Introduction

This blog is called Interethnic Genealogy. It is about families that formed in history across ethnic lines. By ethnicity I mean of a particular racial, cultural, tribal, religious, linguistic or national group of persons. For example, African-Americans, Mormons, Indonesians, Swahili-speakers, white Americans, Sephardic Jews, Protestant Mexicans, Irish nationals, and Filipinos of Chinese ancestry are all viewed as distinct ethnic groups for the purposes of this blog, even though members of one group may in fact belong to one or more ethnic groups.The point is that families form across lines that societies draw.

The information in Interethnic Genealogy will be of interest primarily to family historians, or "genealogists", who are researching their own, a friend's or a client's multi-cultural family history, or who just find the subject interesting. A secondary focus of this blog is to present information from the social sciences that will help genealogists understand the social and cultural context of their ancestors' lives. If you have ancestry that crosses ethnic lines, understanding the worldviews of both groups will help you understand the lives of your ancestors.

It is also hoped that this blog will 1) foster an appreciation for the presence and contributions of ethnic and interethnic families in history (specifically American history, although not exclusively), and 2) promote a much needed understanding of the relevance of the social sciences to family history research (and vice versa).

While far from a comprehensive resource for researching interethnic families in history, I hope to eventually amass enough content to make this blog an interesting, educating and overall worthwhile read.