Identity and Biology

This essay was written on May 26, 2012 after Senator Elizabeth Warren "discovered" her Native American roots.

After reading today's newspaper account of Liz Warren's struggle with her identity or biology ("I'm 1/32 Native American...") I was reminded of a long-standing question from my youth. I had observed, as a young ethno-demographer, that almost all the Italians I knew had much darker skin than anyone else except neighborhood Negroes. In fact, I had darker skin than one of my Negro friends, Junior Emerson. As I matured, and read more widely (the NY Daily News) I discovered that almost all Sicilian Italians were darker than those from the Florence area in the north. How could that be? Was Sicily closer to the sun. Were Sicilians and Barese (that's my family from Bari in the south on the Adriatic coast) too poor to afford sun screen or sun hats? No, the question required deeper understanding.

It wasn't until my college days and my first course in biology when I learned of Gregor Mendel and theories of plant genetics and its link to human genetics. The plot thickened when I took a medieval history course and learned about the Mamaluke people from North Africa. Yipes! In my neighborhood we called kids that we thought were dummies "mamalukes." How can that be? Later in the history course I learned about a Sultan named Mingooch. Holy shit! My father's nickname was Mingooch. What the hell is going on?

If Liz warren has identity without biology, I have biology without identity. Could I have gone to Harvard with Liz Warren instead of Cortland State? Should I tell my kids they are descendants of Sultan Mingooch? Would that do them any good?