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First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves. This discovery, like all recoveries of the identities of ancestors we thought had been obliterated in the crucible of slavery, is first and foremost a welcome gift for the first family, especially for Michelle’s mother, Marian Shields Robinson, and the Shields family line. And for anyone still naïve enough to believe in the myth of racial purity, it is one more corroboration that the social categories of “white” and “black” are and always have been more porous than can be imagined, especially in that nether world called slavery.
As I have learned since embarking upon my African American Lives series (for PBS), never before are more African Americans determined to ferret out the names of their slave ancestors, and never before have more resources, especially online, been available to facilitate these searches. But, be prepared. To paraphrase the Bible: seek; but fasten your seat belt as to what ye may find.
For those of us fortunate enough to lift the veil on our family’s slave past and identify our actual ancestors, these genealogical searches often yield startling results—two in particular. The first shock? That Cherokee Princess that family lore says is your great-great-grandmother most probably never existed. The sad truth is that the overwhelming percentage of African-American people have very little Native American ancestry in their DNA.
A Harvard colleague of mine likes to say, “DNA don’t lie.” And the Reverend Eugene Rivers likes to say that “DNA has freed more black men than Abraham Lincoln.” But genealogy and DNA tests are also “freeing” a lot of our white ancestors as well, revealing the vast extent of white ancestry that each black American has. Here are the facts: Only 5 percent of all black Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry, the equivalent of at least one great-grandparent. Those “high cheek bones and “straight black hair” your relatives brag about at every family reunion and holiday meal since you were 2 years old? Where did they come from? To paraphrase a well-known French saying, “Seek the white man.”
African Americans, just like our first lady, are a racially mixed or mulatto people—deeply and overwhelmingly so. Fact: Fully 58 percent of African-American people, according to geneticist Mark Shriver at Morehouse College, possess at least 12.5 percent European ancestry (again, the equivalent of that one great-grandparent). As a matter of fact, if I analyzed the y-DNA (which a man inherits exactly from his father, and he from his father, etc.) of all the black players in the NBA, fully one-third (somewhere between 30 percent and 35 percent) would, incredibly, discover that they were descended from a white male who impregnated a black female, most likely a female slave, just as a white man did Michelle Obama’s third-great-grandmother. In the ‘60s, we were fond of saying that we are an “African people.” Well, our DNA proclaims loudly that we are a European people, a multicultural people, a people black as well as white. You might think of us as an Afro-Mulatto people, our genes recombined in that test tube called slavery.
For African American Lives, I’ve tested 21 African Americans, possessing a range of phenotypes—from a person who could “pass” for “white,” and whose father actually did, to people with darker and more traditionally African features, such as Don Cheadle and Chris Rock. Not once has any person tested turned out to be 100 percent African. Chris Rock, for example, is 20 percent European. Don Cheadle is 19 percent European. That straight black hair and high cheek bones on your grandmama’s head? Look at a Google Map of Europe, find Italy, then look straight north to England and Ireland, Germany and France. That’s where, in all probability, your ancestor’s hair texture and lighter complexion comes from, not from the rendezvous of a fugitive slave and an Native American compatriot, united in enmity toward a common enemy, sitting around a campfire, smoking a peace pipe and woofing on the white man.
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I'd like to know the methodology used to determine Don Cheadles and Chris Tucker's % European ancestry.
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The number of white people with ancestors who were plantation/slave owners in the US is very small compared to the number of white people in total. The migration of the late 1800s and early 1900s is responsible for many white people's ancestry. Those folks came here to escape hundreds of years of feudalism (aka - European slavery) where land and people belonged to the lord, duke or someother "nobleman" of the realm. They worked the land of the noblemen and were not allowed to leave the village or to hunt in the lord's forests. These folks are not really "white" because they are descended from people who survived Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and other "hordes", Celts, and not to mention those who returned from the Crusades with wives and children from the Middle East. And since the study of genetics and evolution has shown an African to be all of our original ancestors, my perference is to call myself a human being and consider us all Americans. To me, this is the great draw of the President and his wife, they prefer to think the same thing.
Peace and blessings 2 all of good moral conduct,being abled 2 go back and trace ones history is one of the best blessings any American can have,even confederates hear in Texas holds thier family tree sacred,passing down their legacy from generations 2 generations,however when one looses their right 2 exist under a name given by their parents, life can be meaningless,if u can not find out where u came from,and who your parents where and who their parents where,your future and the future of your offspring could be wiped off the face of the earth,all Black Americans should want 2 know,and keep their history from being destroyed,A familly tree now days should be very respected and honored,destroying ones bloodline should be considered a haneous crime,especially if u are a descent from a SLAVE!,THE NEW SLAVERY should be classified,when an american loses his right 2 exist under the name given at birth,most dont seem 2 care where their roots are,however people like me, ponders deeply at the fact of many Black Americans who do not have a clue,who they are,or where they originated from."x",jr.
Why no little Africa? Are you serious???
My family and I just left Little Africa – it's called New Orleans! Ever been there? It has the worst crime rate next to Detroit and D.C. - also considered Little Africa's in the US.
Do you ever here of crime in Chinatown or Little Italy? If you do, it's not even close to black on black crime in inner cities! Which is the worst in the World...yes the World. Black crime in America is the worst among ALL 1st world nations.
Little Africa...what a freaken joke...!!!!!!!!!!!
It always strikes me as funny that light skinned Blacks are the most militant. I guess it's because they feel cheated; like getting half a lamborghini. And now you got to walk around in the ghetto with half a lambo, everyone is laughing.
You know Chris Rock is right nothing more racist then an old black man.
Do you hear that? It's White people not caring, oh wait they don't care about much about anything except money. They only care about race when race interuppts the flow of money, or anything for that matter.
Black people complaining about race is like trying to get the attention of a locomotive while standing in front of it.
It's like that episode of the Bookdocks when the Black kid got bumped by the White guy on the street and the Black kid wanted to get all ghetto in his face and the White guy just laughed and walked on.
We need to walk on. MOVE ON. The Irish did it, the Chinese did it, the Africans are doing it, the Italians did it. Why is there a Chinatown and Little Italy but no Little Africa?
It is really nothing new that most black people in the African Diaspora have white ancestry. On the other hand, the article brings back the discussion to the genetic level and never addresses race as a socially constructed category with real consequences for real people. That is the kind of article that white people will love. It gives them the perfect excuse to say that African Americans are racist, and to just ignore the realities of white privilege and institutional racism in America. From the kind of questions you asked at the end of your post, it is obvious that you never had to deal with police profiling or housing and work discrimination. By the way, why did he pick Michelle Obama? It seems like some people still have problems with her blackness and now they have to find a way of saying: "hey, check it out, Michelle is part white too, just like her husband...". It almost feels that some white liberal paid a black professor to write this article... or maybe it is just a black professor with a white liberal mind.