This is from that much-hyped Daily Show piece featuring embarrassed Washington Redskins fans (which Tumblr won't let me embed?). At around 12:00 in that video, a fan claims to be 1/12th Cherokee, and as a 1/12th Cherokee, says the team's offensive name is not offensive to her. The segment is great and really made me question some things -- mainly HOW IN THE WORLD IS ANYONE 1/12TH ANYTHING?
Everyone has 2 genetic parents. If one of your parents is from Canada and the other is from America, you are 1/2 Canadian.
Everyone has 4 genetic grandparents. If one of your grandparents is from Canada and 3 of them are from America, you are 1/4 Canadian.
Everyone has 8 great-grandparents. If one of your great-grandparents is from Canada, etc., you're 1/8th Canadian.
16 great-great-grandparents (your grandparents' grandparents), you're 1/16th Canadian.
If TWO are Canadian, guess what, you're back to 1/8th Canadian.
If THREE are, you're 3/16ths Canadian.
32 great-great-great-grandparents.
One makes you 1/32nd Canadian,
three is 3/32nds Canadian,
four is 1/8th Canadian again.
DO YOU SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE. That denominator always has to be the number of ancestors in a generation. I mean, even think about it another way, for her to be 1/12th Cherokee, was her mother 1/6th Cherokee? And her grandmother 1/3 Cherokee? How would that even work?
THEREFORE, WE CAN CONCLUDE THAT:
In order to be 1/12th Cherokee, this person's great-great-grandparents consisted of four white couples, three white mothers who cloned themselves and one Cherokee mother who also cloned herself.
Or she doesn't know who in her family actually was Cherokee, if anyone.
