Have you gotten your DNA done?
 

My husband and I sent samples of our DNA to a scientific firm in Florida to determine our racial mixtures. The website, www.ancestrybyDNA.com explains it a lot better than I can.

Today we got our results and whoa, it's a good thing that we're both degreed in science because that stuff is TECHNICAL.:eek: You are given your percentage of mixture along with chromosome maps and tons of other material. Your racial mixture has to be fairly recent to show up--anyway, we found that:

My husband is European-Native American!
I am European-African-Native American!

Hispanic isn't reported since that's not a race but a mixture of races...anyway, has anyone else had their DNA done?

$219.00 USD!!! :eek:

I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.

I'm Martian-American. Its true.

My grandmother did our geneology WAAAY back.

If I cared, I'd just crack those books she wrote.

There is a company that does DNA testing for African Americans interested in tracing their roots in Africa. It's pretty expensive and very hard to understand.

The DNA company told me that every African-American (not African only) they've tested has been at least 20% white.

Yeah I remember him saying something like that. It doesn't suprise me.

I haven't had mine done yet, but due to certain "foster cousins", I may be getting it done soon. Did they just do the swab?

As for the African-American database, I think that's a GREAT idea! I have been totally sold on the Sally Hemings as the mother of several of Thomas Jefferson's children since I first learned of it, and I'd like to see people such as they get their due respect. The whole slavery era was an abomination in our country, and the least that can be done is to help those interested in establishing their roots.

Also, I get several genealogical publications, and the most recent has four different families doing a DNA project, to keep the lineages straight. I think that's a very good step in the right direction!

Dec. 28 — Wayne Joseph, the principal of a big suburban high school in southern California, had an unequivocal sense of his black heritage, having written extensively about race in America.

But after seeing a TV story last April about a Florida company, DNA Print Genomics, which marketed an ancestry-by-DNA test, he began to wonder exactly how much of him was African, how much wasn't, and what else there might be in his genes.

"I sent away for their kit and received the kit, happened to swab both sides of my cheek and sent the swabs in," Joseph said.

A few weeks later, the results arrived at his comfortable Claremont, Calif., home.

"I just glanced at it, just a cursory glance initially — didn't really notice it much," Joseph said. "Then, I went back to it, because all of a sudden it hit me exactly what I had read. And it read, 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian and 0 percent African.

After a lifetime as a black man, Wayne Joseph discovered he probably isn't black at all.


Article

Just an aside....Wayne Joseph is the principal at Chino High School, where I substitute taught for 2 years!

I have been curious about this more and more, ever since my boyfriend's uncle did this. He did it through the company Family Tree DNA and I guess they are participating in the National Geographic project.

I have looked at the websites on this and I am confused on the test I should take.

First off, the reason I am interested is this... my dad was adopted and we have no real clue about what ancestory he is. My grandparents adopted him in DC from an orphanage and have some info on him, but he has never wanted to know his parents. I understand this, but would like to know where they were from at least. Whenever people meet me they are always curious. I have gotten spanish, italian (when I went to Europe people would speak italian to me randomly), and greek (because of my father's looks).

So what test would show from me his daughter my father's lineage?

I've had a DNA chromosome map done by the Doc. It was for medical purposes only though... to test for something specific.. so I didn't get any other cool info from it.

Questions regarding identical twins (i.e. where there was one zygote but it split in 2 resulting in 2 babies)....would identical twins have identical DNA? Just wondering. Paging the GC scientists...

Sure do. DNA (genotype) is the same. One of my students asked the same question today.

Didn't Oprah get this done? If I remember correctly, she discovered she has heritage with the Zulu tribe in South Africa, and that's part of the reason she has been so active with educational charities in that region.

Think of all those soap opera characters who are in jail for crimes that they didn't commit...it was their EVIL TWIN!!! :D ;)

Yeah, I saw that too. On the same show, Henry Louis Gates (Harvard Professor of African-American Studies) had his done--and he was 50% European (probably from Scandinavia).

A quick hijack-there were no tribes in Africa until the colonial period where Europeans came in and screwed everything up. I have probably blown your mind with this information.

Carry on-but remember, no matter where you came from, you're 100% American now. Not Irish-Scottish-English-French-Italian-German-Antarctic-Russian-American. Just American.

If you really wanna get your DNA done, just commit a felony. They'll do it for free at the police station.

Oprah did get this done, but she found out that she was NOT Zulu. She thought she was, but she ended up being from a different tribe (can't remember the name at the moment though).

i always thought it might be interesting but not something i'm interested in spending money on

Cool...so where can this Canadian citizen (who was also Canadian born) get her American passport? ;)

Or go on Maury Povich. :D

After the Gates program, I was interested. I didn't know that it was so easy to do. The price is a little steep for my level of interest, but maybe I'll do it.

I think wide-spread general knowledge about individual racial background has interesting implications for discussions about race and how we think about history.

Think about the argument for reparations for slavery. Does Henry Louis Gates pay himself?

(I’m kidding about that, really, but it’s interesting to think about what it says about our ideas of race.)

One of my mom's brothers had it done, but just focusing on the African ancestry. Their side of the family, however, isn't as ethnically interesting as my father's side. Many of those aunts and uncles have very strong Native American features, red hair, and blue eyes.

On the Gates show didn't he say that a lot of people who thought they were Native American especially were surprised by the results that they weren't? (Or was it just his own family?)

I have it on reliable authority that the DNA tests are just a left handed way for the government to get your DNA on file . . . Big Brother and all that.

Are you kidding?

I'm curious what you mean by that. Tribes as in the sense of organized tribal political groups with extremely distinct identities and memberships? Or tribes in the sense of different cultures with different practices and systems of power?

I believe the first but not the second. There has always been cultural and ethnic variation in Africa.

I was under the impression that there were tribes but the colonial influence mucked things up by creating geographical groupings that didn't make sense in terms of the tribes.

Well, the colonial influence also royally mucked things up, particularly in Western Africa in the very early years of North and South American colonization, via the slave trade, which encouraged different African groups/tribes to conduct wars in order to capture people from other tribes to sell to Europeans for the slave market. It's certainly true that slavery created that problem. But there was already conflict between these different groups/tribes before European contact: the Europeans just capitalized on this conflict.

The geographical thing came later, in terms of European nations divvying up actual territory in the 19th century--where what you're saying is definitely true. But at first (pre-1800) the Europeans were not as interested in setting up colonies in Africa itself but using its resources (human and otherwise) to further their colonial goals in the Americas.

/history grad student

Just for the record, I wasn't trying to diminish the influence of the slave trade on Africa or anything.

My intial impulse was to say that there were tribes but not countries before colonialization (I think countries as we think of them are pretty new historically anyplace really.) I thought that might have been the idea that Centaur was thinking about.

No, I mean tribes such as the Hutus and Tutsis. People believe they have always been a tribe when they haven't.
There have always been societies in African countries, with their own cultures and identities. What screwed things up was the colonialists shoving these societies together based upon geographical location for administrative ease, calling them tribes and making them live together. Naturally, people who do not share a common background do not get along very well. There are power struggles within these tribes.
My point was that the African tribe as we know it was not a permanent fixture. There is still much civil strife in many of the countries today because of colonial laziness. They can barely keep up the power structure within the tribe and the civil wars and genocides we see are a result of trying to gain the upper hand over another tribe. (See Rwanda for a prominent example).
I took Western African Politics and thoroughly enjoyed the class. Half of my midterm was an essay explaining the political problems and tribal warfare and how colonialists screwed everything up.

You don't count :D

Centaur, are you sure you mean the tribes weren't there or that colonial powers pushed tribes together into the geographic spaces they wanted them in?

Rwanda is a good example. There were tribes before colonization, I'm pretty sure. The problems may have resulted from external powers trying to make one country out of distinct tribes.

ETA: I stand corrected on Rwanda, at least according to what wikipedia has to say. The two two major "tribes" don't seem distinct at all as far as genetics and language. Interesting.

There were no 'tribes', just groups of people who lived together. There was relative peace among these groups. It was when the colonialists pushed these little societies together and called them a tribe that the problems started. For a modern day example, let's say we take one half of a state such as Florida, and say, "you all live near each other even though you have entirely separate cultures. Now you're a tribe; act like it." No sane person will react kindly to that.
Another key issue is classism. The colonialists would pick a city and build that city up, making an industrial epi-center. Now, think of this like a bulls-eye, with the city in the middle. If you live in or around that city, you're going to get a decent job. The further away you are, the less likely it is that you'll get a job and you're probably neglected by the governing body. When we couple that with the geographically based tribes created by the colonialists, you can see another fine example of a catalyzing conflict. Those who live far away from the city are made into a tribe; they don't get along because they're not the same, so there's already tension. Then the colonialists create another tribe from the people living close to the city. Now this new tribe has more money, and a better position in society. They're higher up in the class system. This was how it was for the Hutus and Tutsis. The Tutsis lived close to the big city, while the Hutus lived a lot further away. The system put in place by the colonialists made it very hard for someone to move up the financial ladder, so the resentment starts and tension builds. The Tutsis were basically told that they were better than the Hutus. Why? Arbitrary grouping.
Wow, that was long-winded.

GC, I learn things here.

/thanks centaur :)

Yeah, me too.

So are you saying that there aren't ANY culturally distinct groups prior to colonization or just that in certain places the tribal stuff was overblown by colonial powers?

How do you explain like the Zulus, Ebo, and stuff?

I am a wealth of useful/less information! I'll try and find the link where all this is written (a book called 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' or something like that. Really interesting!).

EDIT: Found it! http://www.marxists.org/subject/afri...rope/index.htm

Pay no heed to the website it's hosted on. I really don't know why people dismiss historical fact because of political leanings. The guy who wrote this was a socialist...big deal!

I think you might be missing my point...maybe I'm just not clear enough. I can ramble sometimes.
Before there were tribes as we know them, Africans lived in culturally distinct groups and societies, separate from each other, perhaps sharing a geographical area but remaining unique with their own customs and traditions. When the colonialists rolled in (yes, the brits were infamous for screwing up countries the world over!) they put these smaller societies together and made them into a tribe, such as the Hutus or the Zulus, all because they lived in the same area. The colonialists had no respect whatsoever for Africa's cultural diversity. So I am saying the colonialists MADE the Zulu tribe-before that, they co-existed in the same area peacefully but had nothing in common other than their geographical location.
Another example-England and France share the English Channel. Let's say Denmark invades, starts conquering Europe all over the place and says, "England and France are close. They share common water. It's easier for us if we make them one country." The cultures are entirely different from one another but now the former countries are expected to unify under one name, even if there was hostility prior to this grouping.
Does that make sense? There were always culturally distinct groups, but not the tribes we know today.