Just came across this interesting thing about Elon Musk correcting people on his actual heritage. Apparently he's been getting lumped in as Afrikaner his whole life, but he actually comes from British/English background. What's wild is he drew a parallel to J.R.R. Tolkien, who was also born in South Africa but had English parents.



The whole thing started because someone on social media mischaracterized his upbringing in apartheid-era South Africa as being from an Afrikaner family. Musk saw it and was like nah, that's not it. The distinction actually matters - Afrikaner vs English South African are pretty different cultural identities with different histories.

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein back in 1892 and moved to England young, similar timeline to how Musk ended up leaving the country. And apparently Musk is a huge Tolkien fan - even cited his work when courting Grimes. Kind of a random connection but it explains why he'd make that comparison. The whole thing's a good reminder that people's backgrounds are more nuanced than surface-level assumptions.
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