Rashida Jones
Jones in 2011, kathclick/bigstock.com
Birth Name: Rashida Leah Jones
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, United States
Date of Birth: February 25, 1976
Ethnicity:
*father – African-American, with some English, Scottish, and Welsh
*mother – Ashkenazi Jewish
Rashida Jones is an American actress, writer, and producer. Her roles include I Love You, Man, Our Idiot Brother, Boston Public, The Office, and On the Rocks.
She is the daughter of music producer Quincy Jones and actress and model Peggy Lipton. She is a sister of actress Kidada Jones and a half-sister of model Kenya Kinski-Jones. She has a son with her partner, musician Ezra Koenig.
Rashida’s father was mainly of African-American [West African/Central African] ancestry, with some English, Scottish, and Welsh, heritage. Rashida’s mother was Jewish, of Russian Jewish, Belarusian Jewish, and Latvian Jewish descent. Rashida was raised Jewish, studied Hinduism, and is now a practicing Jew.
Rashida’s paternal grandfather was Quincy Delight/Delightt Jones (the son of Caesar Jones and Susannah/Susanna Burgess). Rashida’s grandfather Quincy was born in South Carolina, and was a semi-pro baseball player. Caesar and Susannah were both black. Susannah was the daughter of West Burgess and Adele, or of Osborne Burgess and Elizabeth.
Rashida’s paternal grandmother was Sarah Frances Wells (the daughter of Love Adam Wells and Mary Belle Lanier). Sarah was born in Mississippi. Love, who was black, was the son of Nelson Wells and Sarah Campbell. Mary’s father, James Balance Lanier, was white, and had mostly English, as well as Scottish and Welsh, ancestry. Mary’s mother, Cordelia Dickson, was black.
Rashida’s maternal grandfather was Harold Arlen Lipton (the son of Max Lipschitz/Lipton and Alice Goldfarb). Harold was born in The Bronx, New York City. Max and Alice were Jewish emigrants, Max from Slutsk and Alice from Brest, both in Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. Max was the son of Harris/Harold Lipschitz and Rebecca Leah Pitovsky/Witkowsky. Alice was the daughter of Aaron Goldfarb and Frieda/Freude Bass/Bab.
Rashida’s maternal grandmother was Rita Hetty Benson/Rosenberg (the daughter of Hyman Rosenberg and Jeanie “Jane” Benson). Rita was born in Dublin, Ireland. Hyman was a Russian Jewish emigrant, who was born in Saga, Province of Kemerovo, the son of Marko Benjamin Rosenberg and Sarah Hahn. Jeanie was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, to Jewish parents from Latvia and/or Kaunas, Lithuania, Benjamin Joseph Bensohn/Benson, from Kovno, and Sophia Winestein/Weinstein.
A DNA test whose results were displayed on the show African American Lives (2006) stated that Rashida’s father’s, Quincy Jones’s, genetic ancestry was:
*66% Sub-Saharan African
*34% European
In his 2009 book about the show, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote that Quincy’s African DNA matched the Tikar people of Cameroon, the Sukuma people of Tanzania, the Tonga people of Mozambique, and the Fang people of Equatorial Guinea.
Sources: Genealogy of Rashida Jones – https://www.geni.com
Genealogy of Rashida Jones (focusing on her mother’s side) – http://www.wikitree.com
some of you people are idiots. Your race is not based on skin tone. If that was the case albinos would be white. Quincey Jones is Black his ex wife is white, his kids are biracial period. If you look at Rashidas sister she looks like she is full black but they have the same parents. You people need to get a clue. As a person of “mixed race” it makes me sick to read such ignorance. “ooooo they black cux they dark, they white cuz the pale..” Get a clue!
wow. seems like everyone is either jewish, russian, puerto rican, or irish. not too many mexicans, huh? well, c there is george and mario lopez, and eva longoria, and jessica alba oh wait she doesn’t want to be mexican. not much, come on people get hungry!!!! everyone else in the world goes for it what are you “vatos” waiting for! shees!
Kenwood yes that looks about right. If Quincy Jones was full black his daughters would not look the way they do. Quincy is mixed.
interesting Kenwwod, thanks for that.
Quincy Jones was on African American lives. Genetically, he is 66%African and 34% European. That would make Rashida Jones ~ 1/3 African.
It may seem so, but actually genetic inheritance is not like that. It’s not like bloodlines, but it can be inherited in a random way, and not in equal parts. From your parent’s you inherit 50% of your autosomal DNA from each parent. BUT, Each parent has 100% DNA – of course – but you only get half of that. The DNA you inherit is actually a combination of your grandparents chromosomes. You inherit entire chromosomes, not small parts. When you inherit a chromosome from one single grandparent, it is only from that grandparent, and it has a much smaller part from the other grandparent due to a phenomenon called “crossover”. It’s random which chromosome you inherit from which grandparent, and it’s not split equally among the chromosomes, and all the chromosomes are not the same size anyway.
Because of this, you can easily inherit much more DNA from one grandparent than another grandparent.
So, you cannot say that she is exactly half of her dads percentage, because that depends on whether the chromosomes he inherited from his parents have the African DNA distributed evenly, which is far from certain. He could have inherited chromosomes which are more “African” from one parent, and chromosomes which are less “African” from the other parent (for example). So, she could, by chance, have inherited those which are the least African of his chromosomes -and so she could be less than 33%, but the reverse could also be the case, she could be more than 33%.