2) ‘Saharan African’? Can be Berber or Tuareg, neither of which are considered Negroidal, or “Black” peoples.

3) You’re “Jewish” friend isn’t necessarily of “Judah” either. Read Arthur Koestler’s “The Thirteenth Tribe”, which makes a convincing argument about the predominant European Jewish ancestry being of the Khazar peoples, whose leader, Bulan, declared to be converted to Judaism in the 7th century, whose features of the “six nose” and other similar features that the Nazis would cruelly caricature in publications like “Der Sturmer”. A small ‘trace’ of the DNA common to these types wouldn’t necessarily make you “Jewish”, my paternal grandmother was a Jewess but my lineage was declared from Ephraim. If one went strictly from the Patriarchal lineage, I’m “Bloody Welsh”, like the scrawny (“I’m Wire-reeey”) Welsh soccer kicker turned field goal kicker (Rhys Ifans) from “The Replacements”, and, according to family legend, a direct descendant of the famed Welsh King Llewellyn the Great. Considering that “nobility” of his era were known to ‘seed’ a ‘wench’ or three, so likely would half of present-day Wales or the Welsh diaspora.

4) Asenath may well have been of the line of Egyptian rulers known as the “Shepherd Kings”, or Hyksos, who were a SEMITIC tribe (distant cousins of Jacob, from what I understand), so her lineage wouldn’t have been of the so-called ‘cursed’ line. Egyptian history records that the Hyksos had integrated into the Egyptian culture, but sometime later they were deposed, hence “there rose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph”.

The trouble with DNA ‘testing’ is that we don’t know what DNA of peoples of antiquity would have been like, we can only compare to where they are TODAY. Many assumptions of necessity have to be made to estimate ethnicity. Never mind that such phenomena as Founder Effect can render such assumptions meaningless.

We don’t have many African Americans over here in the UK Brian. We do have Black British people and Black African people and Black African Caribbean people not to mention people of Mixed Heritage or mixed Race people, including three of my own grandchildren and five great -grandchildren. However of those, two have blonde hair and blue eyes and one is a redhead. Amazing how genes work, that in three generations the blonde reappears on one line and the same generation a great grandchild comes through her blonde mother as black again. Genes are amazingly individual things in how they work. They say the first humans came from the Nile Basin and were Black too. Who knows, who cares, we are or should be all God’s children.

Not all black people are of African decent. Not all people of African decent are American. African-American is not a blanket term you can use to describe a person with black skin. Black and white are acceptable terms.

Sorry Liz, but I am VERY concerned over the use of the term “Black People” rather than “African Americans” being used in your response. Maybe it is acceptable in good ole Blighty, but over here in Realville it is not. Happy New Year!!