Veiled... thanks for explaining a little. Interesting that people thought you were mexican! I don't actually know why Americans have thanksgiving? Is it just Americans, or Canadians too? I think I might have to read up on some American history, I'm interested. In the UK education is only about the UK history. Sad. There's a big world out there. No excuse for me not to read up and find out for myself now though, so I may do this over my summer break.

Race is a really fascinating subject, I did an exam on it the other week. I actually wrote about Thomas Jefferson having children to 4 slaves!! What fascinated me most is that Graves stated that race doesn't actually exist because of mixing way back when people migrated and moved around. If we wanted to find 'race', there would be 2000 races found but that defeats the idea of race as a concept really. There are only 4% of 'unique' genes. Mostly what people consider 'race' to be is actually evolution, which is totally different. The only reason certain 'races' get sickle cell anaemia is because it was an evolutionary adaptation to malaria. Sickle cell anaemia only occurs where people were geographically, it doesn't occur in those who lived high in the mountains as malaria didn't exist in the altitude up there. If 'white' people lived there, we would have the sickle cell anaemia genetic predisposition. It's geographical and evolutionary what society thinks is 'race'. As you said, there are NO 'pure' gene pools. Everyone is mixed. Nobody knows exactly what race they are. I know that I have german, irish, french and english in me but only by relatives who remember relatives. That is as far as I can find out about my heritage. At the end of the day... we are humans. The same species. People say being a person is to be 'unique'... yet society depicts that to be 'wrong'. The obsession of who is better than who is simply ridiculous. It seems society is in competition with the very thing that makes society.

It is really sad and disgusting how society has segmented and categorised people, a lot of the research like the Bell Curve is considered scientific racism. How can people put so much research into something that is still biolgically disputed to exist today? But it is good that I have been taught this at degree level, I learned a lot I didn't even realise. It shows society to be challenging those views which have led to generations of devastation.

I think it's great that you are interested in your heritage, and also in view of history and racism. Where we come from and the lives our ancestors lead is fascinating for a good reason... it's important to learn about diversity of lifestyle. And also the bad side too is important to remember as an example. If everybody was taught the bad as well as the good in History at school, generations would grow up knowing how such narrow minded views are wrong and we would hope that some of those kids in those generations become presidents or prime ministers to ensure it never happens again. But maybe that's idealism.