Americans and Native Americans

The Test post for this blog is dated January 16, 2018. That's just shy of 8 years ago. 

I removed everything and started this blog over multiple times. Then shut it down and took it offline, moving a few pieces to other blogs of mine.

A few hours ago, I permanently deleted dozens of draft posts. Among other things, anything with a Twitter link or Reddit link as the source was removed.

Fuck Elon Musk's White Supremacist platform of hate. I'm not interested in linking to it for ANY reason, even if it's the ONLY source of data for something. 

Most likely, it was a Twitter link that said something like "I have seen DNA evidence that between 40 and 60 percent of Americans are part Native. They just don't know it." and I apparently deleted it because I can't find it.

A search for "40 to 60 percent of Americans are part native American" returns a copilot answer that starts thusly:

Not supported by recent data

40 to 60 percent of Americans are part Native American is a claim that is not supported by recent data. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 0.88% of the population identifies as American Indian and Alaska Native. 

One of the supporting links is from Wikipedia and it says in part:

White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and 44 out of 50 states, except Hawaii, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Maryland. Those identifying as white alone or in combination (including multiracial white Americans) are the majority in every state except for Hawaii and California.

Recent discussions I saw on Reddit suggested that a great many "pretendians" who claim Native heritage but don't have it are actually part African aka Black. Because of the One Drop Rule and the Pocahontas Exception, many families that are only slightly Black told authorities and told their children that any non-Caucasian ethnic features or non-European cultural bits of their lives were Native influence.

If you were deemed Black you could be denied the right to marry a White person under misceganation laws, denied a mortgage under redlining practices, denied employment due to Blacks being "last hired, first fired," paid half as much as a White employee prior to federal minimum wage laws and on and on.

According to oral family tradition, I'm something like 1/32 Cherokee. I've always known that and I believe it's true, though as someone currently homeless who was homeless when I took an interest in my Native heritage following my father's demise, no, I have not been in any position to try to find supporting evidence in records while Natives mostly are openly hateful to me for having an interest in Native culture. 

So for most of my life, if I needed to state my ethnicity on some form, I checked off "White" or "Caucasian." In recent years, I sometimes say Other or Mixed or Prefer Not To Answer while worrying planet Earth is going to come after me for not dutifully replying "White" like I'm SUPPOSED to for some reason and do not confuse them with the facts.

Natives absolutely don't claim me as one of them and have chewed me out for pissing on their rights and ruining their lives for saying "According to oral family tradition, I'm part Cherokee." and have informed me that I should not say that ever for any reason and if it's true, it's "easily verified" because Cherokee heritage is highly documented, so go get the records or STFU up you honky pretendian bitch somehow stealing something from Natives with trying to state why you are in this online discussion and interested in the topic.

(Sarcasm alert) Because I guess an unrebutted Reddit comment is sufficient to gain you tribal membership worth millions. (/sarcasm alert)

My understanding is that US Census data is 100 percent self reported data and this country has hundreds of years of doing egregious material harm to anyone not "White." We actively encourage people to LIE and claim to be 100 percent lily white if they are at all White passing and when families dutifully did that a hundred years ago, 23andme didn't exist, so when the children got lied to for their own good, they repeated the lie innocently, not knowing it was a lie.

I am honest to a fault. I have life threatening health problems and lies can kill me. My interest in The Truth is rooted in a desire for self preservation.

I find it difficult to believe I would intentionally lie about my ethnicity, but I've spent most of my life calling myself White, Natives actively reject me as not one of them and don't want me to state publicly in casual conversation online that I believe I'm part Cherokee and I no longer know what the hell I should say on the goddamned Census when I believe the correct answer is that I'm part Native but that's NOT what I said the first however many times I filled it out, I have no documentation supporting my claims, it's a highly politicized detail in a deeply FUCKED UP country where racism is a GIANT can of worms that's been ruining lives for centuries and MY ANSWER, whatever the hell I say, becomes part of OFFICIAL FEDERAL data that shapes public opinion and policy and law for this country.

So ideally it SHOULD be accurate but frankly I'm scared to try to be accurate without documentation of my Native heritage and it feels like a no win situation that could randomly bite me in the ass someday no matter what I do while the system continues to shaft all "people of color" no matter what I do.

My blue-eyed, blond-haired dead ringer for The Nazi Aryan Race ex-husband was supposedly also exactly as much Cherokee as I am, making our two sons also exactly as much Cherokee as I am and one of them is ALSO blue eyed and blond haired. Once when he pissed someone off, they told him to go back to Scandinavia "where he came from."

Years ago on Cyburbia, I noted in some discussion that a lot of so-called Whites are a small part Native, so for many of us, our interest in the topic was that we are one of them. That's OUR cultural heritage we are talking about, not some "other race" we were rudely geegawing and intrusively butting into for shitty, weirdo reasons.

No, we are personally invested and curious about an aspect of our heritage we probably got very little information about growing up.

My mother was a German immigrant. Most Americans think I look German.

When I lived in Germany in my twenties as a military wife, Americans greeted me in German if they ran into me on the street outside of clearly American spaces. 

No one ever assumed I was an American military wife and homemaker. I got assumed to be German, French, a teacher or at best an officer's wife, not a low ranking soldier's wife. 

That last was because I was on base and the assumption was made by a soldier. 

I don't look American to Americans. And I don't look German to my many German relatives. 

My German relatives look at me and see someone who is clearly part Native American. I look Cherokee to my German relatives.

Somewhere along the way years ago, I hypothesized that what makes White Americans "look American" and not European is that most of us are a small part Native American and Europeans take one look at us and just KNOW we aren't 100 percent Caucasian, that's a big fat fucking NO from them. 

So until we have data better than "self reported lies your grandma told you for compelling reasons in an evil country that LYNCHED people who weren't White," I'm going to say "I believe that blurb I probably found on Twitter years ago and no longer have the link for that 40 to 60 percent of us are part Native."

Actually, I don't believe it. I think that's possibly an undercount.