(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
