• ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I honestly don’t know anyone but Americans who do this. Has anyone else encountered someone white who wasn’t American boast about their mixed “genealogy”?

    • gray@lemmy.ml
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      22 hours ago

      I don’t know if boast is the right word, but it is very common to disclose if you are half something. Half-french, half-polish etc.

      • ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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        15 hours ago

        Half is fair enough as that implies some cultural mixing, but fractions lower than that are just “look at me” bullshit.

      • ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Oh yeah that’s a common question about ethnicity usually an optional question filled out in case there’s some legal process in the future trying to determine if there’s underlying discrimination from poor treatment/service to a specific group when a legal complaint has been lodged.

        I’m talking about the weird obsession some Americans have with determining what % of their genes originated from other countries.

        The closest it’s gotten for me is usually a conversation about family history which most of the time is usually “A country on my father’s side and B country on my mother’s side”. But they’ve never broken it down into percentages before like it’s some sort of eugenic recipe.

        • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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          15 hours ago

          It’s the immigrant mongrel thing. Outside America, it isn’t unusual for your ancestry to be that of your home country for dozens of generations, or maybe halves. Inside America, that’s basically only just full blooded Natives, most everyone else is a hodgepodge of several countries.

          Is just a way to kinda keep track of all the various ancestries.