DNA, ancestery, Elizabeth Warren

I supposedly have an American Indian ancestor, my great-great grandmother. She was Cherokee, although, back then, I hear it was common for white Southerners to claim an Indian ancestor to conceal a Black or Melungeon ancestor. My sister got a DNA test and proved to be 6% Neanderthal. They didn't indicate any American Indian ancestry but that doesn't mean we don't have any.

I haven't had a DNA test myself. I not sure how I should feel about it. A large majority of white people in the US can now be traced by DNA. They caught a serial rapist that way and figured out who a long-unidentified murder victim was. Barry Scheck worked to free the wrongly convicted, but he also called for DNA samples to be taken from anyone convicted of a crime. There were serial rapists and murderers they could be catching.

You know the guy who played Random Task in the first Austin Powers movie? He's in prison. He plead guilty to vandalism. Then he found out he would have to provide a DNA sample. It turned out that he and his friends had kidnapped, tortured and raped a woman 18 years earlier. The statute of limitations ran out on the kidnapping and rape charge, but he was convicted of torture and sentenced to seven years to life in prison. Later, he murdered his cellmate.

So, Elizabeth Warren had a DNA test. Like a lot of whites, she had an Indian ancestor. Donald Trump said he'd donate a million dollars to charity if she proved Indian ancestry, but, not surprisingly, he's refusing to do it. She's somewhere from 1/64 to 1/1024 American Indian. I don't think 1/1024 is possible since her European ancestors wouldn't have come into contact with Indians that long ago.

Someone said that she's not Indian "in any meaningful way", and that may be, but that reminds me of people who said that O.J. Simpson wasn't really Black because he had white friends.

I saw two old white guys on TV who were early rock-and-roll record producers. One of them said, Our friends were Black, our girlfriends were Black, we lived in a Black neighborhood. We thought WE were Black. Then he added, We were mistaken.

I think you have to actually be Black to be Black. And you have to actually be white to be white. And if you have an Indian ancestor you are part Indian.

I'm amused by my Neanderthal ancestry. Of my modern human ancestors, some of the good ones fought for the Union and the bad ones fought for the Confederacy. I have evil ancestors who owned slaves which means I probably have a lot of distant Black cousins somewhere.

Look at this lovely boy. What man wouldn't be proud to have him as a son? His name was Charley. He was a slave. He and his mother were the property of his father. His father sold him. The man who bought him sold him to another guy. He was freed at the end of the Civil War.

These photos were taken by an organization raising money for education for freed slaves. They thought they could raise more money using pictures of white-looking former slaves.

DNA testing is taking a toll on Neo-Nazism. They get DNA tests thinking they're going to prove their racial purity and they keep being surprised.