Friday, April 19, 2013

Genetic Melting Pot



So who and what are you? I have been doing a lot of reading about America’s genetic melting pot and thinking about how unique we Americans are. Many of us put a hyphen in our genetic back ground saying, “I am a German-American or an Irish-American. You can list almost any thing that way; Asian, Latin, African, Native and the list goes on and on.

For a lot of us the genetic hyphens are many. Checking my family back ground is well mixed European German-English-Scottish-French and who knows what else mixed together. I just have to make it easy and say I am an American period and not claim the myriad connections of ancient ancestors. I have met people who are more mixed and melted than that. I know a light skinned black man who also claims Korean, White, Cherokee, and South Pacific.    

As the generations of US citizens add up the melting together become more pronounced. All of us who have families living here for a hundred years or more may be quite shocked at how much of the melting has been done in us. I have noticed that the younger generation has dropped much of the bias of my parent’s generation so that racially mixed marriages are more pronounced. The future of the melting process is clear and the idea of racially purity, at least here, is gone.

Lets get over the name calling and claim the title American human.

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