I found out the other day that the term "mixed race" has been replaced by "mixed heritage". No sure how these things happen or how compliance is achieved but fair enough, somebody will be happy. Less offence may be taken albeit the multiple wrongs done in colonial history and it's sporadic invasions are sadly well beyond any kind of retrospective correction. People argue that words and names make a difference (they probably do) but there's always someone who's left behind in these academic and complex rebrandings i.e. older people like me who can't think clearly.
I however, looking back on my family history, am of an unmixed or even fixed/stalled heritage. Bordering on incestuous due to an understandable inability to travel or explore (?), the tiny East Neuk villages I hail from were ignored and uninterrupted by incomers for centuries. Family trees are often close to being straight lines. People married locally and so generations grew poorer, shorter and stupider and so on ... the unmixed heritage model built up pure but peculiar blood and breeding with no mongrel additions or invasive species. We lived on potatoes and herring, alcohol and/or periods of enforced abstinence and temperance. A few convenient world wars helped to steady the number of inbred victims and religious guilt did it for the rest by banning sex as it just might be seen as "fun".
Unnecessary footnote: Our cats (as above) are highly mixed to the point of being feral in all but behaviour. What doesn't kill you makes you strong, or at least it makes you interesting.
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