A family member recently gifted me with an Ancestry.com report on my ethnicity. The report was based on a DNA sample I had provided. Please spare me any spoilsport comments about how these ancestry analysis reports are essentially meaningless. Granted, there was nothing special about my results; I’m just like billions of other folks down through the bloodlines of history. But there were some interesting tidbits that I hope to extrapolate from for my weekly column.
The biggest takeaway from the report is the inescapable conclusion that I am a “white mongrel,” if you’ll pardon the expression. But a check-up on the pulse of matters pertaining to race and ethnicity these days confirms that it is the “white” part of my genetic story, not the “mongrel” part, that I should be worried about.
Gauging from the tenor of today’s leftist rhetoric and the Left’s horrible obsession with race, it is my whiteness for which I must atone. And the record shows: I’m pretty damn white.
Bottom line: I’m mostly Irish/Welsh/Scottish, 39% to be exact. In my case, I happen to know that the percentage includes a hell of a lot of Welshness, a genetic family lineage which goes back to the time of the American Revolution. Both my paternal grandfather and grandmother and my maternal grandfather were Welsh, with family ties to Ireland. I attribute my interest in politics to those Irish ties, and my preference for brooding, dark-themed music and literature to my Welsh ethnicity.
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The next biggest slice of my DNA, 25%, is from “Europe West.” My maternal grandmother was a pureblood German, not that many generations removed from the immigrant boat. Here’s an excerpt from the Europe West section of the report:
From the boisterous beer gardens of Munich to the sun-soaked vineyards of Bordeaux to the alpine dairy farms of Switzerland, it is a region of charming cultural diversity.
I attribute my enjoyment of beer and dairy to this Germanic lineage, but, like Count Dracula, “I never drink…wine.”
Not surprisingly, my DNA shows ancestry from Great Britain in the amount of 19%. You cannot underestimate the impact of the Northern European hunter-gatherers when they came over what became the English Channel. More contemporarily, I don’t think it’s any newsflash, given the imperial reach of the British Empire, that — if not all — Irish-Welsh-Scottish folk have a little of Merry Old England coursing in our bloodstreams. I did become infatuated with Downton Abbey.
From there, my genetic material becomes increasingly fractional. I possess approximately 8% of what the report calls “Europe South,” a.k.a. Italy and Greece. After thinking this percentage through, I was happy that at least a residual amount of DNA from the two great early civilizations—Greece and Rome—are still extant in my ethnic profile. Similarly with my Scandinavian percentage, 5%, I am able in my wildest imagining to claim blood brotherhood with the Vikings. I was thrown a curve ball by my 1% European Jewish increment, but then again, I’ve always enjoyed Jewish humor.
Of particular interest was my 2% Native American DNA. My father always claimed there was a Native American pairing on the Ellis side somewhere along the line, and until we received my report, we called bulls&%t on it. Come to find out I do have a smidgen of what my father called “Indian blood.” Turns out I have much less than former President Donald Trump, but quite a bit more than Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The next revelation in my genetic portrait was what they call my Neanderthal “variant.” I remember reading an early review of one of the first Rolling Stones albums wherein the reviewer referred to Mick, Keith, Brian, Bill, and Charlie as “Neanderthals.” It was supposed to be a put-down, but the fact is that Neanderthal interbreeding with ancient humans was a seminal (sorry) event in the pre-history of human evolution. It was this interbreeding that led to homo-erectus becoming the most intelligent life form on Earth.
Far from being a put-down, having a Neanderthal variant is a positive. Not having any Neanderthal variants makes you, what, an ancestral bum? My Neanderthal variant is 280, which means I have more of such variants than 54% of the population. I am in first place among my family and friends (losers).
“However,” reads the report, “your Neanderthal ancestry accounts for less than 4% of your overall DNA.” That probably explains why I’ve never had any hair on my back.
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To those who would castigate and denigrate me because I was born white, there is only one thing to say. It is the same thing that parents who are pushing back against insidious Critical Race Theory are saying. It is the message being sent to subversive teachers union types who are looking to guilt-trip America’s schoolchildren. It is what increasing numbers of citizens are saying to leftist propagandists who are looking back hundreds of years to redress the sins of distant forefathers, including our founding fathers, and to make contemporary white people suffer for the regretful condition of slavery which was widely practiced by all races going back millennia.
There is only one thing I can say, only one thing to say, to people who–based solely on skin color–seek to demonize and discriminate against others who happen to be Caucasian.
GFY.
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