HISTORY'S -DNA- *HYPHENS : RESEARCH ESSAY

 

Racial History written in genes : Recent Research conducted by 23andMe demonstrates how America's brutal history is revealed through our genes.

While the majority of the enslaved people brought to the Americas were male, the study found enslaved women had a disproportionate impact on the gene pool.

''Our genes tell a story that's unflinching,'' said Anita Foeman, a professor at West Chester University who studies people's experiences with consumer DNA testing. 

America has struggled to reckon with the horrors of the past. Could DNA tests help in any way?

America, riven by wounds old and new over centuries of racist mistreatment, hasn't figured how to acknowledge the full horrors of the past and all the ways those horrors continue.

The images from the Capitol Hill incursion drove that home : Violent white invaders were met with a more acquiescent police reception than a peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters had months earlier; a rioter carried a Confederate flag through the Capitol building, while a noose hung outside.

The debate around race consuming America right now is coinciding with a technological phenomenon - at-home genetic testing kits - revealing many of us are not who we thought we were.

Some customers of the major DNA testing companies, which collectively have sold 37 million of these kits, are getting results that surprise them.

Perhaps they or a parent was adopted or donor-conceived and never told, or their families hid their genetic ancestries as an escape from discrimination., or they have a sister they never knew about.

Some people are discovering their ancestors were Black, or Jewish. Others are learning their African-American lineages contain more European ancestry than they thought.

Despite the reductionism that some time frames discussions of the ''ethnicity estimates'' that genetic testing industry offers customers.

Ancestry, for instance, is responsible for a disturbing ad relying on ethnic tropes and yoking genes to greatness, attributing a figure skater's ''grace'' to her Asian heritage, and her ''precision'' to her Scandinavian roots - the moment may offer us an opportunity to grapple with the blunt facts of our nation's history.

After all, to heal, from the past, we first have to be willing to see it for what it is.

A Black graduate student I interviewed, who is descended from a white slave owner and an enslaved woman, was able to use DNA results and research to determine the likely identity of this slave owner and to connect with a white cousin who is also descended from him.

''I feel like it's a little bit more awkward for her because she hadn't known about us,'' the graduate student said of this white cousin. ''We kind of just appeared out of nowhere, and I'm pretty sure that's not what she was banking on.''

This Publishing will  continues in the future. The World Students Society thanks author Libby Copeland - who is also the author of ''The Lost Family : How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are.''