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

[kentuck]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/01/1104445/-Slippin-into-whiteness-Melungeons-and-other-almost-white-groups

<snip>
"Whiteness" in the U.S. has value. It is no surprise that in a society that has historically oppressed, scorned and demonized "blackness" (as if blacks were almost an untouchable caste), some sub-cultural groups scattered across the nation sought refuge in elaborately constructed "not black" clusters. The United States government, mandated by the Constitution to collect census data that included "race" as a category, created much of the confusion, with shifting classifications over time, using terms like mulatto, octoroon, mestizo, and mixed. Some states also classified those people who were "not white" and not enslaved simply as "free people of color," which at times included Mexicans and Native Americans.

Clusters of people who were designated "not black," but historically "not white," were scattered across the U.S. All of these groups, dubbed by anthropologists and sociologists as "tri-racial isolates," or "maroons," are an interesting part of our troubled racialized history and current notions of "race," "ethnicity," ancestry, and genetics.

One maroon group that has fascinated both social scientists and genealogists were named by outsiders (as a slur) and they now dub themselves with the same name: Melungeon. Their history and self-constructed folk mythology has been re-visited in recent years due to the advent of modern DNA research.

....more

[Jackpine Radical]

1. An interesting article.

I seem to recall that there is a theory that Abe Lincoln had Melungeon ancestry.

[kentuck]

2. Yes.

I have read that also.

Many of these folks settled in SE Kentucky and I have known many of them. My Great Grandmother was a Collins.

[OKNancy]

3. good read...

[JustAnotherGen]

4. I hope carolinayellowdog sees this

He's written extensively about his Melungeon heritage in the AA group. Me? I consider Melungeon people part of the African American experience. Research his posts - he has done an excellent job breaking down the experience and has some excellent book recommendations.

[kwassa]

5. I particularly liked the discussion of how much racial ancestry is invisible.

One's physical appearance can be quite deceptive in regards to one's racial ancestry.

Dr. Shriver, it turns out, is one of the 74 million White Americans with significant recent African genetic admixture. In a coincidentally similar fashion, Dr. Rick Kittles, Shriver’s collaborator from Howard University in Washington, discovered that he carries the FY-null genetic marker at genome position 1q23. This marker is found in 998 out of every thousand Europeans but found in only one out of thousand Africans. Many of Dr. Kittles’s other ancestry-informative markers tell the same unexpected story. Dr. Kittles is one of the many Black Americans with strong European genetic admixture. And yet, and there is no other way to say this, Dr. Shriver "looks White", and Dr. Kittles definitely "looks Black." Why is there such a discrepancy between measured genetic admixture and physical appearance? There is an immediate answer to this question, and a deeper answer. The immediate answer is that many different invisible genes identify continent of ancestry.

[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.

[kentuck]

7. Thanks cyd !

Your knowledge is always appreciated.

[undergroundpanther]

8. I am a melungeon

My grandma said we were black Irish and Cherokee.possibly some creek too.