Thursday, November 10, 2016

This is not a post about politics. This is not a post about politics. This is not a post about politics.

(This is totally a post about politics.)


Recently I found out that I am 99.9% as white as I always thought I was. I did 23 and Me, one of those things where you spit into a tube and send it away to find out who you really are.

Spoiler Alert: You are who you have always been.

I was hoping to find out something I never knew, like maybe I was part Sub-Saharan African or Broadly East Asian, thinking I would be able to toss that into casual conversation. You know, I'm 7% Yakut myself. A party trick, like tying a cherry stem with my tongue.

But no, I am mostly British, Irish, French, German, a smattering of Southern European, and disappointingly only >1% Native American. I have tried for years, but still can't tie a cherry stem with my tongue.

I am white.

How white am I? Well on Tuesday night I cried watching the election results. Scared, sad, pissed off, shattered. I stayed up to watch Donald Trump give his speech, sitting on my couch in my pjs as I used my Tria Age-Defying Laser on my face. I just got it, the Tria, and it hurts like hell. You're supposed to start at level 1 and build up to level 3 over a few weeks, but as I sat there watching that racist, misogynistic, homophobic small-minded man, I thought to myself this is what I get. For not taking the possibility that he might actually win seriously enough. For not seeing that so many people were that disenfranchised. For not changing my Facebook profile to the Hillary logo. What can I say? I was in shock. So I set my Tria to level 3 thinking that maybe a physical pain would make more sense in a world that elected Donald Trump as our president. Over my forehead, around my eyes, but holy mother of all that is no, it hurt! So I stopped. (I would make a terrible cutter.) This weekend I am going to return the Tria because I know I will never be able to build up to level 3.

Apparently I have more Neanderthal variants than 76% of people, which may explain my mono brow. My haplogroup is U4c1, my family of mitochondrial DNA tracing back to a single genetic mutation 25,000 years to Europe, Asia and Northern Africa. I am 61% likely to smell the asparagus metabolite in my pee.

I am 100% American. 98% enraged, 91% despairing, 22% surprised and 89% embarrassed to be who I am, a white American of privilege. I have never been good at math, but I am going to use the $495 from returning the Tria (yes, $495--I am also 90% vain) to donate to Planned Parenthood, The Human Rights Campaign, Next Gen Climate Change, and The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights. To start. Not sure what I will do next, but I know I will do something.

Not a tube, but we just got spit on. Now it's time to find out who we really are.

Spoiler Alert: We are all human.

xo,
S