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DNA and Racism
Have you seen the recent commercials that promote people having DNA tests? They show a man who is shocked to find out he should be dancing in kilts instead of lederhosen. And there is the woman who clearly has an American accent who says when she travels, people ask where she is from—and she assumes they are asking about her cellular history. Several people report that they now feel “complete,” knowing their personal DNA. It’s fascinating to see how people respond to their results.
One teacher at West Chester University in Pennsylvania has identified a creative and educational way to use DNA tests: to explore questions about racism. Her name is Anita Foeman; she was doing consulting work in the area of race mediation and was using DNA testing as one tool. Her goal, rather than causing confrontation, was to help people recognize their biases and create an environment where people could speak about race in a constructive and positive way. She brought her experiences into the university environment.
Overall, the student response has been enthusiastic.
‘Some people have never had a happy conversation about race,’ Foeman said. But in her class at West Chester University, there was laughter. Eagerness. And easy connections where there might have been chasms. ‘Our differences are fascinating,’ she said.
At a time when tensions over race and politics are so raw, the stakes, Foeman said, seem particularly high. Her students have been talking all fall about riots, building walls, terrorist attacks, immigration, the election. ‘You can feel it buzzing around the halls like electricity,’ Foeman said.
To introduce the process, Dr. Foeman has people complete a short survey about their ancestry. Then they spit into a vial and the vials are sent for testing. Weeks later they get an email with the results of their “ethnic make-up, a color coded map of their past.”
Students have reacted in amusing and thoughtful ways:
‘When I opened my results, the first thing that greeted me was 6 percent African,’ said a student with very pale skin in the back of the classroom, smacking herself in the forehead, mouth open wide, to re-create her reaction the night before: ‘Whaaaaat?’
‘I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised,’ she added. ‘I know a lot of African-American people have some white DNA, so I shouldn’t be surprised there’s some African in me.’
A student with bright-red hair sent her mother an image of her results, telling her, ‘We’re not Irish at all.’ Her first response was: ‘You must have the wrong data.’ And then: ‘Don’t tell your grandfather. It might kill him.’
There were also students who refused to be tested or denied the results:
Foeman has seen people drop out of the project after getting their results, including three people who identified as African-American who were upset to learn how much European ancestry they had. Some people refuse to take the test. A woman of Chinese descent told Foeman: ‘It’s okay for you – you already know you’re mixed up. I don’t want to find out I’m not pure.’
One of the most valuable aspects of this process is that the results create an opportunity to talk about race in a non-threatening, educational and intimate way:
In class, there were a few quiet moments. But mostly people were rushing to talk – to tell about the great-grandfather who was a Portuguese pirate, the grandfather who was a Black Panther, the grandmother who doesn’t like black people, the great-grandmother whose skin is so much lighter than her siblings’ and everyone will be very angry if anyone asks why that is. The grandmother who, on her deathbed at 99, insisted that the family’s roots went back to William the Conqueror, although no one thought the family was of British descent. (That student’s test results indicated they were, in fact, British. ‘Even up to the end, you gave Grandma no respect!’ Foeman teased.)
Emma Krentler, who has pale skin and brown hair, told the class she knew of Italian and German ancestors and expected some kind of a split between the two. Instead, she found a much more intricate tapestry: 2 percent North African, 13 percent West Asian, 2 percent Jewish. And when she saw Middle Eastern, ‘I was like, What? What?’ It was complete and utter surprise.”
‘Who are these people?!’ Foeman laughed with her.
Students are now volunteering for testing campus-wide.
We are in a period of history where many of us want to identify constructive, meaningful and intimate ways to talk about race. We can initiate conversations, but too often participants become upset, defensive, and angry. Discussions might be superficial because they are intellectual, theoretical and uneasy, not exploring the most fundamental aspects of our beliefs about race and culture. I support any method that can bridge the gaps that seem to be increasing over racial differences. If DNA testing is one step that can span those conflicts, creating an environment of curiosity, sincerity, and learning, then I think it could be a great tool for developing and deepening relationships in a society that is ripe for healing.
Published in Education
I thought race was a social construct, like gender.
It’s the Star-Bellied Sneetches playing out in real life. Faster, please.
Who? Help me out!
In a way, it is! We are all so “mixed together” that I’d rather say, who the heck cares?!
I have never agreed with these crude concepts.
I have a daughter whose mother is black, but not especially. That is, she has one white great-grandfather and one Native American grandmother. Other ancestors have various mixes of Caucasian and Native American DNA.
She grew up in a middle class family, mother a teacher and father an army captain around mostly white people and other middle class blacks.
This makes my daughter less than 35% African ancestry, yet she identifies as African American after being propagadized in college, despite growing up in an upper middle class area with mostly whites and south and East Asians with an Irish father and a German ex-patriot stepmother.
Now she teaches English in Korea and experiences real racism of the Asian variety and is relatively unphased by it. Crazy world…
It’s all a matter of collective agreement and I’m not agreeing.
This coursework is a step in the right direction. But watch out because academic forces want to keep the crude status quo alive.
Thomas Sowell’s Race and Culture is a fascinating read, BTW.
Now the star-bellied sneeches had bellies with stars . . .
Read the thing to my kids so many times I have it memorized.
Seawriter
I’d like to have one of my kids tested. There are so many different stories about ancestry on my first husband’s side—and I love the idea of people being surprised to hear that they’ve got bits of this and that mixed in. We are somewhat accustomed to this in America, but Europeans are also a whole lot more mixed up than they think, because human beings have been moving around (or been moved around, willy-nilly) for a long time. And sex…happens.
Great, cheerful piece, Susan! I want to share it.
Re: # 3
“Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
Would brag, ‘We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.’
With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
‘We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort !’
My kids grew up with this Dr. Seuss book. I saw it on sale two days ago and got it to have in the house for my grandkids.
It’s got a track record of ten years. Still, I think it bears watching, Franco. I noticed that Dr. Foeman, in videos on the site, keeps referring to a new kind of diversity. That may be a dog whistle for the left; my hope is that she is saying that we are so diverse that identifying with any one race or culture limits us and creates barriers.
Thanks, Kate! Doing it through their project is$120, if your kids are interested. The link is listed above.
I LOVE IT!! I missed out, not having kids. Thanks to @janbear for sharing it.
Thanks to you @janbear and @seawriter for educating me. I just may get a copy myself!
I really want this test to destroy the one drop rule in all it’s malevolent stupidity. It was conceived to subjugate light skinned blacks and now it is used by loathsome grievance mongers to encourage blacks to feel separate from and victimized by mainstream American society. It involves the dumbest notions of racial purity and has never done anybody (besides slaveowners and hucksters) a lick of good.
Bring on the testing I say!
Has Elizabeth Warren been tested ?
Oh, you with the devious mind! Love it!
I loved Elvis’ answer when asked “what he was”.
American!
That’s my race, too.
My gut response when I began to see ads for what you describe, by sending a DNA sample through the mail, was shock. The enticement of discovering your ancestry is very exciting and personal – they tap into that. However, I remember hearing about a university in CA that was asking students for DNA samples as part of a class experiment – red flags and bells went off in my mind. When parents found out, it was halted. I thought who in their right mind would send a DNA sample through the mail to some company??
I love the discussion they are having in the classroom, but researching their family tree through Ancestry.com etc. would seem a less “invasive” method. I can’t help but think that something is not 100% here – we don’t know who is recording it, where it goes – is it being sold? I think about how innocent it sounds, but what better way for the government to gather personal DNA on its citizens? I also think of WWII and the Nazi goal to create a perfect race.
I also found the suggestion to start tracking those with autism and Alzheimer’s by government alarming for the same reasons.
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/11/wtf-were-they-thinking-government-mandated-tracking-chips-for-kids-with-autism
Maybe I read too many spy novels, but I prefer my DNA to remain with me…..
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/10/18_genetictesting.shtml
Can. Not. Resist.
Seawriter
You bring up legitimate concerns, FSC. I believe the results are emailed directly back to the participants. I have sent an email to the Group to see if they are willing to identify the company or companies that do the testing. I’ll let everyone know if I hear back.
I always mentally roll my eyes when someone pronounces that they are 100% Norwegian, 100% German, or whatever. You only have to go back 8 generations and you have 256 great-great-etc grandparents. How can you be so certain they all lived in the same country?
I always thought racial tension would abate we became more mixed. It is harder to be prejudiced against family. I guess we may already be a long way down this road, and most don’t realize it.
I agree, Frank. But it depends on who you ask, whether we have progressed or not.
I pretty much see this as one more example of a nationwide obsession with race. I get that not having people sneering and screaming at one another may be viewed as “constructive,” but it’s still elevating racial considerations to a prominence that, overall, strikes me as more divisive than healthy.
I have 3 great grandchildren whose father is 1/2 black 1/4 Cheyenne and 1/4 Iroquois. Their mother is 1/2 Russian Jew. 1/4 Italian and 1/4 Hines 57 varieties. They are beautiful, intelligent children. I’d be hard pressed to decide which part of them I shouldn’t like if I were prejudiced against any part of their racial mix.
Meh. We’re Americans – we’re all mutts. Hitler argued that Germany would beat America easily because we were a mongrel nation. Oops.
I see a different possible outcome, although I don’t know if they’d like it. People could realize that we are essentially all mongrels, if you will, and give up trying to create barriers.
Mrs. R got her kit at a $70 price from ancestry.com, and sent in her saliva vial last week. I think there was another $10 charge for shipping, or general sneakiness, or some such thing. I tried to order my own the day that price expired, but the web site wasn’t working. That was in November. I’ve been holding out for the $70 price, but should probably go ahead and order.
A 2nd cousin got his test done last year. His sister told me he was surprised to find some Russian in the results. I told her it maybe wasn’t so surprising, and told her how the 2g-grandfather whose gravesite we were then visiting was supposedly born in Moscow, and how his father had had a few hour’s notice to flee Moscow with his family, and left one daughter behind. It’s strange that we have the exact birth and death dates of our 3g-grandparents, but not their names. The Germans in Moscow weren’t supposed to mix with the Russians, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t. I wish I knew if my 3g-grandmother had a Russian name.
This might have happened as an echo of the turmoil surrounding the Decembrist revolt of 1825, but that’s speculation on my part.
Well, jerks are always going to be jerks (regardless of race, creed, gender, or national origin) so it depends on whether who you ask is a jerk. It also depends on the time frame.
In the early 1970s I remember driving my grandmother around my home town (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and listening her go into a tear when she saw a black man and white woman walking on the sidewalk holding hands. Turned the air in the car blue. (I did not understand why the fuss, but she was my elder, and I figure honor your mother and father applied to grandparents, and I kept silent.)
In 2007 my brother married a woman who was black (my grandparents come from Greece) and my reaction was relief because she was the first sane woman he had dated in 20 years. I was best man, happy to serve. No one in either family objected. That is definitely progress.
On the other hand, have race relations gotten worse since 2007? I’d say yes. Apartheid is becoming a “thing,” as is measuring an individual by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. This is especially true at universities, a trend which is both alarming and disgusting.
I hope this will change over the next four years.
Seawriter
My wife is a sliver Yakut. She now refers to them as “her people” and also exits a conversation with,”it’s a Yakut thing, you wouldn’t understand”. I have a heap of Viking blood in me which is likely why I feel urges to pillage.
Nice article Susan.