Have you gotten your DNA done?

[DolphinChicaDDD]

Originally Posted by CutiePie2000

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.

[breathesgelatin]

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.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

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.

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).

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

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.

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.

[tunatartare]

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

[CutiePie2000]

Originally Posted by tunatartare

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

Or go on Maury Povich.

[UGAalum94]

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.)

[Munchkin03]

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.

[CutiePie2000]

Originally Posted by centaur532

Carry on-but remember, no matter where you came from, you're 100% American now. ..... Just American.

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

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by centaur532

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.

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.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

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.

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

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

[UGAalum94]

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.

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

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.

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.

Originally Posted by CutiePie2000

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

You don't count

[UGAalum94]

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.