It's still significant because it speaks to people being more willing to
admit to being part Native.
My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits.
In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened.
I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically.
Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.
My father actively downplayed his 1/16th Cherokee blood quantum -- and a lot of Natives are quite vocal about hating the whole idea of blood quantum, but that's probably more than people here want to know -- and I grew up in a house in the 'burbs bought the summer I turned three with his military mortgage benefits.
In the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
He never said much about his Native heritage. I think he did so to be white-passing in a world where lynchings still happened.
I am actively trying to learn about the cultural heritage I was denied apparently largely due to fear of violent white supremacists, basically.
Dismissing the interest in their heritage of people like me is just more erasure of Natives and Native culture. It actively reinforces racism in subtle ways. The subtlety helps make it insidious and hard to combat, unfortunately.