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This trend was noticed in the most recent census. Home DNA tests sold by the likes of Ancestry and 23andme are a contributing factor. “We find that people who

This trend was noticed in the most recent census. Home DNA tests sold by the likes of Ancestry and 23andme are a contributing factor. “We find that people who have taken a [mail in ancestry test] are not only more likely to self-identify as multiracial, they are particularly likely to select three or more races,” Johfre said. These differences were most pronounced for middle-age adults, which means the U.S. multiracial population would be growing because of more than just new births, the researchers noted. https://news.stanford.edu/2021/05/17/ancestry-tests-affect-race-self-identification/ https://news.stanford.edu/2021/05/17/ancestry-tests-affect-r...

coldtea 5y ago
Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans? Because that's quite different than Native Americans actually increasing as demographic groups...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans? In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself. Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories...
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I'd say, it's a broader concept that includes many ethnic groups with similar geographical origins and/or backgrounds and shared ancestries. Not that precise of course and with fuzzy edges...
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself. But even on that basis, 1/16 is not very meaningful. > Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories... ...then we're looking at demographic groups, like the earlier comment asked about.
    - stickyricky 5y ago
      > 1/16 is not very meaningful. To you... Many people find it meaningful including American Indian tribes which require ancestry of that amount.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    I'm confused here - are you saying that ethnic categories are social constructs?
- mc32 5y ago
  Yes, quite likely. Also in order to be accurate DNA services need to have enough samples (of the group and the geographic region) to be accurate otherwise they can be misleading.
- vmception 5y ago
  Yes, and thats interesting and important. People begin inquisitiveness and empathy after realizing they are part of a uniquely North American diaspora. Its really not about being a poser or trying to get an obscure scholarship. The inquisitiveness leads to finding relatives and members of a tribe thought disbanded or eradicated, reconnecting by fractional blood can lead to being eligible for recognition, land and some degrees of sovereignty.
  - armenarmen 5y ago
    Not to nitpick, but totally nit picking. I don’t think people of NA heritage (in NA) would be considered a diaspora
    - vmception 5y ago
      Many were relocated, and the dilution of the knowledge of even the locations of other members counts to me.
- jcampbell1 5y ago
  I’d be interested to see the data. Black people are vastly more likely to have Native American DNA than WASPs because it was common until about 1750 for slave owners to buy/trade for female slaves with the Native American tribes.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    "Their conclusions were that while almost all African Americans are racially mixed, and many have family stories of Native heritage, usually these stories turn out to be inaccurate, with only 5 percent of African American people showing more than 2 percent Native American ancestry. Gates summarized these statistics to mean that, "If you have 2 percent Native American ancestry, you had one such ancestor on your family tree five to nine generations back (150 to 270 years ago)." Their findings also concluded that the most common "non-black" mix among African Americans is English and Scots-Irish."
    - smcl 5y ago
      Just as an aside, I feel like "Scots-Irish" is a fairly uniquely American phrase which you don't really hear in Scotland or Ireland. There are a couple of possible interpretations and always I wonder which is meant: 1. Ulster-Scots, i.e. the Scottish people who moved into northern part of Ireland (now all of Northern Ireland plus a couple of counties in Ireland) 2. Some Irish and some Scottish, i.e. they have ancestors from both places and want a word to describe this 3. Generally celtic, i.e. they know it's Ireland or Scotland or maybe both and want to cover their bases Neither is particularly harmful, but I kind of wish some people understood that #1 is a distinct thing
      - kgbdrop1 5y ago
        The overwhelmingly most common usage is #1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans).
        smcl 5y ago
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits. In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened. I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically. Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.
  - ivan_gammel 5y ago
    This reminds me of people in Soviet Union who chose to write “Russian” as their ethnicity in passport despite different ancestry (yes, there was such section in Soviet and later Russian passports until 1990s). Indigenous people of Siberia or Caucasus, Germans and Jews too familiar of ethnic prejudices were redefining their identity to open career opportunities. You could take either ethnicity of your father or your mother, being Russian was often considered the safest bet.
  - causi 5y ago
    I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied Speaking as someone who is also 1/32, same as you, people like us need to stop pretending having a sliver of genetic material somehow entitles us to a "cultural heritage". 1/32 is five generations. That's three percent. For comparison, the average European-American's DNA is 3.5% African. White people are blacker than you and me are Native American.
    - vanderZwan 5y ago
      I think mixing of socially constructed races and genetic ethnicities is a recipe for disaster. The only thing the latter is good for IMO is to highlight how the former is a social construct. With that in mind, tying cultural heritage to "where did my close ancestors come from" seems like a more sensible approach than genetic percentages, since that actually connects to a social context. Having said that, cherry picking one out of thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents over the thirty-one others sounds pretty absurd. But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  I’m 90% sure future historians will look back on this race to four significant digits trend the way we look at Victorian numerology. Correlated to real phenomena. But self obsessed to the point of irrelevance.
bushbaba 5y ago
Eh or it’s due to racism. I as a “white” skinned person often hesitate to put my race down for a multitude of reasons. My family has moved to a new country every hundred-ish years so it’s hard to pin down a specific race anyways.

coldtea 5y ago

Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans? Because that's quite different than Native Americans actually increasing as demographic groups...

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Does this mean those are random "1/16th native american" WASPs and such, that claim the heritage because of the results, but otherwise didn't know about it, or have any real relation (demographic, cultural, etc) with native americans? In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself. Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories...
- coldtea 5y ago
  I'd say, it's a broader concept that includes many ethnic groups with similar geographical origins and/or backgrounds and shared ancestries. Not that precise of course and with fuzzy edges...
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > In the theory under which “race” is meaningful, it is biological and distinct from (and orthogonal to) social “ethnic” categories, so claiming race on that basis is exactly as valid as the idea of race itself. But even on that basis, 1/16 is not very meaningful. > Now, if we admit that “race” is just a dishonest label assigned to certain ethnic categories... ...then we're looking at demographic groups, like the earlier comment asked about.
  - stickyricky 5y ago
    > 1/16 is not very meaningful. To you... Many people find it meaningful including American Indian tribes which require ancestry of that amount.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- bencollier49 5y ago
  I'm confused here - are you saying that ethnic categories are social constructs?
mc32 5y ago
Yes, quite likely. Also in order to be accurate DNA services need to have enough samples (of the group and the geographic region) to be accurate otherwise they can be misleading.
vmception 5y ago
Yes, and thats interesting and important. People begin inquisitiveness and empathy after realizing they are part of a uniquely North American diaspora. Its really not about being a poser or trying to get an obscure scholarship. The inquisitiveness leads to finding relatives and members of a tribe thought disbanded or eradicated, reconnecting by fractional blood can lead to being eligible for recognition, land and some degrees of sovereignty.
- armenarmen 5y ago
  Not to nitpick, but totally nit picking. I don’t think people of NA heritage (in NA) would be considered a diaspora
  - vmception 5y ago
    Many were relocated, and the dilution of the knowledge of even the locations of other members counts to me.
jcampbell1 5y ago
I’d be interested to see the data. Black people are vastly more likely to have Native American DNA than WASPs because it was common until about 1750 for slave owners to buy/trade for female slaves with the Native American tribes.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  "Their conclusions were that while almost all African Americans are racially mixed, and many have family stories of Native heritage, usually these stories turn out to be inaccurate, with only 5 percent of African American people showing more than 2 percent Native American ancestry. Gates summarized these statistics to mean that, "If you have 2 percent Native American ancestry, you had one such ancestor on your family tree five to nine generations back (150 to 270 years ago)." Their findings also concluded that the most common "non-black" mix among African Americans is English and Scots-Irish."
  - smcl 5y ago
    Just as an aside, I feel like "Scots-Irish" is a fairly uniquely American phrase which you don't really hear in Scotland or Ireland. There are a couple of possible interpretations and always I wonder which is meant: 1. Ulster-Scots, i.e. the Scottish people who moved into northern part of Ireland (now all of Northern Ireland plus a couple of counties in Ireland) 2. Some Irish and some Scottish, i.e. they have ancestors from both places and want a word to describe this 3. Generally celtic, i.e. they know it's Ireland or Scotland or maybe both and want to cover their bases Neither is particularly harmful, but I kind of wish some people understood that #1 is a distinct thing
    - kgbdrop1 5y ago
      The overwhelmingly most common usage is #1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans).
      - smcl 5y ago
DoreenMichele 5y ago
It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to admit to being part Native. My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits. In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened. I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically. Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  This reminds me of people in Soviet Union who chose to write “Russian” as their ethnicity in passport despite different ancestry (yes, there was such section in Soviet and later Russian passports until 1990s). Indigenous people of Siberia or Caucasus, Germans and Jews too familiar of ethnic prejudices were redefining their identity to open career opportunities. You could take either ethnicity of your father or your mother, being Russian was often considered the safest bet.
- causi 5y ago
  I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied Speaking as someone who is also 1/32, same as you, people like us need to stop pretending having a sliver of genetic material somehow entitles us to a "cultural heritage". 1/32 is five generations. That's three percent. For comparison, the average European-American's DNA is 3.5% African. White people are blacker than you and me are Native American.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    I think mixing of socially constructed races and genetic ethnicities is a recipe for disaster. The only thing the latter is good for IMO is to highlight how the former is a social construct. With that in mind, tying cultural heritage to "where did my close ancestors come from" seems like a more sensible approach than genetic percentages, since that actually connects to a social context. Having said that, cherry picking one out of thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents over the thirty-one others sounds pretty absurd. But I'm not from North America so I probably miss some social context to understand the logic behind that.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
I’m 90% sure future historians will look back on this race to four significant digits trend the way we look at Victorian numerology. Correlated to real phenomena. But self obsessed to the point of irrelevance.

bushbaba 5y ago

Eh or it’s due to racism. I as a “white” skinned person often hesitate to put my race down for a multitude of reasons. My family has moved to a new country every hundred-ish years so it’s hard to pin down a specific race anyways.