{"id":24603,"date":"2012-08-01T22:11:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T22:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24603"},"modified":"2014-10-22T19:23:21","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T19:23:21","slug":"obama-is-a-descendant-of-nefertiti-confucius-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24603","title":{"rendered":"Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dominion of New York<\/a>
\n2012-07-31<\/p>\n

Alondra Nelson<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Sociology
\nColumbia University<\/em><\/p>\n

There was breaking news yesterday in the lively world of presidential genealogy. Barack Obama<\/a>\u2013who is regarded as an inauthentic African-American by some because his late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham<\/a>, was a white woman and his father\u2019s ancestry traced to Kenya rather than Kentucky or the Carolinas\u2013was suggested to be descended on his maternal side from John Punch, a black man.<\/p>\n

Researchers at Ancestry.com<\/a>, the online root-seeking company, derived Obama\u2019s relationship to Punch using a combination of standard genealogical research and Y-chromosome genetic analysis. (Y-DNA is passed essentially unchanged from fathers to sons to grandsons to great-grandsons, etc.) The timing of this announcement could not be better for the Provo, Utah company that just reported booming fourth quarter profits and is rumored to be seeking a buyer.<\/p>\n

An indentured servant in 17th century Virginia, Punch would earn the lamentable designation of \u201cthe first documented African enslaved for life in American history\u201d when he was reduced to chattel as punishment for his attempt to escape servitude. Punch, like Obama the elder, was an African; tragically, what makes Punch \u201cAfrican-American\u201d is his slave status. With rebellious, freedom-loving roots firmly planted in the New World, our nation\u2019s first president of African descent \u2014Punch\u2019s 11th great grandson\u2013may just be \u201cblack enough\u201d after all…<\/strong><\/p>\n

…We have a high threshold for political gossip and, in the digital age, genealogy is a fast fad that shows no sign of passing out of vogue. But the primary reason these ancestry stories entrance us is because they bring us face-to-face with our national fascination with and anxieties about racial miscegenation.<\/strong> Take, for example, the minor controversy over Rachel L. Swarns<\/a> recently published American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multicultural Ancestors of Michelle Obama<\/a><\/em>. Megan Smolenyak<\/a>, the prominent genealogist who conducted the research for Swarns\u2019 widely-read 2007 co-authored article that revealed Michelle Obama\u2019s white slavery-era ancestors, critiqued it in the Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>. Smolenyak was stunned that:<\/p>\n

the maternal half of the first lady\u2019s family tree \u2014 her mother Marian (Shields) Robinson\u2019s side [was] overlooked. Though Michelle Obama has classic Great Migration<\/a> roots winding their way back to at least eleven states, southern Virginia \u2014 and especially Henry and Pittsylvania counties \u2014 can claim more of her heritage than any other location. Fully a quarter of her ancestry traces to this area on the North Carolina border, but inexplicably, it\u2019s this portion of her family tree that\u2019s given short-shrift.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Smolenyak further complained that \u201cthe \u2018revelation\u2019 of the white ancestor via DNA testing\u201d wasn\u2019t unexpected; \u201cthe only true surprise in the book\u201d she concluded, was \u201cthe absence of over a third of Mrs. Obama\u2019s known ancestors.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti & Confucius Too Dominion of New York 2012-07-31 Alondra Nelson, Associate Professor of Sociology Columbia University There was breaking news yesterday in the lively world of presidential genealogy. Barack Obama\u2013who is regarded as an inauthentic African-American by some because his late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, was a white woman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,63,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[2087,11431,11453,11451,11436,11454,2099,11452],"class_list":["post-24603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-alondra-nelson","tag-ancestry-com","tag-anne-dunham","tag-dominion-of-new-york","tag-john-punch","tag-megan-smolenyak","tag-michelle-obama","tag-stanley-anne-dunham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}