We'd certainly rather see that than the black scum contaminating
everything in Paris.
>
When Trump bans blacks and other non-whites from the US Olympic team, we'll
really be champions then! We'll be just like Germany in 1936 except we'll
have a few more token Jews than Hitler had. Since Russia is whiter than
the USA many of us are going to move there. We're just waiting for those
jobs in the army to be ready.
Don't take a dna test to see if you have any black dna because it's a hoax
by the deep state to make you look like you have black dna.
How white supremacists respond when their DNA says they�re not �white�
Whether you�re a white supremacist, a white nationalist or a member of the
�alt-right,� much of your ideology centers around a simple principle:
�being white.� The creation of a white ethnostate, populated and controlled
by �pure� descendants of white Europeans, ranks high on your priority list.
Yet, when confronted with genetic evidence suggesting someone isn�t �pure
blood,� as white supremacists put it, they do not cast the person out of
online communities. They bargain.
A new study from UCLA found when genetic ancestry tests like 23andMe spot
mixed ancestry among white supremacists, most respond in three ways to
discount the results and keep members with �impure� genealogy in their
clan. Their reactions range from challenging the basic math behind the
tests to accusing Jewish conspirators of sabotage.
Some argued their family history was all the proof they needed. Or they
looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and ethnicity are
directly visible, which is false.
But the real takeaway centers on a new, nuanced pattern within white
supremacist groups to redefine and solidify their ranks through genetic
ancestry testing, said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the
study presented Monday at the American Sociological Association�s 112th
annual meeting in Montreal.
�Once they start to see that a lot of members of their community are not
going to fit the �all-white� criteria, they start to say, �Well, do we have
to think about what percentage [of white European genealogy] could define
membership?� said Aaron Panofsky, a UCLA sociologist who co-led the study
presented Monday at the American Sociological Association�s 112th annual
meeting in Montreal.
And this co-opting of science raises an important reminder: The best way to
counter white supremacists may not be to fight their alternative facts with
logical ones, according to people who rehabilitate far-right extremists.
How genetics warps the rules of white nationalism
To catalog white supremacists� reactions to genetic ancestry results, this
study logged onto the website Stormfront. Launched in 1995, Stormfront was
an original forum of white supremacy views on the internet. The website
resembles a Reddit-style social network, filled with chat forums and users
posting under anonymous nicknames. By housing �nearly one million archived
threads and over twelve million posts by 325,000 or more members,�
Stormfront serves as a living history of the white nationalist movement.
Over the course of two years, Panofsky and fellow UCLA sociologist Joan
Donovan combed through this online community and found 153 posts where
users volunteered the results of genetic ancestry tests. They then read
through the subsequent discussion threads � 2,341 posts wherein the
community faced their collective identities.
No surprise, but white supremacists celebrate the test results that suggest
full European ancestry. One example:
67% British isles
18% Balkan
15% Scandinavian�
100% white! HURRAY!
On the flip side, Panofsky and Donovan found that �bad news� was rarely met
with expulsion from the group.
�So sometimes, someone says, �Yeah, this makes you not white. Go kill
yourself,'� Panofsky said. �Much more of the responses are what we call
repair responses � where they�re saying, �OK, this is bad news. Let�s think
about how you should interpret this news to make it to make it right.'�
These �repair responses� fell into two categories.
Reject! One coping mechanism involved the outright rejection of genetic
tests� validity. Some argued their family history was all the proof they
needed. Or they looked in the mirror and clung to the notion that race and
ethnicity are directly visible, which is false, University of Chicago
population geneticist John Novembre told NewsHour.
�Genetically, the idea of white European as a single homogenous group does
not hold up.�
Though the genetics of �whiteness� are not completely understood, the gene
variants known to influence skin color are more diluted across the globe
than any random spot in the human genome. �That is to say, humans appear,
based on our skin pigmentation, to be much more different from each other
than we actually are on a genomic level,� Novembre said.
Others accused the ancestry companies of being run and manipulated by Jews,
in an attempt to thwart white nationalism, but even other Stormfront users
pointed out the inaccuracy of this idea.
Reinterpret: The biggest proportion of responses � 1,260 posts � tried to
rationalize the result by offering an �educational or scientific
explanation� for the genetic ancestry results. Many in the online community
played a numbers game. If a genetic ancestry test stated someone was 95
percent white European, they would merely count the remaining 5 percent as
a statistical error.
Many adapted this line of thinking to make exceptions for those with mixed
ancestry. Nearly 500 posts made appeals by misapplying theories of genetics
or by saying whiteness is a culture, not just biology � an apparent
contradiction to the mission of forming a �pure� ethnostate. This trend led
some white supremacists to debate the boundaries of their ethnostate,
Panofsky said.
�They start to think about the genetic signs and markers of white
nationalism that might be useful for our community,� Panofsky said. �[They
say] maybe there are going to be lots of different white nations, each with
slightly different rules for nationalism? Or an overlapping set of nations,
that are genetically defined in their own ways?�
But these arguments are moot, because these genetic ancestry boundaries are
inherently built on shaky ground.
Making money off the hunt for white ancestry
If it seems white supremacists are making arbitrary decisions about their
ancestry tests, it�s hard to blame them. Direct-to-consumer ancestry
testing is a slippery, secretive industry, built largely upon arbitrary
scientific definitions.
�It�s black box because it�s corporate,� said Jonathan Marks, biological
anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. �The way
these answers are generated depends strongly on the sampling, the
laboratory work that you do and the algorithm that you use to analyze the
information. All of this stuff is intellectual property. We can�t really
evaluate it.�
White nationalists carry torches on the grounds of the University of
Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia, U.S. August 11, 2017. Picture taken August 11, 2017. Photo by
Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share via REUTERS
White nationalists carry torches on the grounds of the University of
Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia, U.S. August 11, 2017. Picture taken August 11, 2017. Photo by
Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share via REUTERS
Genetic ancestry companies assess a person�s geographic heritage by
analyzing DNA markers in their autosomal DNA (for individual variation),
mitochondrial DNA (for maternal history) or their Y chromosome (for
paternal history). The latter two sources of DNA remain unchanged from
parent to child to grandchild, aside from a relatively small number of
mutations that occur naturally during life. These mutations can serve as
branch points in the trees of human ancestry, Panofsky and Donovan wrote,
and as DNA markers specific to different regions around the world.
When genetic anthropologists examine the full scope of humans, they find
that historical patterns in DNA markers make the case that everyone in the
world came from a common ancestor who was born in East Africa within the
last 100,000 to 200,000 years. Plus, groups intermingled so much over the
course of history that genetic diversity is a continuum both within
American and Europe, through to Asia and Africa, Novembre of the University
of Chicago said.
WATCH: Years after transatlantic slavery, DNA tests give clarity
�Genetically, the idea of white European as a single homogenous group does
not hold up. The classic geographic boundaries of the Mediterranean,
Caucasus, and Urals that have shaped human movement and contact are all
permeable barriers,� said Novembre. �Most of the genetic variants you or I
carry, we share with other people all across the globe�If you are in some
ethnic group, there are not single genetic variants that you definitely
have and everyone outside the group does not.�
Commercial ancestry companies know these truths, but bend them to draw
arbitrary conclusions about people�s ancestry, researchers say. They
compare DNA from a customer to the genomes of people � or reference groups
� whose ancestries they claim to already know.
23andMe, for instance, uses reference dataset that �include genomes from
10,418 people who were carefully chosen to reflect populations that existed
before transcontinental travel and migration were common (at least 500
years ago).� To build these geographic groups, they select individuals who
say all four of their grandparents were born in the same country, and then
remove �outliers� whose DNA markers do not match well within the group.
These choices willfully bias the genetic definitions for both geography and
time. They claim that a relatively small group of modern people can reveal
the past makeup of Europe, Africa and Asia and the ancestral histories for
millions of customers. But their reference groups skew toward the present
and overpromise on the details of where people came from.
While 23andMe denounces the use of their services to justify hateful
ideologies, they do not actively ban known white supremacists from their
DNA testing.
�A study by 23andMe reported that with their definition of European
ancestry, there is an average of 98.6 percent European ancestry among self-
reported European-Americans. But given all I�ve said, we should digest this
with caution,� Novembre said. �An individual with 100 percent European
ancestry tests is simply someone who looks very much like the European
reference samples being used.�
Though ancestry companies cite research that claims genetic tests can
pinpoint someone within 100 miles of their European ancestral home, that�s
not always the case. Marks offered the recent example of three blond
triplets who took an ancestry test for the TV show The Doctors. The test
said the triplets were 99 percent European. But one sister had more English
and Irish ancestry, while another had more French and German. Did we
mention they are identical triplets?
�That shows you just how much slop there is in these kinds of of ancestry
estimates,� Marks said.
�The antidote to shame is compassion�
Marks described commercial ancestry testing as �recreational science�
because its proprietary nature lacks public, academic oversight, but uses
scientific practices to validate stereotypical notions of race and
ethnicity.
While 23andMe denounces the use of their services to justify hateful
ideologies, they do not actively ban known white supremacists from their
DNA testing, BuzzFeed reported.
My ancestory (according to #23andMe). pic.twitter.com/DyrNOCbz97
� Richard ?? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) January 4, 2017
But white supremacists aren�t the only ones to buy into these wayward
notions when genetic ancestry tests support their self-prescribed
identities or reject the science when things don�t pan out as expected.
African-Americans do it too, as Columbia University sociologist Alondra
Nelson found in 2008.
�Consumers have what I call genealogical aspiration,� Nelson told NewsHour.
�They often make choices among dozens of companies based on the kind of
information they�re seeking. If you�re interested in finding whether or not
you�re a member of the small group that has, for example, some trace of
Neanderthal DNA, then you�re going to go to a company that focuses on
that.�
She said Panofsky and Donovan�s study shows that white nationalists will
engage in �a process of psychic and symbolic negotiation� when genetic
ancestry results fail to satisfy their �impossible idea for racial purity.�
But Panofsky, who doesn�t support or sympathize with white nationalists,
believes these negotiations are not a reason to �dismiss white nationalists
as ignorant and stupid.�
�I think that is actually a dangerous view,� Panofsky said. �Our study
reveals that these white nationalists are often engaging with genetic
information in extraordinarily sophisticated ways.�
Many white supremacists are dealing with toxic shame, a perpetual
subconscious belief system where their sense of identity is negative.
White supremacists are trying to deal with the issue of identity as an
intellectual problem, said Tony McAleer, the co-founder and board chair of
Life After Hate, a counseling organization that rehabs white supremacists.
But he said the rehab of white nationalist views doesn�t start with
challenging their mental gymnastics with data.
�We need to deal with the emotional drivers first,� McAleer said.
�University of Maryland did a study of violent extremists and what they
found was the number one correlated factor with someone joining a violent
extremist group was childhood trauma.�
But McAleer continued that the emotional trauma fueling white supremacy
extends past physical and sexual abuse. Many white supremacists are dealing
with toxic shame, a perpetual subconscious belief system where their sense
of identity is negative.
�The person feels at a subconscious level they�re not good enough,� McAleer
said. �One way to react to that is to perpetually spend all of your efforts
to prove to the world that you are a winner.�
So, Life After Hate�s antidote to this shame is �compassion and empathy,�
he said. Rather than toss statistics about how Muslims aren�t flooding the
country and do not lead to spikes in crime, they will take a white
supremacist to an Islamic center and have them sit down and spend time
there.
�A personal connection is a much more powerful way to change the dynamics
within a person, than it is to re-educate the dataset that�s in their
head,� McAleer said.
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