Can a Person Be One-Third Black?

 

The answer is no with a but. A person with full knowledge of his or her genealogy cannot be precisely one-third black. Why not? It has to do with the mathematics underlying family trees. Everyone has two birthparents. Those parents each had two birthparents, and their parents each had two birthparents. The number of ancestors one has can be ascertained by taking increasing powers of 2. One starts with one individual, then two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on.

 

If one looks at a person’s great-grandparents, it becomes clear that one can be 1/8, ¼, or ½ any given ethnicity. A person who has only one black great-grandparent would be 1/8 black. A person with only two black great-grandparents would be ¼ black. It is not hard to see how a person could be 3/8 or ¾ black.

 

But what has to happen for a person to be one-third black? In order for this to occur, one would need to have a number of ancestors at some generation to be evenly divisible by three. However, a generation evenly divisible into thirds will never occur. To show why, I must make reference to prime factorizations. A prime factorization of a number lists the combination of the smallest prime factors that multiply up to a number. For instance, the prime factorization of 15 is 3 * 5. The smallest prime factor of 15 is 3 (1 is not prime). Clearly the product of 3 and 5 is 15. Going back to generations, try taking the prime factorization of the total number of ancestors at any generational level. At the great-grandparent level, there are 8 ancestors. The smallest prime factor of 8 is 2. When one divides 8 by 2, one is left with 4. The smallest prime factor of 4 is 2, which leaves 2. The prime factorization of 8 is 2*2*2 or 2^3. Every number has one exclusive prime factorization. There is no alternative prime factorization of 8 other than 2^3. All of a number’s possible factors can be generated from its prime factorization. The factors of 8 are 1, 2, 4, and 8 only. Notice that 3 is not among these factors. For a generation to be evenly divisible by 3, the number of ancestors must have 3 as one of its factors. Yet at any generational level, the number of ancestors will always have a prime factorization of 2^n where n is the number of generations from the individual to the ancestor. At one generation, it will be 2, at two generations it will be 4, at three generations, 8, and so on.

 

How close can one get to being one-third black? Awfully close. If one goes back 5 generations, one has 32 ancestors. If exactly 11 of these 32 ancestors are black, then the individual would be 34.375% black. If one has 43 out of 128 ancestors who are black, then the individual would be 33.59375% black, less than half of one-percent away from being one-third black. Of course to know one’s ethnic purity to this level of accuracy, one would have to look back seven generations and know the ethnicity of every ancestor at this generational level.

 

Another way one could be one-third black is if one is missing information about some relatives and then calculates out of known relatives only. For instance, even though one has 4 grandparents, one may only have information regarding 3 of them. If a person has one black grandparent, two white grandparents and one unknown grandparent, he or she might consider himself or herself to be one-third black.

A final scenario I thought of seems to me fairly weak but still plausible. I began with the given that each person has two birthparents. However, what happens when a person is born through a surrogate? If an egg from a mother and a sperm from a father combine to form a zygote which is then implanted in a surrogate mother, can one argue that the resulting child has three parents? There is a case to be made here, but I think most reasonable people would consider the parents of the child to be the egg donor and the sperm donor.

What Does It Mean to Be Desi?

According to Wikipedia, the word desi comes from the Sanskrit, देश, deśa-, meaning “region, province, or country.” So Desi means “from the country,” referring to the Indian subcontinent.
Fun fact I discovered while looking this up: Freddie Mercury, lead singer of “Queen,” was Desi. His given name was “Farokh Bulsara” and his family is Parsi.

Song Analysis “Black and White Town” – Doves

Black and White Town

Doves

Here comes the action
Here it comes at last
Lord give me a reaction
Lord give me a chance

[The speaker is impatiently waiting for something to happen. He wants action and reactions. He wants a chance to have fun, to make it, and to do something with his life.]
You should follow me down

In satellite towns
There’s no colour and no sound
I’ve been ten feet underground
Gotta get out of this satellite town

[Satellite towns are suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas where life is pretty dull. Obviously his world isn't black and white. But color and sound here represent creativity, joy, and new ideas. This symbolism is used in some films such as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Pleasantville." Living in a boring small town makes the speaker feel like he's dead, buried underground. He wants desperately to get out.]
Here comes some action
The sound of nightlife
Gotta get out to get compensation
Gotta get out to get this to light

[The speaker wants something fun to do. He's interested in action and nightlife. He wants to get a job. He wants to make something of himself. He wants to get a life.]
whether you live alone
or your trying to find your way in this world
You better make sure you don’t crack your head on the pavement man
You getta get up and shout
It’s been programmed
It’s a dangerous place man
It’s a dangerous place

[This seems to be an opposing voice telling the speaker to stay away from the city because it's dangerous and he'll crack his head on the pavement.]

You should follow your way down

In satellite towns
There’s no colour and no sound
I’ve been ten feet underground
Oh black and white town

You should follow me down

There’s no colour and no sound
In black and white town

You took me underground

[P.S. Check out Doves. They're a great band with music on iTunes and music videos on YouTube. I really like this song ("Black and White Town") in addition to "There Goes the Fear" and "Kingdom of Rust."]

Song Analysis – “Fields of Gold” – Sting

 

Artist: Sting Album: Fields Of Gold Title: Fields of Gold

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold

[In P.B. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," the west wind symbolizes the poet's own wandering soul. Sting may be using the same symbolism. He speaks of the sun in a "jealous sky."  He seems to be talking about a powerful or domineering man who tries to control a woman. Or he could be referring to the sun itself which the speaker claims is jealous of his love.]
So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

 

[He describes a romantic moment between two lovers taking place in a pleasant pastoral setting.]
Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold

See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold

[Sting uses an elegant simile here that compares the gentle blowing wind to a lover, tenderly caressing a woman.]
I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear in the days still left
We’ll walk in fields of gold
We’ll walk in fields of gold

 

[The speaker looks back wistfully upon his past. He regrets being dishonest and breaking promises in the past. But he makes an oath that for the rest of his life, he and his lover will "walk in fields of gold." He means that he will keep the romance alive and keep his love fresh.]

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold

 

[These lines seem to be about the loss of innocence. As he sees young children playing in the fields, he remembers his own youth. The sun going down probably symbolizes time and how he has grown older.]
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold

Fun with Cockney Rhyming Slang

If you’ve never heard the bizarre dialect known as Cockney Rhyming Slang, here’s a simple example. If someone refers to his pants as “Steve McQueens” what he means is “blue jeans.”
Another example comes from the movie “Ocean’s Eleven,” in which Don Cheadle’s character worries that the crew might be in “deep Barney.” His friends look at him puzzled until he explains that he means Barney as in “Barney Rubble,” which means trouble.
What if doctors used cockney slang to soften the blow of bad news? Here’s how it might go down. “I’m sorry Mrs. Jones, but I think you might have Elton.” Elton as in Elton John, as in Tiny Dancer, as in breast cancer.
“Mr. Smith, I think you have a bad case of the Owens.” Owen as in Owen Wilson, as in Drillbit Taylor, as in kidney failure.
“Tom, you have Emma Thompson’s disease.” Emma Thompson -> Nanny McPhee -> HIV.
Special thanks go out to Johnny Monsoon for his help on this one.