From Peter A. Robb:

Re: "Drop" of blood still enough to get you perceived as minority (Dec. 14): How can white Caucasians trace or find out if they have a hypodescent factor in their genetic makeup from their distant past?

IE: Research and DNA analysis on Viking settlements in Europe [cannot recall the place] within the last ten years revealed that there was a mongoloid gene marker in the alleles of tall white Vikings. The mongoloid marker remains whilst no visible evidence remains in the phenotype, as if a vestigial gene [if that is correct usage of the word]. Not what scientists expected. One could hypothesise that Vikings made it to Asia via river systems or other means and brought wives back or encountered migrating Asians in Europe.

So how can White Caucasians claim to be pure blood whites when evidence like this comes to light?

I have names in my larger gene pool that may be Danish or Viking, one being Eving. Our families migrated to New Zealand in the late 19thc from Scotland. Mainly lowland Scotland. This Eving was modified to Ewing in the 17-18c according to Scottish church parish records[TV series character spelling JR EWING] to fit in with local culture and customs that populations. This may have been due to religious persecutions and factions at the time. In much in the same way Asians migrants to my home country New Zealand, adopt upper class English names such as James or American pulp names such as Betty for girls and so forth, to blend in more easily or bridge the sameness gap. Asian names like Tang Ping tend to 'other' minorities here, so they hide their origins through dialectical perceptions of what they consider the local naming norms to be. In many cases the adopted English name tends to disrupt the expectations of Caucasian locals whose christian names now may be adopted from American sitcoms of the 1970s for example and not handed down from earlier generations of a patriarchal system. .

So if a 'one drop' concept is the legal identifier criteria for being a minority; are we all ruled out of the White equation as we cannot really know what our backgrounds are until complex DNA analysis of our body parts is undertaken?