Redskins "racial slur"?

[Joe Guy]

[RayThom]

As I see it, that's tantamount to passive racism. The aggrieved minority is just too small to care about. Damn liberals.

I'm still saying there's going to be big changes by the end of the season.

[rubato]

Football coaches, is there anything they don't know?

Yrs,
Rubato

[Econoline]

Ditka is a blowhard and and an asshat and I never could stand him (except for occasional unintentional humor) even back when he coached the only Super Bowl winning team in Chicago's history. (Some of those '85 players were pretty cool, though.)

[Lord Jim]

Ditka is a blowhard and and an asshat

And yet he managed to nail this one...

I guess it just goes to show that nobody can be wrong all the time...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Just this time.

[RayThom]

White man speak with forked video.

[Scooter]

I saw that one, remarkable how that woman on the left so assuredly proclaims that she is "1/12th Cherokee". Now I admit my knowledge of genetics is sketchy, but do know enough that our ancestors can only be reckoned in powers of 2. Anyone care to demonstrate how anyone can be 1/12 of anything?

[BoSoxGal]

good catch, Scooter! I saw that bit and found it hilarious that they were all sure they were some percent Indian.

Rednecks. Hey! There's a new name suggestion to replace Redskins - fits those fans, anyway!

[Crackpot]

You can get different fractions if multiple lines share partial ancestry.

[Scooter]

You will never get any fraction whose denominator is not a power of 2. You're free to prove me wrong by counterexample.

[Crackpot]

That may be true as I don't have the time or the inclination to find the common denominators or the permutations possible. All I know is I've seen/heard non standard fractions before. It may be due to "rounding" and the particulars of tribal laws but beware I'm going by a half remembered discussion a had with a Native American co worker I had probably more than 15 years ago.

[Scooter]

Descent from a parent is 1/2
Descent from a grandparent is 1/4
Descent from a great-grandparent is 1/8
Descent from a great-great-grandparent is 1/16
Descent from a great-great-great-grandparent is 1/32
Descent from a great-great-great-great-grandparent is 1/64
Descent from a great-great-great-great--great-grandparent is 1/128
And so on...

No combination of any of those could ever render a denominator of 12, because that would require divisibility by 3 (one of the factors of 12), which can never happen.

[rubato]

You are thinking of the contribution of a single ancestor which does change as an inverse power of 2. But if you have 3 Cherokee ancestors who are ggggrandparents their estimated genetic contribution will be 3/64ths. And I said "estimated" because not all alleles will be equally successful in transmission. Your genome is not composed of <<exactly>> equal parts of each ancestor of a given generation; ie you are not exactly 1/64th of each ggggrandparent. You will be more related in fact to some than others. One gene is most likely to be composed of 1 allele each from only 2 of that generation. 23 genes are composed of 46 alleles (which you got from some combination of grandparents) And it should be mentioned that there are often fewer different ancestors in a given generation than you would predict, 1 ggggrandfather might be responsible for pairings with multiple ggggrandmothers.

And I'm not going to mention Chinatown.

But to get 1/12th (0.0833) you only have to go back one additional generation and have 11 out of 132 ancestors at the gggggrandparent level to get 0.08333 ... which is near enough to 1/12th for the difference not to matter.

And as to actual genetic makeup, who knows?

yrs,
rubato

edited to put a '12' where it obviously belonged.

[Scooter]

And it should be mentioned that there are often fewer different ancestors in a given generation than you would predict, 1 ggggrandfather might be responsible for pairings with multiple ggggrandmothers.

Which would still never result in a fraction whose denominator was divisible by 3.

But to get 1/12th (0.0833) you only have to go back one additional generation and have 11 out of 132 ancestors at the gggggrandparent level to get 0.08333 ... which is near enough to 1/2th for the difference not to matter.

Except that the next generation has 128 ancestors, not 132.

[rubato]

.0859 (11/128)is close enough to 1/12 for it to be a reasonable approximation given the uncertainty in actual distribution. (21/256 = 0.08203 &c)

Which you seem not able to admit. Ah well.

Mitochondrial DNA is different. It is passed down the direct matrilineal line to children of both sexes so that only 1 maternal ancestor contributes 100% of it. The Y chromosome is similarly conserved but only for male children. Both of these considerations should suggest that the method of dividing by an inverse power of 2 does not model known reality past a very small number of generations and does not predict genetic relatedness.

Personally I think this notion of identity is flawed because the further you go back the more you are related to 'everyone else' and the less to any specific cultural identity.*



yrs,
rubato

*I'll come back to this.

[Scooter]

Yes, I'm sure THAT woman, who wouldn't know a chromosome from a cheeseburger, had all of those considerations in mind when she made that claim. Pull on my other leg now.

[BoSoxGal]

Yes, I'm sure THAT woman, who wouldn't know a chromosome from a cheeseburger, had all of those considerations in mind when she made that claim. Pull on my other leg now.

Egggzactly!

She's just a redneck who doesn't have a clue what percent (probably 0%) Cherokee Indian she is.

eta: I don't recall people running around proudly exclaiming their Indian heritage until Dances With Wolves, etc. made being part Indian a romantic notion.

[BoSoxGal]

Contact the FCC and ask that the term 'redskin' be banned from television: http://www.fcc.gov/contact-us

[rubato]

Effective ad. Tells the truth.


yrs,
rubato