Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people of African-American and Native American ancestry


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete.  Sandstein  09:12, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

List of people of African-American and Native American ancestry

 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. Vizjim (talk) 08:57, 25 May 2019 (UTC)


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The first thing to bear in mind here is that there is already a list of notable individuals who are tribal citizens and have African American ancestry on the Black Indians in the United States page. The list here, as the voluminous conversations on the talk page attest, has run into serious problems of sourcing because it is in the main being used as a dumping ground for individuals who have at some point made a claim (hence the name) to Native American descent (rather than citizenship). There are multiple issues with this. Firstly, the US has many families that claim to a connection to the Indigenous peoples of America through ancestry based on family myth (from Elizabeth Warren to Bill Clinton to people like Jimmie Durham): even if documented in multiple interviews etc, these claimed descendancies are likely to be of this type. Secondly, Native American identity is not primarily racial but rather political and cultural – someone getting “6% Native American DNA” on a genetic blood test is not considered Native unless they also have links with a specific tribe (any other reading of the situation pushes a particular point of view on the importance of race). To mix this complex of cultural and political affiliations with the primarily racial classification “African American” is to mix two different categories. As mentioned at the beginning, we already have Black Indians in the United States for individuals who “have strong ties to and identify as Native Americans”: any individual for whom Native ancestry and cultural affiliation is important should already be placed on that list, and therefore by its own definition this “self-identified” list is about non-notable features of specific individuals’ identities. Vizjim (talk) 08:53, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 10:56, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 10:56, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 10:56, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 10:57, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - From the title is seems almost like a cross-categorization (WP:NOTDIRECTORY), though the list itself seems to intended to reflect a defined group of people, so-called 'Black Indians', yet by the time you dance around the politically-incorrect naming, the distinction between self-identification (for both categories) versus genealogical ancestry, and the tribal registration issue, the whole thing ends up becoming a quagmire. This could theoretically be a list consistent with policy, but I don't know that achieving that is really possible. Agricolae (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment -> Delete - Yup, it's a mess. If you look at talk, we're trying to sort it with massive cleanup and a page move. But AfD has been discussed as well. I've been doing all of the above, but will go with whatever the consensus is. Everyone who's been working on all of this is very tired. It's tedious and, at times, exasperating. P.S. Though there are reasons to keep it (not good ones, but because people keep insisting on adding unsourced claimants to Native cats; these things are slush piles); I will admit that on days like this I lean towards: Nuke it from space; only way to be sure. Sorry, but I'm sick of playing whack a mole. The categories are bad enough; these lists are embarrassing. - CorbieV  ☊ ☼ 22:17, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * DeleteIt is beyond frustrating. The guidelines are willfully ignored. Make it go away. Please. Indigenous girl (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. No indication why this cross-categorization (one of any number of possible intersections of two ethnicities - and considering we're including people with DNA tests showing 6% of Indian ancestry - we could do 10 and 19 group cross-categorizations here) is discussed as a set in reliable sources. This is the sort of thing that is better handled with categories (and searches on the intersection). Icewhiz (talk) 14:50, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. Re: above comment, DNA tests is not how one establishes Indigenous identity. I support Vizjim's suggestion made else to create an essay for Indigenous identity. Yuchitown (talk) 15:57, 27 May 2019 (UTC)Yuchitown
 * Comment The list was created to give overview into notable individuals that have both heritages that included people who are enrolled in a nation and those who are not. If the list was solely focused on individuals that are citizens then sure it probably would've been named List of Black Indians. Not everyone can be enrolled and some weren't even if they have/had a parent that was Native American. It was also a way for people to explore Wikipedia and learn about people who have both heritages, and also of their achievements. I could've sworn this discussion came up before and it was killed. Also before a few say if they're not a citizen or not acknowledged by the community by being mentioned on the tribe's website then they're not native prime example: Kyrie Irving mother was Sioux, strongly positive he isn't enrolled nor is he mentioned on any of the Sioux nation's websites. Yet there are those (not specifically in this discussion) that would say yes he's one of us and others that would say no he's not a citizen he's just a claim.Mcelite (talk) 17:43, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Response That doesn't really address the problem with this list. Why have a specific list for people based solely on this specific combination of ancestry, unless that ancestral claim is both important to the individual and reciprocated by the Nation concerned? Otherwise we would have List of people with African and European ancestry, List of people with Bahraini and Vietnamese ancestry, etc etc ad infinitum. In the case of Kyrie Irving, his ancestry is important enough to him that he has donated six-figure sums to the tribe, and his belief in its importance seems to have been reciprocated by the nation in a naming ceremony, judging by this news story.. I'd therefore expect that he would go onto the notable list on the Black Indians in the United States pages.Vizjim (talk) 18:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Response I have no issue with Kyrie Irving being listed as a notable Black Indian matter of fact I suggested it b/c there are two people listed which I can't find WP:RS to clarify that they are Black Indians I'm going to clean that up later today. However, I'm not going to place Kyrie because I don't want to be yelled at for doing so when he's not enrolled nor mentioned on the Sioux Nation's website same could be said of Mabel Fairbanks. So I guess I'll bring it up on the talk page later.Mcelite (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Kyrie Irving is, in fact, mentioned on the Standing Rock Sioux webpage, and described there as "our relative." There's no problem with including him on the list. Vizjim (talk) 18:55, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Response [Edit conflinct] Kyrie Irving is a documented descendant, and is categorized as both a Native descendant and a Lakota descendant. But he shouldn't be in the simply "Native" OR "self-identified" cats as he's a recognized descendant who's been honored by the community in ceremony. - Co<b style="color: #003878;">rb</b><b style="color: #145073;">ie</b><b style="color: #006E0D">V</b>  ☊ ☼ 19:05, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note on "relative" - people of any ethnicity can be relatives. - <b style="color:#44018F;">Co</b><b style="color: #003878;">rb</b><b style="color: #145073;">ie</b><b style="color: #006E0D">V</b>  ☊ ☼ 19:18, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment: to some extent this seems as if this article may have been created to get around a restriction of the level of ties that seem to have been deemed necessary for inclusion on the Black Indians page (which seems like something to take up instead in an RfC about that page's scope, rather than via what could be construed as a WP:POVFORK). If the page were restricted to people with verifiable, rather than just self-identified, ancestry, it might have a stronger case for inclusion and separative from Black Indians, since there are a few sort-of-similar articles like e.g. List of German people of Lebanese descent (which however is about the intersection of descent and nationality, not per se the intersection of two ethnicities or ancestries), although there are still issues of WP:NOTDIRECTORY as Agricolae mentions. Mehhh. -sche (talk) 20:03, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Speedy Delete Most if not all of the entries make a "self-identified" claim that is not supported by the sources. This is BLP violation.
 * This has come up several times at WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America and related pages. These "self-identified" lists become dumping grounds for various people who are not tribal members. However, no source or explanation is ever provided to support this assertion: How do we know that these people are not part of a tribe? Why do we say "self-identified" when most of the entries describe them as having Native American ancestry, with no caveat?
 * Although tribal citizenship is rightfully determined by the tribes themselves, they have no say in who has tribal ancestry. The fact is that these ancestry descriptions are reliably sourced and we should not be using weasel words to cast doubt. –dlthewave ☎ 04:08, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Delete - This is a particularly complex area. We can't define it in an encyclopedic way. It is getting impossible to define what this list even hopes to mean or why it should be of interest to readers, much less to achieve it, as it is much too broad and vague. Saying that someone has some Native American ancestry, does not mean they have Native American cultural heritage - and there is no consistency among the people on the list. In some cases the Native American part seems to be far in the past. Parkwells (talk) 17:56, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Comment - Let people claim their ancestry individually, and deal with multiracial backgrounds in the categories of their corresponding articles. This list, as someone above noted, is too much of a dumping ground of vague claims. Let the recognized Native American tribes define themselves and their members, and keep out of it for all the other people of mixed ancestry who want to claim one part or another. Attempting this list now brings up the ways that European Americans imposed their persisting binary slave society standards on mixed-race Native Americans both centuries ago, defining them all as black so they could keep them as slaves, and in the 20th century. The height of excess may have been Walter Plecker, director of vital records in early 20th-century Virginia, who after the "one-drop rule" was passed in 1924, ordered whole families who had been recorded as "Indians" to be reclassified as "black" because he didn't understand the meaning of culture, and thought if they had any black ancestry, they should be classified as black. He cost many people of mixed ancestry and Indian identification, particularly the landless tribes in VA, the historical continuity of records showing their identification as Indians culturally (which Catholic Church records did recognize, by the way). It was not until the 21st century that these tribes gained federal recognition as tribes. What's the point of this list? As Henry Louis Gates, Jr's experts said years ago on his show, African American Lives, many African Americans on average have much more European ancestry than they do Native American, and there are a higher number of African Americans with some European ancestry than there are those who have any Native American ancestry. As someone noted above, if we are going to have this list, are we going to attempt a page that is "List of European American-African Americans" for all African Americans who acknowledge some European ancestry? Gates has learned that he is himself 50% European in ancestry. He identifies as African American, an ethnicity and culture, and also now acknowledges European ancestors; based on one serving in the Revolution, he applied to and was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.Parkwells (talk) 17:56, 30 May 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.