White Anglo Americans like to claim Irish heritage as kind of a soothing balm to avoid feeling guilty about sitting in the seat of empire. Same thing as when white people claim their great grandmother was Cherokee.
Also, do to unfortunate math a ton of us do have a great grandmother that married into whiteness for economic reasons. The problem is people think of that as a little spice instead of a critique of the American peoject
I’ve also known of southern white people claiming native American heritage to hide the reality of African heritage. I’m an example. I was told by my grandfather that his grandmother was a “choctaw princess” throughout my childhood. And I’ve done research into this and it seems like she was actually a black woman. Claiming native ancestry is usually more socially acceptable in the south than claiming black ancestry.
Every princess has a queen as a mother, so why don’t they just skip the bullshit and say they’re descended from Choctaw royalty and have claims to Choctaw royal line of succession?
I mean if you wanna go that far into it, the Choctaw didn’t have a typical hereditary monarchy before 1860. They would have three chiefs/kings that were chosen by popular consensus, and sometimes it would be hereditary, but often it wasn’t. And they didn’t have absolute monarchy either where the chiefs had complete authority. They’ve been a republic with a constition since 1860, which is around when my fictional ancestor was supposedly alive so even the line of succession thing doesn’t work
Synthesis: Claim ancestry from the last reigning monarch of an African nation before the colonizers took over (e.g., Queen Nzinga of what is now Angola) and a notable chief of an indigenous tribe (e.g., Chief Attakullakulla). Probably not that far off for white people who would be able to trace their ancestry to the 17th century colonies anyways
Some of this is frustrating to me. My grandmother and half aunt were all-in on Indigenous American culture, passing it down to their children and claiming to have tribal membership. My mom had none of that. Her mom passed away when she was really young, and her dad did not keep up with the cultural practices, so my mom raised me really white. I recently did some research into our heritage to learn more about this, and it doesn’t look like we have any recent Native American ancestors? Nobody seems to appear on the Dawes Rolls. I have no clue how (or if) they really were members of a tribe. Were they just larping as indigenous descended? So then Mom was probably correct in raising me in white culture, which is sad because I’d love to be part of any other culture. (not in an appropriated or fetishized way; I know I have lots of privileges that I should be using to help less-advantaged people) Even did DNA test at one point and it is very much just British from Britain. Not even Wales or some other country under the United Kingdom umbrella, just Great Britain. I am colonizer prime apparently.
White Anglo Americans like to claim Irish heritage as kind of a soothing balm to avoid feeling guilty about sitting in the seat of empire. Same thing as when white people claim their great grandmother was Cherokee.
Also white people who take DNA test that show they’re less than 1% African
Also, do to unfortunate math a ton of us do have a great grandmother that married into whiteness for economic reasons. The problem is people think of that as a little spice instead of a critique of the American peoject
I’ve also known of southern white people claiming native American heritage to hide the reality of African heritage. I’m an example. I was told by my grandfather that his grandmother was a “choctaw princess” throughout my childhood. And I’ve done research into this and it seems like she was actually a black woman. Claiming native ancestry is usually more socially acceptable in the south than claiming black ancestry.
Every princess has a queen as a mother, so why don’t they just skip the bullshit and say they’re descended from Choctaw royalty and have claims to Choctaw royal line of succession?
I mean if you wanna go that far into it, the Choctaw didn’t have a typical hereditary monarchy before 1860. They would have three chiefs/kings that were chosen by popular consensus, and sometimes it would be hereditary, but often it wasn’t. And they didn’t have absolute monarchy either where the chiefs had complete authority. They’ve been a republic with a constition since 1860, which is around when my fictional ancestor was supposedly alive so even the line of succession thing doesn’t work
Synthesis: Claim ancestry from the last reigning monarch of an African nation before the colonizers took over (e.g., Queen Nzinga of what is now Angola) and a notable chief of an indigenous tribe (e.g., Chief Attakullakulla). Probably not that far off for white people who would be able to trace their ancestry to the 17th century colonies anyways
Some of this is frustrating to me. My grandmother and half aunt were all-in on Indigenous American culture, passing it down to their children and claiming to have tribal membership. My mom had none of that. Her mom passed away when she was really young, and her dad did not keep up with the cultural practices, so my mom raised me really white. I recently did some research into our heritage to learn more about this, and it doesn’t look like we have any recent Native American ancestors? Nobody seems to appear on the Dawes Rolls. I have no clue how (or if) they really were members of a tribe. Were they just larping as indigenous descended? So then Mom was probably correct in raising me in white culture, which is sad because I’d love to be part of any other culture. (not in an appropriated or fetishized way; I know I have lots of privileges that I should be using to help less-advantaged people) Even did DNA test at one point and it is very much just British from Britain. Not even Wales or some other country under the United Kingdom umbrella, just Great Britain. I am colonizer prime apparently.