White folks aren’t really a heritage so much as people with a shared skin tone. I’ve got German, English, Scottish, Irish, Jewish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, and some others in my ancestry, with a lot of that being people mixing things up in the US for a century+. I’m white, but there’s no heritage in that, my heritage is in the various German, English and Irish relatives (who, delightfully, fought bitterly), and American Euro-mutt heritage (with family on both side of the Civil War, yay). “White” is only really meaningful as a way to divide the world into us and them by skin tone.
Side note, my German relatives in the US who are into their German heritage make my skin crawl.
Agreed. I might have issues with my community, but the sense of roots and connection, as well as the moral lessons, form a large portion of my self-identity. But I don’t understand the need to kick others down to make myself taller, either.
As @Mindysan33 commented above, there are two Jesuses (Jesusi? Jesis? Stupid latin correspondence course ) out there.
One was the original mythical amalgamation of Yeshua of Nazareth, who was probably stitched together out of tales of various gadfly rabbis who were taking the moral lessons of the Torah, Rabbi Akiva, and the Mishnah to heart in a period of tumultuous political strain.
The other version is Christian communities projecting themselves onto their god in order to see that, of course, He approves of their actions. Which, in America, has resulted in Tea Party Jesus:
This reminded me of the current Ancestry TV commercial for its DNA test. Some woman talks about how she thought she married an Italian, but it turns out one of her husband’s ancestors (no indication how far back) was “Eastern European”. (I’m going to gloss over the fact that a mere 16% Italian showed up in his test; that’s not “one ancestor” being non-Italian.) You’ll notice they didn’t mention a specific country, like Hungary or Romania or the Ukraine.There’s only one explanation for this: the “Eastern European” ancestor was Jewish.
So, this guy is surreptitiously including Ashkenazi accomplishments in his grouping and claiming that they count as Christian because Europe = Christianity.
It’s a small point in the larger scheme of things, but reminded me of how this sort of bigotry is everywhere if you know to pay attention to what’s NOT being said.
yeah, it’s funny how that tends to happen when it comes to propping up Eurocentric supremacy… those historically marginalized become part of “Western culture” when it’s convienient to do so… When it comes to how those groups are marginalized and acted upon violently, that’s considered an aberration…
Actually, Ashkenazi ancestry is very easy to distinguish in DNA (my mother has a touch, identified through 23andme), but “Eastern European” is very hard to distinguish (I have a ton, mostly from my father). Slav is slav, genetically speaking, with little distinguishing between Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, etc.
If you do one of those, like Ancestry or 23andme, it’ll tell you “X% Eastern European” or “Y% Ashkenazi,” because they’re not the same thing, genetically.
Ashkenazi have been very insular, historically, marrying within the community. It creates some very identifiable bloodlines. My mother’s small percentage is actually quite rare, since it means somewhere in our ancestry, someone left the community and married a goy (six or seven generations back, I think).
But the Slavic ancestry just blends together. The border moves here, then back again. This family migrates for work. These people intermarry and reproduce with those other people. It’s a hodge podge. Same goes for a lot of German and French, or Iberian populations, or Celtic populations in Britain, etc, etc.
I was guessing Jesus is a masculine noun of the 2nd declension, so it was probably Iesi for nominative plural, but apparently the Latin scholars on Stack Exchange think it’s an irregular 4th declension masculine noun, so it would be Iesūs but then one of them says that a particular Latin instructor said it only has three forms (Iesus, Iesu, and Iesum) and no plural forms at all.
It’s really sad that one of my favorite classes in high school 20 years ago was Latin and I rarely get to use it…
You’re right, it is quite possible to get the general category of Eastern European without a specific country listed, but they show a photo of the guy, so they KNOW who he is and thus what country he’s from. Thanks to many years’ experience as a genealogist who works with DNA testing, I am certain the fact that they’re saying “Italy” but not saying the other country is (metaphorically) speaking very loudly.
As to your final point: about 1,000 years ago there was a huge bottleneck in the population of Jews in that part of Europe (down to only about 400 people), and that endogamy is why Ashkenazi DNA is so easy to categorize. However, as luck would have it, Ashkenazim have a tendency to have non-Jewish mitochondrial haplogroups and Jewish Y-DNA haplogroups (in the males). In other words, for a population that classifies itself as Jewish based on the mother being Jewish, Ashkenazim technically aren’t. We don’t know why this happened, and it’s not replicated in any other Jewish population. So anyway, now that consumer DNA testing has become available and affordable, a lot of people are discovering that they have a small percentage of Jewish genes, just like your mom. When you’ve got a tiny ethnic population living away from home base, anyone who has a child with someone from the larger encompassing population is likely to move into that dominant world, and their child will marry in that world, and their grandchildren, etc. Lo and behold, a few hundred years later there’s no knowledge in the family that one ancestor was Jewish, so it comes as a surprise when it shows up in a DNA test.
Just watch all the lamestream media label this poor guy as some kind of “white supremacist” just because he happens to believe white people are supreme to all other races.
I think the reason that ‘white pride’ is derided is that historically, the function of pride among minorities in their respective ethnicities is that they’ve been able to persevere and thrive despite domestic prejudice towards their heritage. And that is something worth being proud of.
Heritage is a complex knot. First, it’s typically more a matter of self-identity than of actual genetics or geography. Second, it’s tied up with racism and nationalism and bigotry and all sorts of vile teachings.
But then it’s also what preserves the Navajo language and what creates aboriginal movements around the world and what keeps unique food traditions in circulation. It’s part of what was ripped from many Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and part of what makes humanity such an interesting and varied species.
My own position is generally is that it’s cool to think your heritage (however you define it) is pretty awesome and to love and appreciate what the people you call yours have done in history and what work you’d like to continue to do today. You can think white people are pretty cool, if you want. What crosses the line is when you veer from appreciation to superiority. White people have a LONG AND STORIED tradition of that, but of course we aren’t the only ones (an interesting example is how the Japanese have treated the Ainu, forex).
Humans have some trouble saying “I like my heritage” without saying, “I like my heritage better than yours,” so the idea is one that requires some confidence. And too many “heritages” are mixed up with a toxic racial bigotry as a matter of history (like when someone claims “pride in their southern heritage,” it’s often code for “I love being a racist dickweasel.” But not always!).
Which is just a long way of saying it’s not Steve King’s love of white people that’s abominable, it’s his dislike of non-white people that’s abominable.
I wonder if people vote for Steve King because, upon reading the ballot, they mistake his name for that of a certain prolific horror author who lives in Maine.
Didn’t that exact author once make the comment that, when it came to disturbing plots and existential horror, he had nothing on his counterpart’s capabilities?
I’ll give “movable type” to both China and Germany since it’s unlikely that Johannes Gutenberg was familiar with Bi Sheng’s work some 400 years earlier.
) out there.
