General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am Latina but pass as White [View all]monicaangela
(1,508 posts)who could pass for white, but refuse to do so. My family is really multicultural and just about every hue is represented within our immediate family. Most of us don't bother classifying ourselves for others when it comes to race. If you perceive me as white and don't bother to ask me, then that's your problem. If I am perceived as black or Hispanic, again, that is your prerogative. If you ask me what nationality I am, I will gladly tell you I am African American, because that is the title I most prefer and the people I most look up to. And too, somewhere during my education I learned that if we take the time to actually learn about race and nationality etc., we find that we are all from Africa, so that means everyone in America is African American.
There is only one race. The human race. Don't for personal gain pretend. When we stop allowing race or ethnicity to be a factor in how we are treated in this world, we bring the world closer to the understanding that there is nothing different about any of us beneath the skin.
"THE GENOGRAPHIC CREED
The creed holds that every single non-African on the planet is descended from one or possibly two small bands of humans who made it on rafts and skins across the Red Sea at the narrows of the Bab el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears, about 50,000 years ago. We are a more maritime species than we ever supposed, even if we keep close to the shore. These early humans, this Mayflower on foot, scavenged shellfish along the tideline and in the rock pools, increasing their range by a few kilometres a year. Within 5,000-10,000 years, without much need for adaptation, they had worked their way around India and across the land bridges that then linked Asia with a short sea crossing to Australia.
Some 99% of the human genome is shuffled from one birth to the next. The Genographic Project traces the 1% of the genome which is not shuffledmitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) through the maternal line and the Y-chromosome through the paternal. These jokers in the pack allow geneticists to work back to our common ancestors. Our mtDNA appears to coalesce in a single woman, who lived on the African savannah 150,000 years ago."
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus