[ExI] Well-roundedness and character

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat



 

>…What would the number signify and why would it matter? The everyday concept of race really doesn't map onto biological concept of a population group. In fact, any clear look at the numbers here shows, for instance, that everyday racial groups overlap different biological populations….   Regards,  Dan

 

 

Hi Dan, the number is mostly to educate people about themselves.  That’s what it did for me.

 

I did one of these commercial DNA tests when they dropped to 100 bucks.  Now they are 60, but in the past 6 yrs, I have bought 34 kits for relatives and done DNA mapping to try to figure out connections with genetic diseases.  That’s how I found out about the black ancestor: all of us on that branch show it, none of us knew.  But now we do.

 

Here’s bit of American history you might find interesting.  The traditional version of slavery in the south suggests that escaped slaves went north to freedom, but it is a little more subtle than that.  If they were in Georgia, some went south into Florida, which was sparsely populated and they could join the local population.  You can see the evidence in the Seminole tribe, which did not evacuate Florida but accepted the Africans.

 

In Virginia, the escapees from the slave plantations could head north, but their better chances were in heading west, to get over the Appalachians.  Over on the west side, in what is now West Virginia but was then part of Virginia, they still had (theoretically) legal slavery but no one owned slaves out there from what I can tell from the census records.  My great^3 grandfather was a fiery Methodist minister who spoke often and thunderously on this topic.  So the slaves would sometimes go west, get over the mountains and set up camp in the hollers on the west side, often going into the coal business, where they could be free, work harder than before under far more dangerous conditions, while still being as destitute as they were as slaves.  But they were free, and they were equal to the local whites there.

 

Decades went by.  My grandmother was born and grew up there.  She was telling me how life was in the mountain country.  There was a choice of careers: you could do anything you like, as long as you like coal mining.  There the black men and white men were truly equals: after a half an hour in the mine, everyone was the same color.  The black and white families lived in the same row of company-owned shotgun houses.  They accepted each other as equals.

 

This explains a long-standing puzzle: we couldn’t figure out why my great^3 grandmother ended up there of all places, from Georgia.  Reason: she was Scotch-Irish with an African baby.  She ended up in the coal country of West Virginia, where they had no heartburn with that kind of thing.

 

The 1920s came along.  The miners decided they would politely ask the company to lift a finger to help keep them alive, the company politely refused, the miners began to unionize, the company brought in strike-breakers from Italy.  The labor force detested the Italians, but black and (non-Italian) white were friends, united in common cause against Italians.

 

Race is both more and less than DNA, if it is anything at all.

 

With that in mind as a background, you may come to understand why your comments on the DNA-component of race interests me.  You can do some interesting tricks with these low-cost DNA tests, but perhaps the most important one of all is that it educates people about themselves.  It did that for me.

 

spike 

 

 






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200612/3c534deb/attachment.htm>