Re: Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests


mkao wrote:
The racist American government does not provide equal right for people
of the nation. They use race or color of skin in laws and regulations.
Many White in the US may found out to be Black in DNA test.

What a shock. You've preceded an interesting article with typically
idiotic comments that are at best marginally related to the article. It
must be frightening to have such a poor understanding of the world. Do
you bump your head a lot?

The DNA Age
Seeking Ancestry in DNA Ties Uncovered by Tests

Alan Moldawer's adopted twins, Matt and Andrew, had always thought of
themselves as white. But when it came time for them to apply to college
last year, Mr. Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the
origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a new DNA kit that he
had heard could determine an individual's genetic ancestry.

The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11
percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process.
But Mr. Moldawer, a business executive in Silver Spring, Md., says they
could be useful in obtaining financial aid.

"Naturally when you're applying to college you're looking at how your
genetic status might help you," said Mr. Moldawer, who knows that the
twins' birth parents are white, but has little information about their
extended family. "I have three kids going now, and you can bet that any
advantage we can take we will."

Genetic tests, once obscure tools for scientists, have begun to
influence everyday lives in many ways. The tests are reshaping people's
sense of themselves - where they came from, why they behave as they
do, what disease might be coming their way.

It may be only natural then that ethnic ancestry tests, one of the
first commercial products to emerge from the genetic revolution, are
spurring a thorough exploration of the question, What is in it for me?

Many scientists criticize the ethnic ancestry tests as promising more
than they can deliver. The legacy of an ancestor several generations
back may be too diluted to show up. And the tests have a margin of
error, so results showing a small amount of ancestry from one continent
may not actually mean someone has any.

Given the tests' speculative nature, it seems unlikely that colleges,
governments and other institutions will embrace them. But that has not
stopped many test-takers from adopting new DNA-based ethnicities -
and a sense of entitlement to the privileges typically reserved for
them.

Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as
minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their
European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights.

One Christian is using the test to claim Jewish genetic ancestry and to
demand Israeli citizenship, and Americans of every shade are staking a
DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money.

"This is not just somebody's desire to go find out whether their
grandfather is Polish," said Troy Duster, a sociologist at New York
University who has studied the social impact of the tests. "It's about
access to money and power."

Driving the pursuit of genetic bounty are start-up testing companies
with names like DNA Tribes and Ethnoancestry. For $99 to $250, they
promise to satisfy the human hunger to learn about one's origins -
and sometimes much more. On its Web site, a leader in this cottage
industry, DNA Print Genomics, once urged people to use it "whether your
goal is to validate your eligibility for race-based college admissions
or government entitlements."

Tony Frudakis, the research director at DNAPrint, said the
three-year-old company had coined the term American Indian Princess
Syndrome to describe the insistent pursuit of Indian roots among many
newly minted genetic genealogists. If the tests fail to turn up any,
Mr. Frudakis added, "this type of customer is frequently quite angry."

DNAPrint calls the ethnic ancestry tests "recreational genomics" to
distinguish them from the more serious medical and forensic
applications of genetics. But as they ignite a debate over a variety of
genetic birthrights, their impact may be further-reaching than anyone
anticipated.

Some social critics fear that the tests could undermine programs meant
to compensate those legitimately disadvantaged because of their race.
Others say they highlight an underlying problem with labeling people by
race in an increasingly multiracial society.

"If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they
haven't experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is
supposed to remedy," said Lester Monts, senior vice provost for student
affairs at the University of Michigan, which won the right to use race
as a factor in admissions in a 2003 Supreme Court decision.

Still, Michigan, like most other universities, relies on how students
choose to describe themselves on admissions applications when assigning
racial preferences.

Ashley Klett's younger sister marked the "Asian" box on her college
applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test
that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European.

Whether it mattered they do not know, but she did get into the college
of her choice.

"And they gave her a scholarship," Ashley said.

Pearl Duncan has grander ambitions: she wants a castle.
A descendant of Jamaican slaves, Ms. Duncan had already identified the
Scottish slave owner who was her mother's great-great-grandfather
through archival records. But the DNA test confirming her 10 percent
British Isles ancestry gave her the nerve to contact the Scottish
cousins who had built an oil company with his fortune.

Graphic: What Genetic Tests Can Do "It's one thing to feel satisfied to
know something about your heritage, it's another to claim it," said Ms.
Duncan, a writer in Manhattan. "There's a kind of checkmateness to the
DNA."

The family's 11 castles, Ms. Duncan noted, were obtained with the
proceeds of her African ancestors' labor. Perhaps they could spare one
for her great-great-great-grandfather's black heirs? In case the paper
records she had gathered were not persuasive, she invited male family
members to take a DNA test that can identify a genetic signature passed
from father to son. So far, no one has taken her up on the offer. Her
appeal, Ms. Duncan said, is mostly playful. Less so is her insistence
that the Scots stop referring to their common ancestors as simply
"Virginia and West India merchants."

"By acknowledging me, the Scots are beginning to acknowledge that these
guys were slaveholders," she said.

Other slave descendants, known as the Freedmen, see DNA as bolstering
their demand to be reinstated as members of the Indian tribes that once
owned their ancestors. Under a treaty with the United States, the "Five
Civilized Tribes" - Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles and
Cherokees - freed their African slaves and in most cases made them
citizens in the mid-1800's. More recently, the tribes have sought to
exclude the slaves' descendants, depriving them of health benefits and
other services.

At a meeting in South Coffeyville, Okla., last month, members of the
Freedmen argued that DNA results revealing their Indian ancestry
underscore the racism of the tribe's position that their ancestors were
never true Indians.

"Here's this DNA test that says yes, these people can establish some
degree of Indian blood," said Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee Freedwoman who
is suing for tribal citizenship in federal court. "It's important to
combat those who want to oppress people of African descent in their own
tribe."

As the assets of some tribes have swelled in the wake of the 1988
federal law allowing them to build casinos, there has been no shortage
of petitioners stepping forward to assert their right to citizenship
and a share of the wealth. Now, many of them are wielding genetic
ancestry tests to bolster their claim.

"It used to be 'someone said my grandmother was an Indian,' " says
Joyce Walker, the enrollment clerk who regularly turns away DNA
petitioners for the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, which operates the
lucrative Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. "Now it's 'my DNA says
my grandmother was an Indian.' "

Recognizing the validity of DNA ancestry tests, some Indians say, would
undermine tribal sovereignty. They say membership requires meeting the
criteria in a tribe's constitution, which often requires documenting
blood ties to a specific tribal member. DNA tests cannot pinpoint to
which tribe an individual's ancestor belonged.

But if tribes are perceived as blocking legitimate DNA applicants to
limit payouts of casino money, experts say, it could damage their
standing to enforce the treaties conferring the financial benefits so
many covet.

"Ancestry DNA tests are playing a part in the evolution of what the
American public thinks matters," said Kim Tallbear, an American Indian
studies professor at Arizona State University. "And tribes are
dependent on the American public's good will, so they may have to
bend."

Under no such pressure, Israeli authorities have so far denied John
Haedrich what he calls his genetic birthright to citizenship without
converting to Judaism. Under Israel's "law of return," only Jews may
immigrate to Israel without special dispensation.

Mr. Haedrich, a nursing home director who was raised a Christian, found
through a DNA ancestry test that he bears a genetic signature commonly
found among Jews. He says his European ancestors may have hidden their
faith for fear of persecution.

Rabbis, too, have disavowed the claim: "DNA, schmeeNA," Mr. Haedrich,
44, said the rabbi at a local synagogue in Los Angeles told him when he
called to discuss it.

Undeterred, Mr. Haedrich has hired a lawyer to sue the Israeli
government. As in America, he argues, DNA is widely accepted as
evidence in forensics and paternity cases, so why not immigration?

"Because I was raised a gentile does not change the fact that I am,"
Mr. Haedrich wrote in a full-page advertisement in The Jerusalem Post,
"a Jew by birth."

Shonda Brinson, an African-American college student, is still trying to
figure out how best to apply her DNA results on employment forms.

In some cases, she has chosen to write in her actual statistics - 89
percent sub-Saharan African, 6 percent European and 5 percent East
Asian. But she figures her best bet may be just checking all relevant
boxes.

"That way, of the three categories they won't be able to determine
which percentage is bigger," Ms. Brinson said.

.

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