{"id":34781,"date":"2013-11-19T04:17:05","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T04:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34781"},"modified":"2017-02-19T23:05:40","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T23:05:40","slug":"the-genes-that-build-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34781","title":{"rendered":"The genes that build America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2007\/jul\/15\/usa.genetics\" target=\"_blank\">The genes that build America<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/a><br \/>\n2007-07-14<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/profile\/paulharris\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Harris<\/a><\/strong>, US Correspondent<\/p>\n<p><em>From the discovery that presidential hopeful <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> is descended from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black Americans have European ancestors, a boom in &#8216;recreational genetics&#8217; is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DNA\" target=\"_blank\">DNA<\/a> jigsaw of what it really means to be born in the USA<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Al_Sharpton\" target=\"_blank\">Al Sharpton<\/a> walked into a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Carolina\" target=\"_blank\">South Carolina<\/a> pine forest just outside the sleepy southern town of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edgefield,_South_Carolina\" target=\"_blank\">Edgefield<\/a> and stopped at a cluster of toothlike unmarked gravestones. This was the former plantation on which a few generations ago his ancestors had worked, lived, loved and died, owned as property by white masters. &#8216;You must assume that it&#8217;s family here,&#8217; Sharpton said, referring to the abandoned slave graveyard.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks previously Reverend Sharpton, one of America&#8217;s most outspoken black civil rights leaders, had not known of the cemetery&#8217;s existence. But researchers had explored his genealogy and broken the news to him. Sharpton&#8217;s story had an astonishing twist: the genealogists discovered that his ancestors had once been owned by the ancestors of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Strom_Thurmond\" target=\"_blank\">Strom Thurmond<\/a>, the Senator and former segregationist who once ran for president on a racist platform. The phrase &#8216;ironic coincidence&#8217; did not begin to cover it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2007\/jul\/15\/usa.genetics\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The genes that build America The Guardian 2007-07-14 Paul Harris, US Correspondent From the discovery that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is descended from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black Americans have European ancestors, a boom in &#8216;recreational genetics&#8217; is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,63,459,8,3015,26,6940,20],"tags":[16407,16408,16409,2055,2103,2835,16406],"class_list":["post-34781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-politics","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-al-sharpton","tag-paul-harris","tag-peter-fine","tag-strom-thurmond","tag-the-guardian","tag-the-observer","tag-tony-burroughs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34781","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=34781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51713,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34781\/revisions\/51713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}