origin of the Melungeons as a creole people of European and African with some Native American ancestry, including DNA evidence:
The Melungeon DNA Project is a genetic study of people who have Melungeon ancestors according to historic records
To summarize, most individuals tested to date have been shown to have Y and/or mtDNA haplogroups that are considered Northern European and/or African.
This is consistent with historic research of Paul Heinegg, who in Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware traced many African-American families free in North Carolina in 1790-1810, back to families descended from marriages and unions between white women and African men in colonial Virginia. The women were free, often indentured servants; the men were free, indentured or slaves, and sometimes freed slaves. By the early 19th century, their mixed-race descendants had joined the movement to the frontiers in Virginia and North Carolina (and later Kentucky and points west), in part because they found it an easier social environment than the Tidewater plantation area.
Taken as a whole, such findings appear to verify the 19th-century designation of Melungeon ancestors as "mulattos", that is, descendants of white Europeans and Africans.
There seems to be a total absence of the kind of evidence for Jewish ancestry, such as the Cohen Modal Haplotype, that shows up in other populations with supposed Jewish roots, such as the Lemba of South Africa.
Might some Melungeons have some Jewish ancestry? Of course, in the sense that anyone of part or whole Western European origin might have some Jewish ancestry, given that Jews and Gentiles lived nearby to each other in Europe for hundreds of years. But there is absolutely nothing to support the fantasy that Melungeons have an especially significant portion of Jewish ancestry, and plenty to argue against it.
In fact, that is specifically addressed in the DNA studies:
The line with a variety of haplogroup with roots in Portugal, Spain and Italy is consistent with historian Ira Berlin's research showing that some of the charter generation of enslaved or servant people in the Chesapeake Bay colony were Atlantic creoles. They had Spanish or Portuguese paternal ancestors and African mothers. They were descended from African women and European men; the latter worked in the slave trade at ports in Africa run by Spain and Portugal, and took wives from the indigenous population.
So like any descendents of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Melungeons have some Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, because the Spanish and Portuguese pioneered and ran it. To the extent that Melungeons have some Jewish ancestry - because Iberians, like all Western Europeans, have a potential small amount of Jewish ancestry - then all black Americans do. There is nothing to support and everything to refute the idea that Jews were an especial part of the Melungeon's ancestry.
The diarist then goes on to state, in the comments, that the Sephardi diaspora was in fact responsible for the spread of Calvinism to Northern Europe and eventually America, and the accompanying emphasis on the Old Testament in religious life. This is now into the realm of insane conspiracy theory. The Sephardi diaspora was predominantly oriented toward other lands in the Mediterranean, especially those controlled at the time by the Ottoman Empire. Some made their way to the Low Countries and a few to England and the Americas, but the origins and spread of Calvinism are a clear matter of the historical record, and have nothing to do with the arrival of tiny numbers of Sephardi refugees in these countries.
For a historically and scientifically correct look at the history of the Sephardi diaspora, I suggest this diary: http://www.dailykos.com/...
To conclude, it is a shame that a fantasy with such direct contradiction of the historical and scientific record would become part of the 'Community Spotlight' and garner 19 recs and 24 tips. I urge people to practice more critical thinking and enlightened skepticism when reading and recommending diaries.