>c Oh yes, quite so! As a German-Portuguese Brazilian with Jewish, Italian,
> Irish, English, and African ancestors, I have genealogical links to the
> some of the most genocidal peoples of Europe AND their victims. I am so
> lucky! That's what happens.
Ah, but you sound pure American to me. Given a political problem you respond with a little story about your personal life. How nice that you have such a colorfull family history, how charming, how irrelevant.
> When asked to identify their ancestry, a very large number of Brazilians
> with my kind of family tree tend to overplay the Jewish, African and
> Amerindian roots (mine are extremely remote)
Extremely remote? I bet they are. The African and Amerindian populations got too small too fast to leave all that many descendants.
> How many Israelis acknowledge (let alone fake) Arab roots?
Before the recent immigration from Russia most of the Jews in Isreal were from Arab countries; Arabic was their native language, they didn't have to fake Arab roots. Bagdahd was a city with a majority population of Jews - and that was less than 3000 years ago. That's not true anymore though, Does this interest you? The North African Jewish communities however, would have great difficulty in faking Arab roots since they date to before the Arab conquest of North Africa - an event which also took place less than 3000 years ago. Those communities no longer exist - another source of deep distress to our professional morality merchants.
> Mate, I am an anthropologist.
Gee, a Brazilian anthropologist. What was the population of the Amazon basin before your fine Portugese ancestors created modern Brazil? I actually have no idea; I really do want to know; I only know that there was a fuss about this some time ago. And then of course, 90% of the Africans brought to the New World as slaves went to South America while 90% of the Western Hemisphere's current black population lives in North America. Does this suggest a difference in survival rates? It must be nice to be so pure. No genocide here officer, I found this country lying on the street, it must have fallen off the back of a truck.
> Christian fundamentalists? The Hebron settlers? The religious right in
> Israel? People who talk about the greatness of the British Empire? People
> who celebrate Columbus? Aren't you the least worried about these fruitcakes?
I worry about all kinds of fruitcakes - especially those who tell stupid lies about countries and peoples of whom they know nothing. Feel free to let your clan know that that was meant personally.