[Ethnicity Thread] Who Do You Think You Are?

[Cirno]

@Luna gave me this idea, since she frequently mentions her awkward White Girl nature.

Furthermore, it's 2015, and dialogues about race are now common to the Internet - which, until very recently, was considered to be the bastion of all things White and Male, what with users circa 2003 cracking jokes about "no girls on Internet" and "black people don't know how to Internet". Saying that you were a woman or a minority on the Internet was certain to cause people to say that you were merely pretending to be a minority, or a woman, for the troll factor.

There are now forums like this one that require you to declare what race you are, your ancestry, your haplogroup, even.

So. Who do you think you are, WORA? What race are you? Which European (or otherwise) country do your ancestors hail from?

[EmmahSue]

I am super white with family in England and Germany, as documented through records kept by my grandmother (the far distant Blackfoot princess may well have been a tale told to a little girl when she asked her Nana if there was anyone fun in the list). Glow in a blacklight white, yo.

ES

[silentsophia]

My family's so white we have a box of saltines in the family tree. Aside from the whacky third branch with us dark haired types. So we're pretty much English, German and some random Aussies with one branch having some Native American blood due to an extramarital affair.

Shenanigans.

[Cobalt]

Mostly white, but with some Swinomish mixed in very very far removed these days.

[TNP]

I'm 50% German, 25% Romanian and 25% Ukrainian with Jewish coming from all four lines of grandparents. What their ethnic makeup is, I haven't a clue (though I like to think there's some distant Celt in there given they originally came from that region). Strange that this topic just came up at work today when a customer mentioned he just got the results of his DNA analysis through Ancestry.com. For only a hundred bucks, I'm almost tempted out of sheer curiosity.

[Wizz]

My great grandma on my mom's side was a Danish immigrant to the US, so I'm...what, 1/8th Hamlet? My dad's side is a pile o' mutt. They claim to be Irish but I actually have no idea.

[Chime]

I think race is kinda silly from the biodiversity perspective; the dna differences are negligible. Now... socio-cultural differences and the effect of historical circumstances, prevalent languages used, etc, can be a big deal.

Hell if I know though. I'm a compsci person, not a psychosocial engineer.

Based on genealogical research my mother did, about 5/8ths of the family came from England, with a few small branches from Ireland. The rest is mostly Germanic, with the current surname dating to Prussia in the 1880s.

As far as skin color, well... yeah. I'm well into the looks-like-a-vampire territory. I put on SPF 9000 or it burns and peels off in long, bleeding strips. Mostly it's pale-to-translucent, but often looks fairly red because I blush anytime I'm thinking something naughty.

And yes, I'm always thinking something naughty.

But culturally? Well. That's much more complicated but likely best left in a different topic.

[HelloRaptor]

@Cirno

what with users circa 2003 cracking jokes about "no girls on Internet"

People still do that in 2015, and it boggles my mind.

[mietze]

German-Japanese-Cajun

Adopted into an Italian and British/Scottish family.

I've actually been starting to find quite a few distant (3rd cousin range) biological relatives on 23andMe.

I always wondered if the no identifying information I had was full of shit or not (my adoption happened in the era of agencies being able to do whatever) but it was neat to see the test confirm at least the Japanese/Asian component as well as geographical region where a lot of those 3rd cousins show up.

I have fair skin and freckles but tan well and don't burn easily. I think my biracial features were much more obvious when I was a kid and teen (I got teased a lot) but now i don't think other people notice except for other -Asian people. They're usually the ones that ask.

[2mspris]

I'm probably a good 75% German in the American Melting Pot. My bio-father's side of the family his parents came to the US from Germany directly as children and the family tree is traced back generation upon generation upon generation there. My mother's family was a little bit more diverse but there was additional German, English, Irish, Scandinavian and Shawnee Indian in there.

My parents and grandparents were always very into genealogy, which is handy in so far as it means I'm pretty familiar with where I'm from, etc. My mother's even done the "trace your ancestor line through DNA" thing to go beyond that.

[Alzie]

I'm White through and through. My father's side is German, my mother's side is Italian. I'm told my father's family immigrated here shortly before WW1. I imagine they had a hard time since he was an officer in the german military. My mother's family doesn't know much about their ancestors and i haven't really bothered to look.

[Miss Demeanor]

We're mostly English and Dutch with a touch of Portugese on my grandmother's side. My father's side CLAIMS Irish, but I disbelieve.

Skin color is fishbelly, burn ratio is OHGODITBURNS.

[Bobotron]

@2mspris
My mom was really into genealogy. My cousin inherited all of the big binders of family history stuff when she passed on, as my cousin is really into it too.

On her side we have German, Dutch and Irish, with Cherokee as a not too recent addition (I'm 1/16th, my greatx3 grandmother was full Cherokee). On my dad's side we have French and English. IIRC we'd traced some of the stuff on her father's side back to the the early 1600s (I should really ask my cousin what else she's found) and my dad's French and German ancestry back to earlier than that (though I can't recall how far,.

[Misadventure]

Czech-German. Bohemian atop that (which is just more Slav with German).

[thebird]

Each of my grandparents were from different European countries, whose families all immigrated to the United States sometime around World War II. Don't know what their genealogy is like, but just what I know from where they come from, I'm Irish, Scottish, Dutch and German.
Interestingly (and sadly), we suspect my father's mother's brother was a Nazi or somesuch, as they supposedly had some political ties in Germany. He allegedly sent his family away to America at some point, and was then never heard from again. Just speculation though. I like to think if he was, he was a reluctant one, and why the family never heard from him again. Again, all speculation/rumor I heard from my parents. Oh, and my Scottish grandfather apparently had a castle. Our family rumors are clearly reliable. That or everyone in Scotland had a castle...
Not as interestingly, if I step into sunlight, I will likely turn immediately into ash. I "can't even" with sunlight. #PastyProblems?

[Rook]

German - Irish.

[BetterJudgment]

Although my maternal grandfather's surname is Dutch, the ancestor of his whose history I know was from the duchy of Brunswick in Germany. My paternal grandmother's maiden name is definitely German, my paternal grandfather's surname is likely so, and my maternal grandmother's family name is English. I suspect on no good evidence beyond the name and country of origin that my paternal grandfather's family was Jewish not too many generations back. Needless to say, I have gotten second-degree burns from a summer afternoon at the lake with my shirt off.

[Jaded]

Going way back my family is strongly Dutch and German prior to major colonization of the Americas in my family. And then in the 1700s some of our Dutch family line came to the Ohio Valley and integrated to a limited degree with the Shawnee. Which was further diluted with interspersed marriages with German and/or Irish/Scottish immigrants coming to the continent from the mid 1800s up to World War 2. And somewhere around World War 2 some Greek was thrown in there as well.

[Luna]

I don't know. Both sides of my family has been here a long time. I also apparently come from a long line of mostly white trash. Me and my brother are mostly different though in our looks, both from family and each other. I'm auburn haired, shorter, fair and freckled with hazel eyes. My moms the only one out of her four sisters like that (though she has brown eyes which are common in her side) and none of my cousins are like me except for one redheaded cousin...and on my moms side I have a LOT of cousins. My brother is taller with olive skin, no freckles, brunette, thin and almost no body hair. He can't even grow a beard to save his life...there are just spots that refuse to grow facial hair at all.

I tried tracing our family back but seriously, we've been here ages and always in the south. I did find out my dads mom lived on a street when she grew up with a black family. I feel sorry for that family. They were the only ones with any damn sense to not have 10 kids. My grandma was a hateful old lady so I can't see the rest of her family being much nicer. There's also census records of a missing kid. Weird stuff.

Anyhow, I'm just some plain old white girl who refuses to live in east Texas like her white trash family. I'm likely three check marks away from being a basic bitch. I'm ok with this.

[Cobalt]

I used to think that I was SUPER PALE WHITE (I lived in Florida), as I don't really tan -- and I do sunburn but it mostly just turns pink rather than red or anything, and then the skin underneath is more peachy/pinky afterward.

However. I live in the Pacific Northwest again, and have learned that I am not nearly so pale as I thought. I am a pleasant sort of peachy color. Unlike the girl I saw walk past me at campus the other day, in cut-off hot pants that exposed the entirety of her Glow In The Dark Bone White legs. The sun glinted off of her calves and I was blinded.