You may want to wait until she’s at least in her late teens before you decide she’s not going to look anything like you. For whatever reason most (not all ) children are born favoring more their fathers looks vs their mothers. Some biologists speculate this is to allow stronger bonding of the father and child and to encourage greater investment of resources by the father towards the child’s development as the father is “sure” the child is genetically his.
Over time this effect diminishes markedly and the mother’s side of the inheritance comes through.
Hmm. I have 4 very good friends that have some Native American ancestry. Not mythical. Very well documented. They are not related to each other, so these are independent cases. Why is it surprising that someone living in 2006 might have some Native American ancestors. Do you think there was no interaction between the American Indians and the, mostly, European settlers moving in? Was there some big wall seperating them?
I’ve also known a man that was of European, African and Native American ancestry. So no, it’s not always “white people”.
It was the opposite for my brother, astro, suddenly he looked almost freakily like our dad. I think that’s really cool…though he does have our mom’s eyebrows. Heh.
My SO’s sister was adopted from Korea. I haven’t met her, but I haven’t heard anything about her having any problems with her family that most people can have with theirs. I can see how their parents drive her up the wall sometimes, for one thing, though they’re good people and I like them. They can drive ME up the wall too!
sigh. No, that’s not it. The point isn’t whether anybody anywhere has any Native American ancestors. The point is that there are many who make spurious undocumented claims of Native heritage, often of a grandmother, often Cherokee. It is a legend in its own rite, often repeated without a thought as to its authenticity. Who knows why? Could be a desire to appear exotic, could be some kind of cultural immunization that prevents one from being seen as the white oppressor. Here’s what noted Native American author Vine DeLoria observed on this topic:
(snip)
Indians Today, the Real and the Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, New
York. Macmillan, no. 1-27. 1969.
As one who is inordinately proud of the smattering of Cherokee blood I possess, I stand to correct.
Cherokees were intermarrying with Anglos almost from the day they came into contact with each other, many (most?) of the Cherokee leaders of the time of the Trail of Tears were of mixed blood. Vast numbers of native Texans and Oklahomans have Cherokee blood of varying degrees. The variance is indeterminant, since the Cherokee themselves paid little attention to such questions of “one-quarter”, “half-breed”, etc.
In all probability, far more people have Cherokee ancestors and don’t know it than people who claim Cherokee ancestors they haven’t got.
Whoop-dee-do. That still doesn’t validate the people who repeat baseless claims. The same may also be true of African Americans, but few white people seem breathless to tell you about their black great-great-granddad way back in the day.
Which might just as readily suggest much fewer inter-marriages between African Americans and Anglo Americans. So whoopty fuck a doo to you, too, Bobba-lou.
Thank you for making the most sense in this thread. Even if a white person does have a documented 1/16 side it’s not as if that matters, but lots of them act as though it does, lets them take part in an oppression and identity that isn’t theirs to claim. Damn, white people suck.
(Although I do think it was far more common for a white male to marry or have a child with a Native woman than the other way around, simply because of the social stature of these groups. A white woman going off to live with her Native husband is taking a step down, while the white male is raising his Native bride up out of the gutter. So I don’t have trouble believing that the majority of white “Natives” got their heritage through the matrilineal line.)
And I also agree with you that what the OP is talking about is not at all what many of the “Hispanic-looking” white people are talking about. I don’t look a hair like my mother, but we’re both still white which gives us certain privileges. Nobody is going to think my mother stole me out of some rich person’s carriage or think I’m the neighbor’s child and treat me accordingly. God, the SDMB is so clueless about things sometimes.
Wow! Somebody understands what I mean. Maybe my English is not so bad.
It is one thing not to look like your mom by virtue of the genetic lottery, so to speak, and another looking like it is highly improbably to impossible to be your mom’s (or dad’s) child. And after reading a couple articles about families where this have happened it seems as if the children certainly have problems adapting to the idea themselves.
Au contraire. It’s the Dances With Wolves effect. If anything, a claim of Native American ancestry, even if spurious, lends one a certain fashionability these days.
I once read an interesting article by an Amerindian writer that suggested that whites were so eager to claim Indian heritage, no matter how slight, because it makes them feel like they “inherited” America, instead of conquering it. I’m big into genealogy, and it seems like everyone happily hunts down that legendary Cherokee GGGGGgrandmother, but few people seem nearly so happy to find African/Mestee/FPOC ancestry. Is it the whole ‘noble savage’ thing?
I posted a thread a long time ago under my old username, asking Are there any Amerindian Dopers? Several responses seemed to have genuine connections to the Native community, others seemed to fit into the ‘Cherokee princess’ category.
Not quite on-topic for the OP, but my uncle (like myself) is of terminally pale Irish/Scottish decent. His wife is half Mexican and pretty dark-skinned. Their first kid took after dad in the pigment department, and the mom got pretty pissed after a while because when she’d be out with her baby, people kept assuming that she was the nanny.
The town I live in a while back in New Jersey had lots of adoptive parents, and waves of adoptions from various places - first Korea, then Columbia, then native American orphans from Oklahoma. Some of the Korean kids got very interested in their heritage once they reached high school, but it didn’t seem to be a big issue. It probably depends a lot on where you are.
Right about now though, some employers are going to get surprised, because some of the Korean kids had really lovely Irish names.
As for your second question, it is not wise to expect anything. An actress (Ellen Terry?) once told George Bernard Shaw that they should have a child, since a child with her looks and his brains would be marvelous. But, he asked, what if it came out with my looks and your brains?
Around here it is so increadably common to see mixed families- and sometimes families that include neighbors, distant relatives, etc. that I doubt many people would give it a second glance. I know plenty of families with people adopted from other races and it never really made me bat an eye. My own boyfriend is a beautiful half-Filipino American with a very extremely Irish name. Totally normal for these parts.
Some adoptees do well. Some have more troubles. I don’t think it’s really ever fully about race, but that could be a factor depending on their family. I know a young man who was adopted when it was fashionable to adopt a Korean, and then pretty much dropped when his parents found a project. That didn’t turn out great. I also know a young woman who never really ajusted well after spending five years in a Vietnamese orphanage, but again I think that was a factor of the conditions she grew up in, not her age.
As for International adoptions, there are some intersting ethical issues. I personally always found it disgusting that many adoptive parents spend extra time and money to go through Eastern European agencies- which are notorious for lying and cheating and being very risky to work with- rather than go through the well established routes we have in in Asia, etc. just so they could have a kid that looks like them.
I can also see why some countries are uncomfortable with foreign adoptions. In Guatemala there were some cases of baby brokering, and it was making people uncomfortable. People WANT to raise their kids, even if they are poor. People want their kids to grow up in their culture. I worked with an orphanage in Guatemala where kids from poor families could live, and they often went home to their families on the weekend. It was a good system, and the kids were healthy and happy for the most part. I can totally see how a system like this is better for a country’s health than sending unwanted kids to America, even if a given kid may have better prospects in America.
Also, I have a legendary Cherokee Great-Grandma- you see, apparently we captured by Indians at some point…I never thought of it but anything but a myth that battles the sense of “rootlessness” and “culturelessness” that many European Americans feel.
First, it’s not a myth. I went to school in Oklahoma where an awful lot of people not only claimed Indian ancestry but were enrolled members of tribes (various, but including Cherokee), and in the case of mixed blood it was usually the grandmother they had the closest tie to.
Second, of course it wouldn’t stand out at all if an Indian claimed to have an Indian grandmother now, would it? That might explain why it’s always white people.
