The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA), of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The term is also used in reference to the ancestry of groups of genes (haplotypes) rather than organisms.
Genetic genealogy is the use of genealogical DNA tests, i.e., DNA profiling and DNA testing, in combination with traditional genealogical methods, to infer genetic relationships between individuals. This application of genetics came to be used by family historians in the 21st century, as DNA tests became affordable. The tests have been promoted by amateur groups, such as surname study groups or regional genealogical groups, as well as research projects such as the Genographic Project.
Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups. By contrast, many tribes do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria.
A genealogical DNA test is a DNA-based genetic test used in genetic genealogy that looks at specific locations of a person's genome in order to find or verify ancestral genealogical relationships, or to estimate the ethnic mixture of an individual. Since different testing companies use different ethnic reference groups and different matching algorithms, ethnicity estimates for an individual vary between tests, sometimes dramatically.
Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.
The Malagasy are a group of Austronesian-speaking ethnic groups indigenous to the island country of Madagascar. Traditionally, the population have been divided into ethnic groups. Examples include "Highlander" groups such as the Merina and Betsileo of the central highlands around Antananarivo, Alaotra (Ambatondrazaka) and Fianarantsoa, and the "coastal dwellers" with tribes like the Sakalava, Bara, Vezo, Betsimisaraka, Mahafaly, etc. The Merina are also further divided into two subgroups. The “Merina A” are the Hova and Andriana, and have an average of 30–40% Bantu ancestry. The second subgroup is the “Merina B”, the Andevo, who have an average of 40–50% Bantu ancestry. They make up less than 1/3 of Merina society. The Malagasy population was 2,242,000 in the first census in 1900. Their population experienced a massive growth in the next hundred years, especially under French Madagascar.
Native American identity in the United States is a community identity, determined by the tribal nation the individual or group belongs to. While it is common for non-Natives to consider it a racial or ethnic identity, for Native Americans in the United States it is considered to be a political identity, based on citizenship and immediate family relationships. As culture can vary widely between the 574 extant federally recognized tribes in the United States, the idea of a single unified "Native American" racial identity is a European construct that does not have an equivalent in tribal thought.
DNAPrint Genomics was a genetics company with a wide range of products related to genetic profiling. They were the first company to introduce forensic and consumer genomics products, which were developed immediately upon the publication of the first complete draft of the human genome in the early 2000s. They researched, developed, and marketed the first ever consumer genomics product, based on "Ancestry Informative Markers" which they used to correctly identify the BioGeographical Ancestry (BGA) of a human based on a sample of their DNA. They also researched, developed and marketed the first ever forensic genomics product - DNAWITNESS - which was used to create a physical profile of donors of crime scene DNA. The company reached a peak of roughly $3M/year revenues but ceased operations in February 2009.
Multiracial Americans or mixed-race Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
Mark D. Shriver is an American population geneticist. He leads genetic research at the Pennsylvania State University.
Faces of America is a four-part Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Public television television series hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. The series originally aired February 10 to March 3, 2010 from 8–9 p.m. ET. In Australia, this program aired on SBS One each Sunday at 7:30pm from 9 -30 January 2011.
In Brazil, a sarará is a multiracial person, being a particular kind of mulato or juçara, with perceivable Black African facial features, light complexion and fair but curly hair, called cabelo crespo, or fair but Afro-like frizzly hair, called carapinha, cabelo encarapinhado or cabelo pixaim. In the 1998 IBGE PME, 0.04% of respondents identified, in an inquiry on race/colour, as "sarará".
Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans occurred during the Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic. The interbreeding happened in several independent events that included Neanderthals and Denisovans, as well as several unidentified hominins.
The inhabitants of Latin America are from a variety of ancestries, ethnic groups and races, making the region one of the most diverse in the world. The specific composition of the group varies from country to country. Many have a predominance of European-Amerindian or Mestizo population; in others, Amerindians are a majority; some are dominated by inhabitants of European ancestry; and some countries' populations have large African or Mulatto populations.
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is compiled with information researched by professional genealogists that allows them to view their ancestral histories, learn about familial connections and discover secrets about their lineage.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.
A ghost population is a population that has been inferred through using statistical techniques.
Cherokee descent, "being of Cherokee descent", or "being a Cherokee descendant" are all terms for individuals with some degree of documented Cherokee ancestry but do not meet the criteria for tribal citizenship. The terms are also used by non-Native individuals who self-identify as Cherokee despite lacking documentation or community recognition.
African American genealogy is a field of genealogy pertaining specifically to the African American population of the United States. African American genealogists who document the families, family histories, and lineages of African Americans are faced with unique challenges owing to the slave practices of the Antebellum South and North. These challenges rise from a range of events, including name changes following the American Civil War, the act of separating families for sale as slaves, lack of issued birth or death records for slaves, etc.
