Millions of Americans have been
watching Henry Louis Gates’ new PBS show Faces of America. On the show, Gates takes a number of prominent
American personalities and claims to trace their ancestry through DNA. Genetic
ancestry testing has become big business with hundreds of thousands of
Americans spending hundreds of dollars on do-it-yourself kits, the home version
of the practices on Gates’ show.
 Genetic ancestry testing companies claim they can help you fill in the blanks. |
Many Americans understandably want
to know more about themselves and from where they come. For Black Americans,
this can take on an extra meaning. Owing to the lack of records for many
slaves, including any information regarding from where in Africa they or their
ancestors may have come, the sense of a “lost history” is palpable for many.
Unfortunately, despite media hype, genetic ancestry testing does not trace
one’s background beyond a few generations with any significant degree of accuracy.
Gates’ Faces of America and the type of testing the program promotes are
roughly analogous to the “tonics” sold in the early 20th-century Sears and
Roebuck catalogs—promising all sorts of miracle cures for what ails you, with
no scientific backing and misleading advertising. On both methodological and
conceptual levels, genetic ancestry testing is deeply flawed.
There are two basic types of tests
for genetic ancestry testing: Mitochondrial DNA tests and Y Chromosome tests.
Both test about 1 percent of a person’s DNA and shed light on
only one ancestor per generation. Such a limited sample excludes a significant
number of one’s ancestors. This relatively obvious flaw is noted in the fine
print of most of these tests. However, those who promote genetic ancestry
testing deliberately obscure other complications.
As propagated by Gates in his
various shows, genetic ancestry testing claims to be able to locate the
geographic and social origins of one’s family via DNA. The two basic types of
tests can match one’s genetic characteristics with areas in the world where the
same characteristics happen to be present today, not necessarily in any historical sense. However, even this kind of
matching is totally dependent on a company’s database, none of which are able
to capture every genetic marker prevalent in a particular place even for a
single point in time.
Misleading results
This shortcoming means that while
the test could suggest an ancestral connection to one location, the same marker
could be found in another, making the whole process highly speculative.
Scientists have pointed out that even in the cases where some genetic markers
are most common in one particular population, the results can still be
misleading, given that genetic diversity is great even within any one particular
grouping.
Furthermore, modern location and
residency patterns do not necessarily correlate with the same information for
the same group in any particular period of the past. Social groups have changed
greatly in composition across time in all areas of the world.
For example, some Americans may
refer to themselves as “German-Americans.” However, prior to 1871, there was no
such place as “Germany.” In fact, the current German “ethnicity” that many
would identify with has its own roots in a number of socially distinct groups,
like Ostrogoths and Vandals, which no longer exist. In the history of every
continent, there are myriad accounts of the fluid nature of any particular
ethnicity, nation, population and so on—the point being that what primarily determines
these distinctions are social factors, not biological factors that create some
immutable identity for all time.
Correlation between ‘race’ and DNA statistically insignificant
This brings us to our final point,
and the one that creates the most disturbing conclusions. Many people use
genetic ancestry tests to discover their own racial origins or lineages.
However, science overwhelmingly has proved that the correlation between race
and DNA is statistically insignificant.
In 1972, evolutionary biologist
Richard Lewontin took on the issue of human genetic variation. Examining blood
types, he found that 85.4 percent of genetic variation was explained by local
factors, while only 6.3 percent was explained by race. Since that time,
scholars using even larger data sets have come to the same conclusion as
Lewontin: that geography is the most important variable in the determination of
genetic variation.
Biologist Alan Goodman explains
further:
“Although highly correlated with
genetic variation, geographic location, however, is not in itself an
explanation for genetic variation. Complex questions about human variation come
down to specifics about our early evolution and migration out of Africa,
subsequent movements of migrating populations, adaptive struggles, and
stochastic events. … Human diversity is the end result of two complex,
interrelated and fascinating processes: evolution and history.” (http://tinyurl.com/y3du3p4)
We can draw two important
conclusions from this data. First, this evidence casts doubt on genetic
ancestry testing’s ability to give individuals even the most general sense of
their origins, meaning an entire industry is being built on junk science and exploitation of
people’s curiosity and emotional vulnerability—in and of itself a despicable
thing.
Second, it impacts heavily on our
conceptions of race. As science has proven, there is no such thing as a “race”
in a biological sense; human beings make up one race. “Race” is a function
primarily of racism. The division of humans into distinct and ultra-broad
groupings based on superficial and anecdotal observations of physical
characteristics is a function of domination and the attendant resistance to
such—that is, social not biological factors.
Racist theories based on biological theories of race
Why does this matter? The vast
majority of the most reactionary racist theories are based on biological
theories of race. These range from the anecdotal “Black people are naturally
[fill in the blank]” to the more sophisticated theories of Charles Murray with
his “Bell Curve” analysis that suggested a correlation between race and IQ.
In the realm of medical care,
biological theories of race have led to disturbing trends such as some psychiatrists
prescribing incorrect dosages of anti-depressants because of the contention
that Blacks metabolize them more slowly—something that has been proven untrue,
as even some practitioners of this theory admit.
For Marxists, it is crucial to
oppose false theories of racial genetics and biological determinations of race
for a number of reasons. First and foremost, our theories have to be based on
facts not on supposition. Second, in our critique of the capitalist system we
should be at the forefront of exposing predatory industries like genetic
ancestry testing. Finally, biological race theories are the basis for all sorts
of reactionary views in regards to the origins of and solutions to the
super-exploitation faced by oppressed groups in the United States, undermining
our struggle for equality.
