Slippin' into whiteness: Melungeons and other 'almost white' groups

[carolinayellowdog]

6. Biracial Y DNA results, but triracial+ results from mitochondrial and autosomal studies

Until someone does a study combining Y, mitochondrial, and autosomal results from the same sample, I am a skeptic about interpretations based on only one. The three Melungeon DNA studies all had comparably small sample populations and told three different stories. All three stories are true but people think they are in conflict. My publisher is one of the experts cited in the article; a person whose book I cite extensively in my own is as well. But they take different positions on the triracial vs. biracial argument as well as the idea that Iberian ancestral claims in Melungeon folklore are rooted in fantasies rather than memories.

It is true that the 2012 Y-DNA study showed the presence of 40% African Y DNA haplogroups in the population. The flip side of this is that 60% of the Y lines were European, yet descendants of those lines occasionally have non-European in maternal ancestry. A 2002 university study found mitochondrial, that is female lines, among Melungeon descendants as 83% European, 5% African, 5% Native American, and 7% South Asian/Middle Eastern.

So the Native American and Mediterranean folklore traditions and appearance of Melungeon related groups are no Afrophobic myth, but rather a truth about ancestry passed through female lines. A 2010 autosomal DNA study confirmed the multiplicity of ancestries, an almost global melting pot, for a Melungeon descendant population. Descendants of triracial populations are found from New York to Texas, in clusters of interrelated families but mostly absorbed into whiteness. There are many different blends in different groups and a lot still to be learned.