I'm curious about how people who consider themselves to be of mixed race view how it has affected their lives; especially given the recent media-driven racial tensions arising in this country.

Since I am African-American - a very nebulous physical definition but a fairly clear cultural one - I wonder how blatinos and Blasians view themselves and how they are treated in society.

Though I consider myself fully culturally African American, the genealogical evidence that I have found about my ancestors suggests more and more that a better term might be "Blasian" - not the traditional meaning of a black person with features of far east asians such as Chinese (primarily Hun) or Japanese (most of whom I gather are actually non-aboriginal early immigrants from the Chinese mainland) - but North African or Near East Asian such as Sephardic or some other early North African origin.

My results from participating in The Genographic Project placed my male ancestry squarely in the blue line that goes through North Africa on this map and my own family history research through the US census suggests a name of Hebrew origin and one male ancestor possibly of Jewish origin, but no practicing Jews that I know.

What a fascinating story. I personally know many american black people aka African Americans who are proud of their Native American heritage and are registered members of tribes such as Cherokee and Creek. There are many types of Jews in the world from white Ashkenazy to brown Mizrahi to black Jews of Uganda, South Africa and Ethiopia. Your geneology shows how we humans are all one family in reality.

I consider myself to be mestizo. Unfortunately, I cannot legally identify myself as such under federal census guidelines since an American Indian, according to the US government, is someone who grew up on a reservation in the US. So I simply "mark" government forms as White-Hispanic, that is until the government corrects this problem.

Angry & bitter author aside, I liked the data on this link about mestizos.

I know many Mexicas who call themselves mestizo aka white/Indian.I know many who are pure Mexicana Indian such as Maya or Azteca. Lovely the multicultures of the world.

I meant Mexicanas. I misspelt. Sorry.

Interesting topic. I refer to myself as Blatino given that most of my makeup is African American (father's side) and Puerto Rican (mother's side). My maternal grandmother was Puerto Rican and my maternal grandfather is black and white. My maternal great grandfather was mostly Scottish/Irish and black and my maternal great grandmother was French and Jamaican. I also have some Iroquois heritage from my father's side. So essentially, I'm just a mutt. Because of my fair skin and fine hair most people think I'm some kind of Latino, but I check off African American on any demographic sheets because thats the one that dominates my culture. I guess I could check bi-racial or other, but I don't. Race is a social construct. We all came from the same damn place anyway.

My background is so mixed I call myself a Euro-mutt.... But it also means I lack a strong cultural identity to any of them....

Maybe I should just call myself Blahhhh-casian

Actually kick you've made an excellent pt. You got me thinking about my ancestry. Hell, the Spaniards have just about every muttness in them possible:

1. Spain was once part of the Roman Empire.
2. The Moors (Arabs) ruled Spain for 700 years.
3. There's a Gypsy population in Spain, which btw emigrated from India into Europe centuries ago. Plus, Romania I believe has the largest Gypsy population so there must have been much Romanian Gypsies migrating into Spain.
4. The Spaniards have always had a deep history w/ marrying into pretty much every European ancestry, but especially the French, English, Irish, & Portugese.
5. My last name, from the research I've done, has Greek origins.

So I, too, can consider myself a mutt. & as mdterp mentioned. We all know that humankind emerged out of northern Africa (specifically Ethiopia) so...

Edit:

I forgot about:

6. Spain once had the largest European Jewish population (pre-Inquisition).
7. American Indians are generally believed to have emigrated from Asia into the Americas via Siberia-Alaska.

So that adds another possible layer of "muttness" into my racial ancestry.

Interesting comments about Spain SCTrojan. I have long had an interest in Spain since I found that I had an aptitude and fondness for the Spanish language in high school. It was also partly the inspiration for this thread since watching a documentary about the history of the Jews I noticed that the Jewish rabbi/scholar/physician Maimonides, who was born in Spain, emigrated to Fez, Morroco in the 12th century.

That was when it clicked that a cousin of mine - who also does family history research - reminded me of a story that I then remembered hearing as a youngster but had totally forgotten about while focusing on my direct paternal line. My father's maternal grandmother was the daughter of a man who was said to have immigrated to the US from Morocco. Though I have found that great great grandfather living as a "free black" in the early 19th century in the county where I was born I have not found any record of his immigration - not surprising since the court house and almost all of it's records were destroyed in a fire not long after he would have immigrated.

Note though that Spencer Wells, who heads The Genographic Project I mentioned initially, is trying to prove the theory that all modern humans descended from an "Adam and Eve" who appeared in East Africa. The northern branch split from the Middle East:"from eastern Africa into the Middle East, then to southeast and southern Asia, then New Guinea and Australia, and finally to Europe and Central Asia."

I'm an American. I have so much different stuff in me, but it's mostly northern Eurpoean. It gets interesting for me with religion. Just recently, through geneological studies and recollection of family stories, branches in my family tree are Jewish, converted to Catholic. Some stories were told only to certain family members, and not openly discussed...must have been the guilt!

From the Jewish side or the Catholic?

Take your pick!

I've talked about my ethnicity before on Outsports to provide context to whatever opinion I was voicing, but I'll repeat myself here, and ask for forgiveness for doing so.

My father is black (African-American) and a Methodist, and my mother is a German Jew and a Holocaust survivor. Both cultures have had a very strong influence on my life. My parents let me figure out my spirituality on my own when I was growing up, and I attended both church and synagogue. I opted for Judaism and had a bar mitzvah at 13. I lived eight years of my life in Germany. Both of my parents speak German, and I still speak German fluently.

So what do I identify myself as? All of the stuff I just said in the previous paragraph. My modus vivendi has been to be a chameleon and take on whatever culture I happen to be in at the moment. If it's not a culture I belong to, like say a trip to Chinatown, I go white American. Do I have a label for myself? No, but a friend of mine many years ago called me a "Hebro."

I thought it was clever.

Perhaps you know this already but there's actually a Hispanic Catholic-Jewish population well known in the southwest w/ the same story. Sadly, lots of conversos (those that "converted") experienced the same thing. If I remember correctly (from the Jewish study courses I took in college), the conversos were a huge phenom during & after the Inquisition in Spain & Latin America. It happened out of fear for their lives, literally! Also, there's the Ladino language, which is hardly any different to modern Castillian Spanish. I can read & understand it.

Ooohhh how the ugly legacy of the Church still haunts us today.

I didn't know about "Ladino", you learn something new everyday! Also, part of the experience of the conversos - on the part of the descedants of Arabs - was aljamiado, which is Spanish written in Arabic characters. One of its most important texts, the Tratado del Mancebo de Arévalo was transcribed by María Teresa Narváez, from the University of Puerto Rico (my alma mater ). Anyone interested in the history of Spain and its impact on literature would be advised to read the books written by another University of Puerto Rico professor, Luce López-Baralt. She has written extensively on the influence of Arab literature on the poetry of Saint John of the Cross and Spanish literature of the Golden Age in general.

I'm also fascinated by the Catalans' & Basques' history & language, especially the languages. Particularly the Basque language cuz scholars agree that it has no ties to other Indo-European phonetic roots (aka genetic language isolate).

Ladino is to Spanish as Yiddish is to German: a dialect. Ladino is written using the Arabic orthography, Yiddish in Hebrew.

Another fascinating group are the black Jews of Ethiopia. Sometimes called falashas (this is actually an improper degrading term) these Jews have practiced Judaism for millenia. The state of Israel was unwilling to help them due to their black skin until the eighties. Abba Eban had total indifference to them. Outright hostility actually. There are native Jews all over black Africa including a tribe in South Africa. There are also tribes of Jews in India and SouthEast Asia. There are native Jews in Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. Fascinating. And there are Pashtun speaking Jews of Afghanistan.

The native Black Jews of South Africa are called Lemba. And there are some Masai in Kenya who have ancient Jewish roots.

Hebro? OK, that's new one on me.

My sister and I got into the ancestry kick about three years ago. Nominally we are traditional German-Irish Catholics from Cincinnati. But we have always practiced "Catholic-lite". It was long thought that because my paternal grandmother had 'curly' black hair, that we might have some African thrown in on the vine. I was hoping for it, just for the enrichment and diversity, but haven't come upon that aspect yet.

However, we have had some delightful surprises. We have Jewish and Mik'mak Native American ancestry, through the Cajun (Acadian) branch. My paternal grandmother's family was French and Cajun from New Orleans (Burguieres, Theriot & Melancon surnames), but our Acadian ancestry, beginning in about 1640...now Nova Scotia.....includes a Mik'mak females and a Jewish male. The Jewish male was Sephardic, who is said to have escaped the Inquisition to France. He purportedly was a famous amour-er, named Dugas, still a more common name in Louisiana today.

All I got. The other branches save one, have mostly dead ends, and many mysteries. Back to "digging up the dead", as my sister and sinisterly refer to our 'hobby'....

TRL

Sheesh. All of you guys make Barack Obama's bio seem boring. So who did/do you hang out with in high school and college?

Or were you loners like me?

Sport...my group was always called the Rainbow Coalition because we were so diverse. In high school, the population was predominantly white, yet my lunch table consisted of Black, White, Bi-Racial, Asian, and Latino.

In college it was the same thing. My college boasts about being so diverse, but it takes more than having a lot of different groups of people to have diversity. There was some mingling, but for the most part the blacks hang with the blacks, the whites hang with the whites. The white greeks were totally separate from the black greeks. In the cafeterias the tables were mostly segregated. But...I also had traveled so much internationally by the time I had gotten to college, and had been exposed to so much that mingling with different groups of people was no big deal to me. For people who really haven't been out of their corner of the world, its natural to migrate to whats familiar. But, its ashame because I am a more well rounded and more worldy and open minded person because of the diversity in my friendships.

Amen mdterp! I grew up just the opposite of you: a Latino in an inner-city community that was easily 98% Latino. After hs, I went to college. Boy that was an eye opener! All I can say is, "Thank you God!" That's why today, which I've said tons of time, I believe that "there's only ONE race on this planet--the human race!"

If I had blond hair I would be the whitest kid I know. My entire family ancestry is Anglo-Scandinavian.

Aw, you're just trolling for a 20-something to post some pics...I agree! A picture paints a thousand words! Post away, Danny Boy! As for high school, Sport, I went to the most bland, all-vanilla high school on the planet. Out of 2,000 students, I believe we had one African-American as a student, and she arrived in my junior year. Our idea of "minority" was the handful of Greek students. Lots and lots of blond hair at my high school, as most were either Dutch or German. Rather ironic, considering the school I attended was kady-corner to the blackest town in American; Gary, Indiana.

The pretty blond-haired youth Alexander the Great most likely enthralled his lover the dark-haired Haephestion with his looks, forceful personality and intelligence when they both wrestled as youngsters.

But if the best surviving images are any guide Alexander lost those looks as he "aged" into his late 20s and 30s, yet maintained the affection and faithfulness of his lover - and many others - with his empathy, charm and precocious political skills at practicing a form of democracy on the battlefield.

He lead, rather than forcing soldiers to follow: something no commander can do.

But Alexander also was charmed by a dark-skinned and dark-haired partially-castrated eunuch Bagoas, and enthralled by the exotic dress and looks of his Persian countrymen and countrywomen.

He was not the first nor the last.

The fair Crusaders were also struck by the beauty of the swarthy North Africans and Shakespeare's Othello was likely the sexual fantasy of Englishmen as well as Englishwomen.

Frederick Douglas too likely became a fantasy of both and who knows if his charms may have convinced a sexually ambiguous president Lincoln to finally accept that black men as soldiers would demoralize the South.

On a similar topic, I just read this quite interesting article. I'm not surprised by the reaction in China since, for ie, countries in the West believe that what makes one a "true" citizen in their respective countries usually means where one was born regardless of race. In many non-Western countries that is not the case. But @ least it got the Chinese to debate about "who is & isn't Chinese." Frankly, because we are living in a global economic age dependency, exposure, & mating with "others" is inevitable. I think that other non-Western countries may have to rethink their attitudes & laws re: this fascinating but sensitive subject.

Btw, I think Lou is beautiful! Model quality!

It was interesting to watch the video (altho I didn't understand a word they said). But it seems they compliment her since she bows several times as a show of humble appreciation.

SCTrojan! I have never heard the term Mestizo. I am Mestizo! In my beloved crowd of Mexicans that I love, I have always been referred to the quasi-LatinoEuro Dude! Seriously, my ancestry is Spanish, American Indian, & French just so you know I am not taking this lightly. I am intrigued and must find more.

Write me! We'll twalk!

For ie??? What does this mean, SCT?

I should actually be writing "e.g." I often confuse the 2. My bad.

e.g. = "for example"

i.e. = "that is" (for clarity).

Some of that Latin from Jesuit Prep School rubbed off.

TRL

I find it difficult to see how China will develop into a world leader with such a race-based culture.

Sadly, many countries are still race-based re: citizenship. Germany, until recently, also was.



I would venture to guess (I may be wrong) that most countries have some different varieties of race-based laws re: "true" citizenship, the US & Canada aside.

Non race-based laws for citizenship: also include the UK, France, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, South Africa (as of the new constitution), Australia (as of the last 30 years), and quite a few other countries, actually. Japan is notoriously in the opposite camp. It actually paid Brazilians of Japanese ancestry TO GO BACK to Brazil (Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan) recently, and continues to make it difficult for Japanese of Korean, Chinese or other ancestry to become full citizens.

A few other points: most African Americans--not counting recent arrivals from Africa--whose ancestors have been in the US for several generations are racially mixed. We've discussed this on here before but genetic testing has shown that most African Americans have ancestry from Africa and Europe, and many also have Native American ancestry, while a smaller number have East Asian ancestry.

According to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's website, an increasing number of African Americans are now of direct African or Afro-Latino ancestry. Blasians can consider themselves Black and Asian-American, just as Blatinos could consider themselves Black and Latino/Hispanic. One doesn't cancel out the other. There are also more Black people outside the US in the Americas (i.e. Latin America) than Black people in the US. Brazil has about 80-100 million people of African or mixed-race ancestry compared to the US's 37-39 million. Far more African enslaved people went the Caribbean and Latin America than came to the US. I can't recall the number the difference is staggering.

BTW, according to the 2000 Census, the second largest number of Afro-Hispanics (since the Census didn't use the world Latino) in the US after Puerto Ricans identifying as such were...Mexican! Most people don't realize that. I wonder if this will change with the 2010 Census because of the large number of Dominican Americans who may also now identify as black.

We're all related distantly, of course. We shouldn't ever forget this.

This map of indigenous skin color based on "data" collected before 1940 makes it obvious how misleading color can be in determining anything about individuals:



The Genographic Project I participated in speculates that a Y-chromosomal Adam and a mitochondrial Eve gave birth to all of humanity as we know it and dispersed through migration by their descendants.

The color changes would have evolved both from more or less exposure to the sun and genetic selection through interbreeding within isolated populations.

But what if skin colors, being "highly inheritable" could not have evolved in the time frame speculated on (30,000 to 100,000 years by most)? Might this have not been long enough for even the genes for skin color to have been selected so much? Could even a superficial trait like skin color be selected for so quickly say in a highly migratory interbreeding species?

An alternative theory that some more distant single race human ancestor populated the planet and that different humans eventually evolved from these isolated groups would still allow for a genetic Adam and Eve.

A great article in yesterday's New York Times, amplifying what we've been saying about the US. Not only President Obama, but the first lady, Michelle Obama, is racially mixed, like most African Americans, Latinos, and many other Americans, who might not even know it.

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery

It is also not unusual that the white ancestor can not be clearly identified from the documented record. That is the most frustrating and inspiring part about my own search. It helps when you have the full cooperation, and are a good friend or, a white descendant of the potential white relative. But even that has not insured successful identification.

Clues keep popping up though. So I am hopeful on about my own search, mostly because there was such an unusually large proportion of free blacks along side enslaved ones in my county of birth: about 50:50 during the recent antebellum period. And lost county records might possibly have been duplicated in the dusty archives of the state.

I may need the help of a judge to get to them but have a couple of prospects who attended high school with me.