Study: Southern Whites Have More Black DNA Than Whites In The Rest Of USA

[big_dog]

Some of the states with the most racially charged attitudes towards African-Americans are also the states where the most whites have black ancestors, according to a recently released study. Researchers examined 145,000 DNA samples provided to genetic testing companies for ancestry analysis to determine that at least six million Americans who called themselves white had 1 percent or more African ancestry.

The study published this month in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that whites in the South were far more likely to have at least 1 percent black ancestry than any other part of the country. “European Americans with African ancestry comprise as much as 12% of European Americans from Louisiana and South Carolina and about 1 in 10 individuals in other parts of the South,” the authors wrote.

The study also noted that individuals with less than 28 percent African ancestry tended to identify as white, while individuals with more than 50 percent African ancestry almost always identified as African-American. And black Americans living in the South also had more African ancestry than any other region of the country. African-Americans in West Virginia and Oregon had the lowest percentage of African ancestry.
Jenée Desmond-Harris explained why black individuals were more 15 times more likely to have a European male ancestor. “That, of course, reflects what historians know about white slave owners raping enslaved women who descended from Africa,” Desmond-Harris wrote. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/southern-whites-have-more-black-dna-than-whites-in-the-rest-of-us-study/

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. I never understood ...

if the slave-owners believed their own argument: that Africans were sub-human and animals, or at best, a different species of mankind, etc., (that justified the enslavement), what were they saying about themselves, as they frequently had sex with these Africans?

“That, of course, reflects what historians know about white slave owners raping enslaved women who descended from Africa,” Desmond-Harris wrote.

"It wasn't rape ... there were, and are records of, consensual and loving relationships between the slave-holder and the (mostly) female slaves", in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

[XemaSab]

9. You're missing the word "property"

[1StrongBlackMan]

10. Well ...

Iam really attracted to my power tools and goldfish. Time for some sex!

[XemaSab]

12. EXACTLY

If you see people as disposable and replaceable, well...

[1StrongBlackMan]

13. People as disposable ...

they didn't even see the Africans as people ... But they were willing to lay down with "sub-humans"?

I have three poodles that I really like. I feed them, walk them, stroke their chins ... I have, yet, to consider having sex with any of them.

[Nay]

56. And, truly, they didn't see women as people either, not even white women.

White women existed to run the household and raise the white children -- they were certainly considered subhuman in the sense that they had few to no rights and were easily replaceable. If his wife died, he bought another wife in a month or two, just to do the dirty work. Black women were even lower on the ladder of course, and could be raped for fun without any blowback.

And remember that men have sex with . . . objects, real animals, etc., so they're game for anything. What can I say? I've certainly never understood it.

[hootinholler]

14. It is inconsistent

Either they're Hypocrites or Zoophiliacs

[1StrongBlackMan]

16. I'll take ...

"White female controlling, Hypocritical lying ass rapists for the win, Alex."

[a kennedy]

17. Now that was funny.....

[Brickbat]

21. They didn't have sex with them.

They raped them.

[1StrongBlackMan]

23. Well, okay ...

But do you really believe massa Irby would cope to raping my "sub-human", but cute as hell, maternal great-great-grandmother, Priscilla, in 1860s Louisanna?

[Brickbat]

36. I don't understand your question.

Rape is used as a tool to oppress. I don't think slave-owners were embarrassed at all to have it known that they raped their slaves. I also don't see what Priscilla's looks have to do with it.

[StevieM]

29. Well, I don't think they considered the children created to be their own children,

even if they knew they were the biological father. They were that racist.

I think to Confederates it was like a homo sapien breeding with a neanderthal.

Can I just say one more time....had the South won the war we would NOT have "been like the U.S. and Canada." They would have wreaked havoc on humanity.

[True Blue Door]

30. You misunderstand fascism.

They took slaves because they could. They raped them because they could. They made up ridiculous excuses because they could. And when they couldn't any longer, they waged war on their own country to try to get away with it. Confederate fucks should have been hanged by the bushel.

[ellie]

42. Thank you

The traitors should have been taken care of.

[1StrongBlackMan]

57. That's not fascism ... pyschopathy, absolutely ...

but that's not fascism.

[True Blue Door]

59. There is the 20th century political movement known as Fascism

and then there is the underlying psychology that produced it.

That psychology is basically...

1. Power is morality.
2. Whatever serves power is truth.
3. The quest for power is its own justification.
4. There is no you, there is only me. (solipsism)

The Confederacy was fascist on a fundamental level.

[1StrongBlackMan]

60. Okay. n/t

[jwirr]

50. You are correct. But when human beings start to justify their behavior the truth seldom has a place.

[1StrongBlackMan]

58. True. n/t

[notadmblnd]

2. Dave Chappelle was right on the mark, lots of Clayton Bigsbys in the south.

warning: offensive language



http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82404406/

[GReedDiamond]

32. "Dave Chappelle was right on the mark..."

...YES!

I had never seen that before - thanks for the link, notadmblnd.

The premise for the piece is perfect, as well as the performance.

[derby378]

54. Wasn't Hitler a Clayton Bigsby, so to speak?

[notadmblnd]

63. I'm not certain that his heritage was established with any certainty

But rumor has it, yes.

[SummerSnow]

3. klansman found out he was 14% white...lol.Kind of appropriate for the post

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/210116/things-not-going-so-well-for-the-white-supremacist-who-found-out-he-was-14-black-on-national-tv/

Things not going so well for the white supremacist who found out he was 14% black on national TV

part of the article reads...

You see, the other White Supremacists? The ones he invited to come to Leith? Whom he bought property for? They don’t want him anymore on account of that whole “14% black” thing. His house has been defaced with graffiti that says “BACK IN BLACK,” which is what I imagine qualifies as clever and insightful for the White Power set. The perp, described by Leith police as “not real mentally stable” is a former friend of Cobb’s with whom he had a falling out the day the show aired.

Another “not real mentally stable” friend of Cobb’s, former KKK Grand Dragon and founder of the “White Aryan Resistance,” Tom Metzger, has now rejected Cobb’s offer of land in Leith and has decided to keep his distance.


roflmao

[Tsiyu]

6. OMG that is priceless

You couldn't write a movie script that satisfying.

Surely, whites in the South would have to know they would have a greater likelihood of having African-American blood; the South was home to so many AAs because of the whites' own policies in the South. Whites sailed ships full of Africans and sold them in America. Now, the ancestors of those same folks are pissed that they're still around.

They don't get "cause and effect."

The thing I've been struggling with today is, how do all these racists around me also worship "the Lord"

He was a swarthy Jewish dude from the Mideast. I won't repeat what they call those types in the South. But they may as well throw their bobbles away. They made up this blond haired blue eyed Lord and Savior that they love and obey and worship and glorify, who saves them from the fiery pits of hell. Grown men get all dreamy-eyed when they talk about JEEzusss.

But if the actual person who was alleged to be Jesus showed up in their churches, they'd go ballistic and wail and gnash their teeth that a dark person tainted their pews.

I can't wrap my head around all that, you know?

[KitSileya]

35. The Norwegian author Tor Åge Bringsværd

Wrote a short story called "Matt 18, 20" where a person with darker hue walks into church somewhere in the South in the '50s during service one Sunday while the priest is preaching on the verse "Where two or three are gathered in my name, behold, I am among them." They don't take kindly to his presumption, and call the police, and he is beaten and condemned. Yet his executioner is disturbed by his hands, which seemed to have gaping wounds in them.

It is short, and very good. Definitely recommended.

[Tsiyu]

38. Thanks for that rec

I will check it out

[kimbutgar]

4. There are so many people in this country who have black blood in their DNA

After the civil war many light skinned blacks moved north, west and east and passed for white. My grandmother was white looking with blue eyes, she married a light skinned black man but her sister passed and married a Jewish man. Her two children never knew she was black. She used to visit my Grandmother in the evenings so no one would see her. She lived in Skokie Illinois and took the train into Chicago to see my Grandmother. So many people have no clue they have black ancestry.

[Odin2005]

8. Native blood, too.

I suspect most Southerners have at least one member of the 5 Civilized Tribes in their family trees.

[dawg]

44. Yes, but we all brag about the first nations blood ...

and shamefully whisper things about " the woodpile" when it comes to the other sort of race-mixing. (Not all of us, of course. But some.)

And in related news, I'm 1/16 Cherokee! (or maybe 1/32? I'm not sure).

[raccoon]

47. That has been my observation too. nt

[DonCoquixote]

5. louisiana used to make you reigster as black

if you had 1/32 black blood..this was finally repewaed in 1983
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/06/us/louisiana-repeals-black-blood-law.html

You see, the French often intermarried, or rather, inter bred. When you go to the Laura planation (famous for beign where Brer rabbit tales that started in senegal were first told in America, not GA as Diusney would have ye believe) they will tell you about a musical prodigy that was the half brother of the owner. His name was toissuant, and he was educate at the Sorbonne in Paris. of course, when the Whiote took over, they had ebvery intention of not just reducing the status of ediucated blacks, but everyone who was french or catholic, White or Black. This was a nasty way to do just that, where many would have to give their property to anglo saxons.

Of course said hypcrites will vote for Bpobby Jindal because he does what they like, but Bobby forget the fact that many of the hopp hollering people that vote for him would glady kill him.

[Odin2005]

7. I read about this in "DNA USA" by British geneticist Brian Sykes.

The irony is wonderful.

[kwassa]

11. The original study is pretty interesting

There are many different ethnic breakdowns and charts in this piece.


http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297%2814%2900476-5

Our admixture dates for African Americans provide evidence that African and European mixture occurred prior to 1860, suggesting that gene flow between these groups might predate the Great Migration of African Americans from the South into the North beginning around 1910, though more complex models (that capture more continuous gene flow) are needed to resolve African and European mixture timing.73
............................................................................................

Our estimated rates of non-European ancestry in European Americans suggest that more than six million Americans, who self-identify as European, might carry African ancestry. Likewise, as many as five million Americans who self-identify as European might have at least 1% Native American ancestry. Louisiana’s high levels of African ancestry in European Americans are consistent with historical accounts of intermarriage in the New Orleans area.74, 75

...............................................................................................

Large sample sizes, high-density genotype data, and accurate and robust local ancestry estimates allowed us to discern subtle differences in genetic ancestry. In spite of present-day high mobility of individuals, the genetic ancestry of present-day individuals recapitulates historical migration events, known settlement patterns, and admixture processes. Perhaps most importantly, however, our results reveal the impact of centuries of admixture in the US, thereby undermining the use of cultural labels that group individuals into discrete nonoverlapping bins in biomedical contexts “which cannot be adequately represented by arbitrary ‘race/color’ categories.”81

[csziggy]

15. It's not surprising - there were a lot with African ancestry who "passed" for white

If they could.

In researching family history on a side branch I found a young woman living with her older sister and widowed mother . The young woman had two children who in 1870 on the census were described as "mulatto." The children were young enough to have been conceived after the Civil War. On the 1880 census they were marked as white. By 1900 the son had married and had two children - from then on everyone in the family was marked as white on the census for two more generations. I wonder if anyone in that family realizes their lineage?

I haven't come across any other records like this, but I don't think it's entirely impossible there could be a similar story in my family waiting to be discovered.

[Boreal]

19. Very cool that you found that!

I've often thought that if people who have fought and are fighting with each other, all around the world, were to have their DNA analyzed that they would see how much they share roots and how stupid it is to fight.

[csziggy]

20. True - DNA shows how close we are all related

And how little difference there is between different groups of people.

I was intrigued when I found the family group and the woman with the two mulatto children. She had changed her name from her birth name so maybe she was married to a black man. Or given the period maybe she changed her name so people would think she had been married. I wish I knew more about her story other than just the fact that she had those two children.

That's what keeps me researching genealogy - I love trying to figure out the stories behind the dry facts.

[Boreal]

22. I'm not too into the subject

but have been fascinated when reading various articles where DNA has been brought up. One instance that comes to mind was about people in Afghanistan. There didn't appear to be any DNA that wasn't a mixture of ancient peoples who had migrated through that region. The mixture was so amazing, too. From Siberian to south Indian and Celtic. It gets you thinking about where [i[those different people originated. Nobody knows! I once read something about the Sami and their DNA and it was that same thing. I would love to see something on "African" DNA and all of the different peoples that that represents. Surely it must be extremely varied - IOW, another intriguing mix leading into antiquity.

[csziggy]

24. The National Geographic DNA project is a great start on sorting it out

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

A good article is linked on the front page but here's the direct link: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/03/new-genographic-y-chromosome-tree/

[Boreal]

25. Thank you!

I'll have a look.

[csziggy]

33. I got interrupted - also check out the link for News on their page

There are lots of articles about different results and updates included.

I got my DNA tested through Ancestry and only had a couple of surprises - some trace from Greece and some tiny trace from India, of all places. Nothing in my genealogical records research explains those traces, but they could be older than the records. Everything else is British Isles

My husband on the other hand, tested as having Irish, Welsh & Scottish ancestry and no British ancestry! What little British records we've found for him came from the borders of Wales and Scotland, so I guess that could be correct.

[Boreal]

40. Alexander the Great was in India

and a Greco-Buddhism evolved out of that cultural encounter.

[csziggy]

46. True and that could be where my traces of Asian and Greek DNA came from

But genealogical research, with many lines going to the 1600s and some lines going back to 1500 and earlier, shows no hint of any Southern European lines. Mostly I have British Isles with English, Irish and Yorkshire roots, recent Welsh immigration to the US, a good dose of German in the 1700s and a tiny amount of French at about that same time.

If there was an infusion of Macedonian/Greek with traces of Indian DNA, it had to be from a long time ago!

[Yupster]

31. I did the National Geographic DNA test and was surprised by the results

My family can trace its lineage into Germany for almost 200 years.

However, the DNA test father-father-father etc showed we were not originally Germans but more probably Celtic.

Were my ancestors sitting there when the Germans invaded what is now Germany and after a few generations we became Germans?

Was an ancestor a Roman soldier from Britain who was posted on the Rhine and then retired there?

It was pretty interesting.

[csziggy]

34. That is neat!

Since my main interest is genealogy I got the Ancestry DNA test for both my husband and me - and it has hooked us up with some distant cousins and added to our family trees.

But I'd love to do the National Geographic DNA test to get their deeper perspective. Maybe that would help us understand some of the apparent anomalies that the Ancestry test shows.

Your Celtic links are cool!

[HockeyMom]

37. My maternal parentage is Sicilian

I am sure that DNA could have a lot of possibilities.

[Boreal]

41. I'm pretty sure I've read

that Celts originated in the region where Germany now is.

[Yupster]

51. Yes, they occupied a good part of Europe

The Germans were an invading tribe from the north.

[Odin2005]

55. Took that test a couple years ago!

I am Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a, meaning my paternal line goes back to the late Neolithic peoples north of the Black and Caspian Seas who spoke Proto-Indo-European and were the first to domesticate the horse.

[csziggy]

61. That's neat - unfortunately Ancestry does not give haplogroups

So I can't compare what I have to what is in the National Geographic database. I need to upload my raw results to Family Tree DNA, but I don't know if they do haplogroups either. Maybe next year I can afford to get the National Geographic testing.

Thanks to your ancestors for domesticating horses!

[BumRushDaShow]

39. Henry Louis Gates has been running a series on PBS

on the subject, using famous people.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/episodes/

[csziggy]

62. That series is really great

I love how he combines the use of DNA to research done with verifiable records. It makes it really interesting to see how the two methods can be used to get a better understanding where we are from.

[ecstatic]

18. *cough* Bob Barr... nt

[kelliekat44]

28. Most blacks in know who are familiar with him say he even looks part black. I think so too. nt

[LittleBlue]

26. And virtually all black Americans have European ancestry

The difference between whites and blacks in America isn't as strong as many want us to believe.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

27. Ns,S

sort of duh/derp kinda thing here.

[GreatGazoo]

43. This study reads like Jerry Springer with a PHd

This work demonstrates that the legacy of population migrations and interactions over the last several hundred years is visible in the genetic ancestry of modern individuals living in the US. Our results suggest that genetic ancestry can be leveraged to augment historical records and inform cultural processes shaping modern populations. The relationship between self-reported identity and genetic African ancestry, as well as the low numbers of self-reported African Americans with minor levels of African ancestry, provide insight into the complexity of genetic and social consequences of racial categorization, assortative mating, and the impact of notions of “race” on patterns of mating and self-identity in the US. Our results provide empirical support that, over recent centuries, many individuals with partial African and Native American ancestry have “passed” into the white community,79, 80 with multiple lines of evidence establishing African and Native American ancestry in self-reported European Americans (see Subjects and Methods). Though the majority of European Americans in our study did not carry Native American or African ancestry, even a small proportion of this large population that carry non-European ancestry translates into millions of European Americans who carry African and Native American ancestry. Our results suggest that the early US history, beginning in the 17th century (around 12 generations ago), might have been a time of many population interactions resulting in admixture.

http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297%2814%2900476-5

I don't see any mysteries solved there. Not sure what use this study is.

In other studies it is suggested that our most recent common ancestor is from 300 BC:

[dawg]

45. And the funniest part of all is the fact that the "white" blood ...

represents the genetic legacy of one particular band of Africans that left the continent 80,000 or so years ago. Whites are very closely related to certain genetic groups within Africa. Closer even than other groups who still live on the continent.

[Fawke Em]

48. Well, Duh.

I guess as a (mostly) white Southerner, I've always known this.

Heck, I'm one of the few (mostly) white people bearing my last name. Most people with my last name are black.

And, btw, I have no problem with it.

[DirkGently]

49. Of course. Race is a social construct.

We're all from Africa. All we're fighting about now is culture and class, defined and constrained by color, which is essentially meaningless.

Likely most long-time "black" families in America, the South and otherwise, feature plenty of European DNA as well.

These problems are not in our genes -- they're in our minds.

[ladyVet]

52. Exactly.

My belief is that we are one race, the human race, or Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Everything else is cultural differences. We all came from primates who evolved on the African continent and migrated.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit to find I have African genes. Nor would it bother me. I have Native American ancestry on both sides (I'm going to look into it and see if it's enough to be included on tribal rolls), and that doesn't bother me either.

[kelly1mm]

53. So now they can apply for all those affermative action bennies they complain about all the time. nt

[mmonk]

64. I know as I am as white as alabaster and

live in the southeast but know I'm directly related to some African Anericans in the area a few generations back. Racism is one of the few stupid things the human race has ever come up with. We are all the human race. Time we acknowledged it. Have a great holiday.