Ethnicity, Race, DNA

I have been wanting to get on this soapbox for a while. Which soapbox you might ask.

Well, let’s talk a bit about Ethnicity, Race & DNA. I see more confusion in this ‘arena’ than almost any topic within family history.

It seems almost everywhere I go, I read about people wanting to be part of one ‘ethnic’ group, and frequently trying to avoid being in another. People want to identify with what they consider a ‘good’ grouping and/ or dislike some other group. As an even sadder historical fact, people are willing to go so far as to destroy those they dislike or see as being amongst those ‘evil’ others (e.g. the Shoah/Holocaust provides a decent historical case study).

My challenge to you is, have you ever tried to seriously and logically sort out the issues associated with your own background and what you consider as your race and ethnicity? I will not attempt to convince you that I have the ultimate solution; but, rather let me offer some thoughts and issues associated with ethnicity, culture, and race.

Race is actually probably the easiest and most obvious topic to address. Surprised?

What follows is a link to a pretty decent, albeit simplistic, definition of the issue. Yes, it comes from that center (repository) of all human knowledge, Wikipedia. By way of quick summary:

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. […] Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.

If you take the time to read the introductory material on the above mentioned article, you will notice that any human racial grouping is essentially one of convenience designed to distinguish human physical (physiological) appearance(s). It is not a science but rather more of a pseudo-science.

This 20th century pseudo-science, of race, itself has largely devolved further into more focused while remaining largely imprecise theories/ topics/ subjects of ethnicity, national identity, populations, communities, etc. The question is where does this all leave us? Let me provide a small (brief?) case-study.

Quick Case Study:

If you read materials here on ManyRoads, you will notice that my mother’s family came from an area that is today located in North Central Poland. Prior to WW1 the region was located in The German Empire (Deutsches Reich). As you probably know, Hitler managed to make a mess of things in WW2 and as a result my mother’s family was expelled (ethnically cleansed) from those lands where they lived from the late 1300’s until 1945. They had considered themselves Prussians of Dutch descent and German. You may have already noticed a small confusion here. Were they Dutch, Prussian, German? What exactly was a Dutch descendant in 1923 (when my mom was born)? What was a 1923 Prussian? What was a German from West Prussia?

In the late 1920’s there was no real DNA tracing, but the Germans were certainly working hard on differentiating between Ethnic superiority and inferiority. Undaunted by information or logic, they were willing to expel ‘other’ peoples from their homes to make room (Lebensraum) for Germans. But who were these people for whom they wanted to make room?

Well, let’s take a quick look at some incomplete and abbreviated history.

The regions that were defined in 1918 as being German were peopled by a population whose lands had during the previous 1000 years been co-resident with or over-run and conquered by numerous peoples including those who identified themselves as Vikings, Swedes, Lithuanians, Sorbs, Czechs, Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusian, Estonians, Latvians, French, Dutch, English, Finns, Mennonites, Jews, etc.

Not surprisingly, these peoples did what people always seem to do and left some of their DNA behind. Thus, by the 1920s when my mom was born and just as Hitler began to rage, Germans were a mix of people who had spoken languages such as German, Italian, Swedish, French, English, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, etc. These people not only brought their DNA along to join, or blend, in the German-mix but also contributed from their history, traditions, and foods.

Thus by the 1930s, those Poles, Jews, Russians, etc. who were to be expelled take room for the ‘master race’ of Germans were largely distinguishable by a few cultural mores and linguistic and religious preferences. Nothing much beyond that.

So where does all this leave us? Well, what your mom probably means when she told you she was German (or Polish…) was/is that family members spoke German (or Polish), followed German customs (probably regional customs), and that she and her parents self-identified as part of a German community. She probably did not see folks within her self-identified community has having dark skin. Her group may have even gone so far as to narrow their self-identification so as to exclude differing faiths, accents, etc.

Ethnicity is always thus. It exists as a human convenience and construct. DNA models are precisely that, models. These models try to reflect what people generally consider to be an identifiable ‘ethnic or racial’ group by today’s understanding not an understanding that may have existed in 1200, 1600, or even the 1800s.

After all, you need to buy their DNA results; those earlier folks are long dead and they don’t purchase DNA results.

As a parting set of thoughts.

These models, descriptions, and definitions will evolve. Your personal DNA can help you identify genetic relatives. As for identifying your ethnic group or regional associations, these definitions are likely to change as more data is gathered and populations migrate.

You may discover that the way you are described changes over time. You can see what I discovered about myself here……

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