"Mutts like me."

[DRoseDARs]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081108/ap_on_el_pr/mutts_like_me

I'm not going to bother posting the article in LBN, someone else can do that. I just found the line incredibly funny because I've been saying that about myself for years. Scottish (my clan traces back 800+ years), English, French, German and Russian blood flows through my veins.

Mutt Pride :thumbsup:

[Chulanowa]

1. Been saying it myself, too

My family has always been rather proud of it (which is kind of weird, coming from the deep south as we do!) Of course we're also proud that we're mostly descended from "scum of the earth" too. Welsh stowaways, Irish theives, Cajun bigamists, you name it we've got it :D

[DRoseDARs]

4. Welsh? The only thing good about the Welsh is Cathrine Zeta Jones...

;) :P

[Chulanowa]

5. I beg to argue!

The best thing about the Welsh is that most of them stay the hell in Wales! :D

[DRoseDARs]

6. At least they aren't the English, bunch of prissy tea-sippers.

;)

God, I just don't get why people get their bloomers in a bunch over bloodlines, particularly when those bloodlines are say all white. Good for President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II (say it, it's fun) for thumbing his nose at this with a smile and a chuckle. :thumbsup:

[Chulanowa]

7. Well, I'm all sorts of mixed up.

There's the Welsh I mentioned, plus some Cornish and irish. Beyond that? Choctaw and Cajun (which, really, could be damn near ANYTHING). There's also the obligatory "Cherokee princess" which means either I have some actual Tsalagi chick somewhere in the background, or a (pardon the term) "high mulatto" lady, or, more likely, nothing of the sort, it just sounds nice in the family history. Heh.

[izzie]

10. Better read up on your English history if you think they are pure

anything. And they all know their history. They were all mixed before any one heard of Am. believe me.

[sarge43]

14. Indeed. Mutts rule.

Phoenician and Greek traders in Welsh gold and Cornwall tin, Celt, Roman, German, Scandinavian, Norman French occupation. Further, there's strong implied evidence that Queen Elizabeth is one of descendant's of Muhammad due her Spanish ancestors. What is true for her is probably true for many of her English subjects. Also thanks to her grandmother Queen Mary, she might be a descendant of G. Khan and Attila.

We're all mutts. We all have cousins in every part of the world. We're family.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

12. Nice to wake up to having your grandfather and his heritage slammed

thanks. Pretty ignorant comment, and insensitive and inflammatory to Americans here of Welsh heritage or Welsh DU members. If this is supposed to be a joke it isn't funny

[DRoseDARs]

18. see post 6

You, sir, are a humorless boob. Obama gets the joke (that's why he made it) as do others here. I suggest you consider the joke more carefully and see why this thread openly mocks its basis.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

23. I'm a woman, not a sir. I said on another "Mutt" thread that we ALL are mutts

I have a great sense of humor, but sorry, trashing an entire nationality just doesn't rise to the level of great humor. I suggest you consider what the reaction would be here if you had substituted the word "Mexican" or "African" for the word "Welsh".

Is this ok to say?
"The best thing about the Kenyans is that most of them stay the hell in Kenya!"
"Mexicans? The only thing good about the Mexicans is Selena"

[DRoseDARs]

30. I'll spell this out for you: We're mocking ethnicity because taking issue w/ ethnicity...

...is absurd. Why? BECAUSE WE'RE ALL MIXED ETHNICITY. I spelled that out in the first fucking post by pointing out my mixed blood, as well as my use of smilies. I guess my lack of the :sarcasm: smiley put it too subtly for you and your "great sense of humor." Thin skin is a more apt description for you. Notice how others get it, but you don't? :eyes:

[eowyn_of_rohan]

32. Just because nobody else spoke up on this (but for one or 2 below)

doesn't mean they appreciate your idea of humor. Don't assume they are "on your side". Also, your sarcasm emoticon wouldn't make a difference because the joke is in such poor taste. And your hostility is inappropriate too
yuck. what a creep
good riddance

[DRoseDARs]

40. I take it then you pissed yourself with rage everytime Chris Rock got on stage.

No one spoke up about this because all (except you and what, two others?) got that we were mocking the notion of ethnicities being pure. You really need to pull that stick out of your ass.

[Chulanowa]

37. Your grandfather, too?

Well, lady, sorry to have offended, but personally I don't find my own heritage so utterly sacrosanct that all funning about it is verboten. Now maybe you think I'm a big bastard or something - you go right ahead with that - but fact is, I'm teasing my own heritage, too.

Now. Want some frybread?

[DRoseDARs]

47. Thank you for coming back. Her delicate sensibilities are seriously killing the laughter.

My gawd, what a concern troll.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

13. see post 12

[Chef Eric]

15. What the hell are you talking about?

The Welsh gave us Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century.

[DRoseDARs]

17. If you're not going to bother noticing the smilies, no one is going to bother noticing you. eom

[whathehell]

41. And Richard Burton...loved him.

[lamp_shade]

2. Irish, Scottish, Slovenian, Turk. n/t

[Tiggeroshii]

3. German, Irish, Mexican, Black, Japanese

...And probably a bunch of other stuff I don't know.

Mutt pride :)

[eShirl]

8. proud American Mutt checking in!

:hi:

[Enthusiast]

9. We are ALL of mixed heritage.

Especially those of us with roots in the British Isles. We were mixed up to start with then we received genetic contributions from Asia, North America, Polynesia and Africa (The nation of, lol).

[SmileyRose]

21. I have to take issue with "ALL"

My sister in law is an American of ONLY Korean blood - at least for the last 700 years in every direction you can dream of. My neighbor has a very small about of Spanish blood but is nearly all, and very proudly Apalachee (Native American). We have quite a lot of Americans who are not or don't consider themselves, mixed heritage.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

26. I understand your point

but i think if we go back far enough in any line, there will be a mix of races, eg., Native Americans supposedly migrated from Asia to North America during the Ice Age. How do we know there was not mingling between races before they came or along the way?

[Kind of Blue]

33. So true. I originally thought that I was 100percent sub-Saharan, Black, Nigerian-American.

Until I found out in my teen-aged years that I have a direct male Chinese ancestor, a trader, who settled in Nigeria a little over 100 years ago. He may not have been from China but he was known as the Chinaman. Would've thought? Then to find out that my people (on both sides because my grandmothers are distant cousins) weren't even originally from Nigeria, and the stories go far back to Iraq. I couldn't believe it. And I forgot to mention the hard horse-riding Berbers. So I related to Obama's statement in a broader sense, that this nation is a nation of mutts.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

36. That's really cool!

The study of family history is a source of unending fascination and excitement, isn't it? I related to Obama's statement in the way you did. I haven't been doing genealogy for months... missing it now!

[Kind of Blue]

38. "...source of unending fascination and excitement, isn't it?"

You betcha! My dream is to have one of those DNA test that traces your genes through time. I'd love to see where they've been. On the local news about a year ago, an Anglo blond-blue male reporter (of Celtic stock) and his colleague, a Chinese-American female, submitted their cheek cells for testing. Lo and behold, a marker was found in both sets of genes by way of Mongolia! It was thrilling for the two reporters, and me. The Celts and Mongols really got around. :)

[Enthusiast]

27. You are correct, of course.

I was thinking of "regular Mericans" . :sarcasm:

[sarge43]

28. As Korea was invaded and occupied many times, your s-i-l's ancestry

is most likely mixed. It's a brutal fact that soldiers leave children behind them.

I know from my appearance and family oral history, most of my ancestors came the British Isles and Germany. Given the history of those two areas, I also have, minimum, Roman, North African, and Mongolian ancestors. Your neighbor with Spanish blood has ancestors from North Africa and the Middle East. The Islamic empire occupied Spain for close to 700 years. That more than enough time for gene pool to be mixed.

Genes get around. Following the Norman Conquest the children of Harold Godwinson, last Anglo-Saxon king, left England. One of his daughters married the duke of Kiev. One of their descendants married a king of France. One of their granddaughters married a king of England. Harold came home. That took about three centuries, so we can imagine how far his genes were dispersed around Europe and possibly farther. I use royalty because their genealogy is well documented, but what's true for them is probably more true for the rest of us.

[chiefofclarinet]

43. Never thought about that...

I am half Korean and half European of VERY mixed descent. However, this makes me think I am entirely "mutt," only half mixed Asian and half mixed European.

[ngant17]

11. variances in the gene pool can be advantageous for survival

It also has produced sports legends like Tiger Woods.

From the "Gene Expression" website:
http://www.gnxp.com/
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/08/interracial-marriage.php#

a. Mating between different races of animals or plants within the same species often results in "hybrid vigour": the offspring are superior to either of the parents (or at least to their mean). The main reason for this is probably that it reduces the harmful effects of inbreeding. As human racial and ethnic groups are to some extent inbred, then some degree of hybrid vigour might be expected when different groups interbreed.

b. As a more specific benefit, the offspring of interracial mating are likely to avoid genetic diseases arising from homozygous harmful recessive genes found mainly in particular groups, such as cystic fibrosis in Europeans and sickle-cell anemia in West Africans.

[Kind of Blue]

34. Reminds me of a documentary I saw once on the KKK and white

supremacist in the U.S. One footage (1940s, I think) was of a rally of whites and blacks. The speaker, a white man, was urging the end of "race-mixing" because the "products" would be smarter, stronger people who would take over the world. He may have been an ignorant man, but instinctively he understood basic biology (and didn't like it).
Thanks for including cystic fibrosis in the example. I'm black and was a zoology major at a mostly white university. I always cringed when sickle-cell anemia was the ONLY genetic disease used as an example.

[ngant17]

39. Mutants taking over the world?

...race-mixing" because the "products" would be smarter, stronger people who would take over the world...

Mutants taking over the world? Well, I agree that this guy, whoever he was, he might have understood genetics and biology, but he still was still quite ignorant and ossified mentally, in thinking in such a backward direction. For example, why could he not have imagined that those genetic mutations from bi-racial unions might have, instead of producing more beastial, savage, diabolically cunning animals, out to rule the world, intent on "taking over the world", that would have produced humans of a more advanced, superior moral and ethical nature? More omniscient minds capable of viewing and acting and sharing in a world from a more pacifist and non-violent Weltanschauung (world view)?

Perhaps the guy was just getting confused with Nietzsche's philosphy of "superman", or Wagner's ideas, and applying it somehow by extrapolating it into the dangers of interacial offspring! Those German philosophers were popular back in the 1940's, I suppose. But blonde hair/blue eyes are basically the result of recessive genes and have nothing to do with an Aryan master race. The statistician Karl Pearson established scientific data to support this idea (recessive genes from blonde hair/blue eyes) way back in the late 1920's or 1930's, I believe. This old loony Nazi idea wasn't ever based on real science.

But to get back on topic, you can look at a lot of the people who live in the Caribbean islands (Dominican Republic, Barbados, Cuba, ect.), many of them have large populations which are mixed white/black/Indian race: mulatto, metizo, and the like. I don't see any superhuman mutant threats coming out the Caribbean islands, do you?

[Kind of Blue]

45. Of course, I don't see any mutant threats coming out of the Caribbean.

Let me clarify, this man said nothing of mutants but he was frightened by the Superiority in Every Way of the "product." Nothing about "mutants" or "beasts." And that's my point, instinctively he understood diversifying the gene pool creates a stronger hybrid, but didn't like it because in his own mind it would make "purer" strains less viable. And therefore, he was able to get Both blacks and whites to come to his rallies. To them, a real threat of annihilation by Super humans not "diabolically cunning animals."

I don't have to look to the Caribbean, my family is a medley of everyone from Africa to Europe to the United States. My husband is a proud mutt and I'm a mutt though I wasn't born here. But I really think one day we'll all be homogeneous in our diversity, because surely, our phenotype is not our genotype.

[ngant17]

48. I'm using the word "mutant" liberally like Obama said "mutt"

and for what it's worth, I don't know if there are really such things as pure strains or races of Homo sapiens. Racial or ethnic purity is a mirage. It sounds cute for someone to preach about racial purity, but on the genetic level, it really can't be supported.

"...the racial designations that we currently use are principally based on three characteristics. They are facial structure, skin color, and hair texture. Those are things that are controlled by six genes out of thirty thousand genes in the human genome and those genes have never been shown by any geneticist on the planet, any biologist on the planet, to be connected, or what geneticists call “concordant,” with any other trait known as intelligence or known as temperament or behavior or ethics or morality or any of those kinds of things."

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004046.html

[Kind of Blue]

52. You're preaching to the choir. n/t

[Jamastiene]

16. I usually call myself Heinz 57, but mutt is pretty accurate too.

:D

[dynasaw]

19. Poi Dogs

Mixed breed dogs are known as Poi Dogs in Hawaii where Obama was born. :-)

Very pleased to see him acknowledge his mixed heritage in a humorous way.

[me b zola]

24. Poi pride!

:thumbsup:

[Sparkly]

20. Me, too!

I don't even know what some of my heritage is. I sort of envy people who have a clear sense of roots, ancestry, culture -- like H2S, who is Italian-American.

[Nikki Stone1]

22. Biracial and of mixed heritage. I thought the comment was interesting.

Most Americans are mutts, I guess. I am one of the few who is of a single ethnicity on both sides and can trace both families back 150 years or so. Most Americans, however, are mixed: ethnically and racially, and that is what will save us as a nation in the end.

[Lifetimedem]

25. Me too

I always say I am the melting pot..

Irish, german, dutch, alsatian , polish...

And I have family that has added Korean to our pot..

This is America... YEA

[LWolf]

29. I like that line, too. nt

[onefreespiritedchick]

31. Proud mutt, saying hello :)

:D

[magellan]

35. I'm German, French, Canadian, Cree, Dutch, Irish, English & Polish

There are more purebred dogs in this country than purebred people, and even they go back to wolves, just as we all go back to Africa. So much for our understanding of the word "purebred".

I think racism stems partly from the sense of entitlement some get from being able to say "My family was here before yours". Righto. Try that line on someone of American Indian descent.

[Gregorian]

42. I thought the line had some significance.

On several levels. But one which struck me as he said it. I am hoping that what it does is defuse some anger that some may have toward him. It showed humility. I could see "freeper" (for lack of a better term) heads imploding when he said it. I think by taking the opposite approach from arrogance, he may very well have gained friends of what might otherwise been enemies.

This is going to be one of the best administrations this country has ever seen. We may not get revenge. We may not see the dramatic results that we want. But he is setting an example in unification. And that is, after all, what we are. United States.


I'm Armenian and Welch. Yikes.

[Omnibus]

44. English, Scotch-Irish, German, Norweigian, Cherokee, Dutch

...roughly in that order.

[yowzayowzayowza]

46. I use that term too.

Welsh, English, German & American Indian here.

[OHDEM]

49. Hey! Watch the Welsh comments!

I can trace my Dad's family back to Wales - they came here in the late 1700s. I'm Welsh/Irish/Scottish/German/Italian. Or as I say - American! I married a 100% Italian guy and he boasts that our kids are MOSTLY Italian. LOL I think once anyone's been here past a generation or 2, they're a mutt. Perhaps our mixing will finally make us let go of our stereotypes.

At any rate, when I saw the Obama and Biden families up on stage on election day, I thought "That's what America looks like!"

[Skittles]

50. I have long said America is a nation of mutts

:thumbsup:

[Fire1]

51. Chocktaw, Creek, African, German, Scotch-Irish, in the house!