Who's Your (Irish) Daddy?

[Blue_Tires]

On St. Patrick's Day, Henry Louis Gates Jr. reflects on an unknown Irish ancestor.

In one of my favorite Malcolm X speeches, the brilliant rhetorician asks, "What's your name? It isn't Smith or Jones or Bunche or Powell . They don't have those kinds of names where we come from! What's your name?" It might have shocked Malcolm to learn the complexity of the answer to that question, an answer buried deep in our collective DNA.

For hundreds of years, our ancestors have, sooner or later, wondered about our African roots: Where in Africa did your actual, original African male and female ancestor--the one who stepped off the boat after the nightmare of torture during the dreaded Middle Passage--come from? What ethnic group, or "tribe," were they a part of? And, as Malcolm would have us question, what was our family's original name, back on the Continent?

You might say that since 1977, when Alex Haley's classic mini-series aired on ABC, many of us have had a most serious case of "Roots envy!" I know I certainly have. And my attempt to answer Malcolm's challenging question led, by fits and starts, to my African American Lives and Faces of America series on PBS, as well as to the creation of a genetics ancestry company, African DNA, designed to help other black folks trace their family's origins, deep into the African past.

Scientists can do this by analyzing your DNA (which they obtain from your saliva) on your mother's mother's mother's line, and--if you are a man--on your father's father's father's line. The former process tests your mitochondrial DNA (which you inherit like an identical genetic fingerprint from your mom), and a man's y-DNA (again, which a male inherits from his father, who inherited that identical genetic signature from his father, and so on).

Well, here's the shocker: If we tested all the black men, say, in the NBA, about 35 percent would trace their male ancestry back--not to Africa at all--but to Europe! That's right: 35 percent of all African-American males descend from a white man, a white man who most probably impregnated a black female during slavery. And before I started the research for African American Lives, I had no idea that this was true. And many of these white male ancestors, it turns out, were Irish. (Ever wonder what part of Africa Shaquille O'Neal's ancestors came from?!)

http://www.theroot.com/views/whos-your-irish-daddy

(FWIW, my last name is common in England-Scotland-Ireland-Germany; but is most likely descended from Scottish)

[jmm]

1. This makes me think of a story a professor in college told us.

He helped run a company that worked with campaigns. They did everything from make stickers and poster to commercials and helped with advertising strategies. Once a Republican running for a state legislative seat in a very diverse, very Democratic part of Boston asked them for help. They didn't normally give advice but they let him know he didn't have a realistic shot of winning. One of ideas for reaching to his "base" was to send mailings to everybody in the district with an Irish last name. He didn't want to believe it when they told him about 50-70% of black people in Boston have last names that could be considered Irish and not all Irish people shared his racist views. They all were disgusted by him and considered not doing business with him but decided to work with him since he was paying for the race out of his own pocket and didn't have a chance at winning so why not let him go broke making a fool out of himself?