Can one really claim 1/4 or 1/8 of a ethnicity?

Question

Now understanding the way our DNA is inherited, I was wondering is it realistic for someone to claim to be 1/4, 1/8, or even a 1/16 of an ethnicity?

For Example.....

It is certainly true that if one of your parents is full German, then you are in fact 1/2 German. However, while your children will in fact inherit some German genes from you, it is not likely that they will be exactly 1/4 German. They could inherit more than 1/4 or less than 1/4......right?

and then on down the line grand children and great grandchildren may not actually inherit any German genes....right?

 

 

Comments

it is my understanding that each child inherits 50 % dna from dad and 50 % from mom but the dna is randomly disperced in each child. there is no certain amount that each child inherits. for example my dad may have 60 % irish but I may only inherit 20 % and my sister might get less or greater than me. I am going through this with my dad because he thinks his children should have half of whatever ethnicity he has but I had to look it up and explain it to him that dna doesn't happen that way. he thinks each child should inherit all the same amounts of irish, scottish, english etc but siblings could have completely different dna ancestry results.

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You can claim to be Pi/2 Martian if you want.

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I understand people can claim to be whatever they want...lol

I was more or less asking this wondering about the usage of https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:User_Ethnicity .... my thinking was using this sticker for 1/4 or 1/8 wouldn't actually be correct and that it ONLY works for either full blooded or 1/2

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Long before DNA tests, in a sad chapter of American history, Euro-Americans wanted to remove the Native American tribes from the United States.  Part of this campaign was the Blood Quantum laws.  Once an individual had less than a certain percentage of Native American blood, they were considered not of tribal origin.

Now, the tribes themselves have adopted BQ laws that govern whether you can be a member of the tribe.  For some tribes, it is as high as 50% (1/2), and they range down to 6.25% (1/16th).  

So yes, one can really claim 1/4 or 1/8 of an ethnicity and even without a DNA test.  

Answer 1

The short answer is "YES".

It sounds like you understand the situation better than most of the folks ho are offering answers. In fact, my understanding is that it's one (if not the MAIN) reason that the ethnicity percentages that they give you in DNA can be wildly inaccurate. The fraction of DNA you get from your 4th great grandparents is not EXACTLY 1/64 - that's just an average. If you go back far enough, some of the fractions can become effectively zero.

A legitimate point is being brought up though is about the relationship between genes and ethnicity. Realistically, certain genes will be more prevalent in various "gene pools", so it's kind of a minor, nit-picky point. A better issue to bring up in that regard is the possibility that somebody born in Germany might not be German, ethnically. Maybe the person's grandparents migrated to the town from Poland, or someplace, for example. So a "German" might really be Polish, ethnically. I wouldn't say that's a particularly serious concern, though - just something to think about.

Answer 2

Genes are translated to proteins to construct your body, and they don't get evenly divided in sperms and eggs according to our social constructs like ethnicity. They're more complicated than that (consider dominant and recessive traits).

Ethnicity is a combination of race/culture/heritage. I don't think DNA determines your current "ethnicity".  It really only shows your genetic makeup/pattern and likely helps you link to places where your ancestors may have came from where other people have similar genetic makeup (based on statistics).

Short answer: true! Your DNA ethnicity might not match the percentage breakdown that you might predict.

Comments

Yep; one up-vote. :-)  Here's a link to a 2017 blog post by Roberta Estes that discusses this very issue: https://dna-explained.com/2017/04/21/concepts-percentage-of-ancestors-dna/.

Ethnicity aside, Stephanie is also correct that you do receive 50% of your total DNA from each of your parents. Ya have to; no place else for it to come from. But after that, the percentages--thanks to meiosis and recombination--will vary. You don't have to receive (and probably don't) 25% from each grandparent. Move into the past several generations more, and there may be an X-times great-grandparent who contributed absolutely nothing to your genome.

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Actually, I found this to be just an overcomplicated and less clear way to say the same thing the person posing the question already said, and ignores that when you go back to the 1800s and beyond that the distinction between race/culture/heritage and genes is a minor one. There are people who will literally map out your migrations over thousands of years, based on your genes.

How many Sicilians are we to imagine were living in Bocholt, Prussia, in 1847? Or perhaps I should consider that my ancestors who came from there were Egyptian, and so people with a fair amount of DNA in common with me might really from Egypt. Heck, maybe I'm really part Aboriginie...

Answer 3

I think claimants are more referring to heritage than biology. I know in the US many of us come from immigrant backgrounds. My family's culture is deeply connected to the German and Czech heritages passed down from my grandmother or my great grandfather.

While I would claim to be 1/4 or 18 of those things casually, genetically you're right, I don't really know.

Answer 4

I don't understand how genes get to be German.  They don't seem to have any way to absorb German-ness.

And it's not like they're passing on original pure German, because the Germans all came from other places in the first place.

Answer 5

The percentages are different by company because the samples they compare against are broken down differently. We think of nationalities but some tests go deeper. There reason many from Britain show German is because some companies separate the Angle Saxon heritage and label it as German. How far back the tests go changes the percentages. Also the number of people in their samples limits what they can tell you. Eastern Europe is poorly represented so it is hard to find out anything. Also I have seen that Indian Americans sometime just do not show up even when some people have document evidence that doesn't go back very far. Maybe more samples to compare against are needed. More work is needed to separate out recent mixing. It is clear that questions about race on various documents are misleading when few are 100 percent.