Just Found Out I’m Not Actually Native American
And I’m Not Sure How to Feel
Day 25
So for most of my life I thought I was nearly one eighth Native American. My maternal great-grandfather was supposedly adopted from a Seminole Tribe in Florida. Somehow he met my great-grandmother — a black woman from Southeast Virginia. They married and moved to North New Jersey where they raised my grandfather. I could not authenticate any of this, by the way. My grandfather died before I could straight up ask him. My mother, God bless her soul, is one of the least curious people in the world when it comes to family lineage. My aunt kind of heard some rumors about it. Either way, the story was created for us and by us. We believed it. That was, of course, until my sister decided to do an ancestry.com DNA test, which I can’t really authenticate the results of either but they have commercials and shit so it’s probably right.
My sister who — as far as I know — has the same exact parents as I do, came back with the following DNA results: approx. 76% African, 26% European, .5% unassigned and .2% Asian. At first I thought, “Ok, nothing that surprising here. Most of my lineage would come from Africa and well…slavery… so the 26% European makes a lot of sense too. What the fuck is unassigned? Also, only .2% Asian? I guess that makes a lot of sense too. Not too many Asians running around getting it on with black people in the American South during the 19th Century— at least not to my knowledge. I guess it’s racist to assume that without knowing. Or maybe it’s not. Whatever.”
I proceeded to go about my merry way until one of my other sisters in the group text said: “Does this account for any of Native American DNA?”
HOLY.SHIT.
Yeah, what about my great-grandfather who I’ve never seen who supposedly looked like this?
Apparently, if my grandfather did look like that, the “Asian” category would have been a lot higher than the unassigned. But we have more DNA that is unassigned than we do Asian. Which would mean we ain’t even a little Native American. Clearly the results must have been wrong. But at the same time ancestry.com does have commercials and shit. Was our family wrong this whole time? Were we just another stereotypical black family who fell victim to the, “yeah, well you know my hair’s wavy because I’ve got Cherokee in me” myth? Oh God, I used to judge other black people for those stories. My logic was that there was no way there were that many Native Americans running around getting down with black people. Native American and Black orgies have been documented exactly nowhere but in the minds of black grandmothers’ imaginations. But despite this logic, I just knew, in the pit of my soul, that my family was different. We had Seminole in us — which sounds fancier than Cherokee. Also, we supposedly had a family member who lived relatively recently who was Seminole ( my great-grandfather lived in the 20th century and died in the late 1950s)— though our evidence was spotty. Our story made sense though.
Until I realized it didn’t.
Black people for centuries have been peddling myths of Native American blood. Why? For one, it sounds exotic. It’s like we got loyalty, got royalty inside our DNA. Perhaps we were related to Pocahontas or some chief. Most of us have never met a chief and now you’re saying our ancestors might have been one? OK, we’ll take it!
But by far and away the biggest reason these stories exist is because they sound nicer than the truth — we were raped during slavery. Any features we possess that aren’t African are from our European roots. And no, our African ancestors didn’t take trips to Europe and marry a bunch of Europeans.
Of course, the fact that black people find any joy in these stories is a manifestation of white supremacy and anti-blackness. There is a pervasive ideology that black is bad and anything not black is better. So if we can claim ancestry from another group of people that didn’t rape us, it’s a win-win. But also, not true.
Meanwhile, I knew ALL of this and for some reason arrogantly thought I was immune to this gullibility. But I believed in Santa until I was ten. True story. I don’t have a good track record of thinking critically about shit older people tell me. I guess I just thought I grew out of it. Apparently not. Apparently I believed that my maternal great-grandfather was Seminole — when really he probably just hopped out of a pool one day and his hair looked a little wavy and people called him “Indian James” and it stuck for a century until his great-granddaughter — whom he’s never met — found out on ancestry.com that ain’t accurate.
Here is a list of things I’ve done in my life assuming I was part Native American:
- Outwardly explained to someone that I had trouble growing a beard because of my Native American Heritage. In retrospect it was because I barely hit puberty. And it was kinda racist.
- Seriously asked a fellow law student (who actually had documented proof of being part of a Native American tribe) what I would have to do to prove my status in case I ever wanted to. Thank God I never did.
- Pompously explained in a business school class to at least thirty human beings that my grandfather received racial privilege because his father wasn’t black but NATIVE AMERICAN. I dropped straight knowledge on these fools about the history of racial privilege in America and they were feeling it. Well everyone except for the few black people in the class. They looked at me with disbelief and pity. Today I realized it’s because they were saying in their heads, “this motherf*cker ain’t no Native American.” Today, I realized they were right.
- Felt especially offended by things like the Redskins logo, the Dakota Access Pipeline, etc. because of my imaginary heritage.
All of it is true, though my Native American ancestry is not.
Oh well. I’m still black and proud like James Brown (holy shit, maybe I’m not actually related to him either!).
