this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
207 points (93.7% liked)
Memes
1147 readers
73 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What it really means when they're "part Cherokee": "one of our ancestors had sex with a Black person and we're all too ashamed to admit it, so we told you you're part Cherokee to make you feel better."
Oh that's Seminole. Which most racist people are too ignorant to realize meant runway slave (In this context, the majority of Seminole were/are straight up indigenous), and thus actually a black ancestor they didn't want to acknowledge. But they had to put something on the family tree in the family bible. That's a fun one to find in the South East US.
Cherokee is usually a straight up fiction. Personally I think the idea got popularized because people like feeling special and native Americans were big news in the 1970's. Racists also jumped on it as a means of showing native Americans didn't deserve special rules or treatment.