DNA rewrites history for African-Americans (2230 hits)

DNA rewrites history for African-Americans

 

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

 

 

 

At age 4, Mika Stump was abandoned by her birth mother in New York City's Penn Station. Brought up in a foster home, she knew nothing of her African-American roots, she says, other than, "I was black."

 But a DNA test she took recently showed strong similarities between Stump's genetic code and the Mende and Temne people of Sierra Leone, in Africa.

 Now, "I have a place where I can go back and say, 'This is who I am; this is my home,' " says Stump, 34, a homemaker and mother of six in Basalt, Colo. "That's something I never, ever expected to say."

 As the descendants of slaves, black Americans have long faced huge obstacles to researching their family histories. However, advances in the use of DNA — the cellular acid that determines physical characteristics and is inherited from one's parents — are allowing African-Americans to connect with previously unknown ancestors. (Related item: Genetic genealogy's price tag)

 

 Some are using DNA to test the oral traditions that African-American families have relied on to transmit their histories. And in a 21st-century update of Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots, others are seeking to match their DNA to the ethnic groups in Africa to which their ancestors might have belonged.

 

For black Americans, however, there are some drawbacks. DNA evidence has confirmed some family stories but debunked many others. For example, most of the nine black celebrities who underwent genetic testing for the PBS documentary African American Lives believed they were part Native American.

 

 One of those tested, Oprah Winfrey, 52, says on the program that to many African-Americans in her generation, being "a little Indian" was desirable. The two-part documentary, which began running this week, says genetic testing revealed that only two of the nine celebrities tested — Winfrey and comedian-actor Chris Tucker — likely had Native American ancestors.

 The new wave of genealogical testing also has reopened one of America's ugliest wounds by confirming with science what historians have contended for generations: In slavery times and beyond, large numbers of black women were impregnated by white slave owners or other white men in positions of power.

 About 30% of black Americans who take DNA tests to determine their African lineage prove to be descended from Europeans on their father's side, says Rick Kittles, scientific director of African Ancestry, a Washington, D.C., company that began offering the tests in 2003. Almost all black Americans whom Kittles has tested descended from African women, he says.

 That's partly why genetic genealogy is "not for the faint-hearted," says Melvyn Gillette, a member of the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California and a longtime family researcher.

 "Before you go opening any door, you need to ask, 'Am I really ready for what might be behind it?' " Gillette says. "Not everyone is."

 

 Tracing patterns, finding links

 Each person's DNA is unique, but some DNA patterns remain relatively unchanged within families as well as within ethnic and geographical groups. Genetic genealogy tracks those types of DNA.

 One test examines markers of DNA on the Y chromosome, which passes virtually unchanged from fathers to sons. Another test uses mitochondrial DNA, which children of both s*xes get from their mothers.

 Such tests allow DNA researchers to go back in time to confirm paternal and maternal lines, or to debunk them. By tracing tiny DNA mutations, researchers can link a living donor to a group in Africa that shares those DNA patterns.

 A separate test analyzes inherited mutations to estimate an individual's ethnic makeup: European, African, East Asian, Native American or a combination.

 Genetic genealogy has been pushed forward by a "significant increase" in data that can be searched online, says Scott Woodward, director of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City. That enables test-takers to compare results with people descended from the same families or ethnic groups.

 The tests, available through about a dozen commercial labs and non-profit groups, are increasingly popular. Kittles, who is of African ancestry, says his company has sold more than 4,000 tests at $349 apiece since it opened in 2003.

 Bruce Jackson, a geneticist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, says the African-American DNA Roots Project he co-founded in 2001 has been "swamped" by African-Americans who have volunteered samples to aid historical research. Afrigeneas, a website on black American genealogy, recently added a discussion forum on DNA research, webmaster Valencia King Nelson says.

 

 The tests that seek to match the DNA of a living black person to samples from African groups have touched a chord with African-Americans who had thought they would never know much about their distant forebears.

 

"You sit with (white) folks who say, 'My family goes back to County Cork, (Ireland)' or, 'My family goes back to Sicily,' " actress Whoopi Goldberg says in African American Lives. "And you say, 'Umm, I don't know, I think Florida.' "

 

Testing commissioned by the program found that Goldberg was related to the Pepel and Bayote people, who live near the Atlantic Coast in Guinea-Bissau.

 

Anita Wills of Oakland used DNA testing to confirm an old family story — and to discover dozens of relatives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Wills searched her paternal DNA against one of the increasing number of databases maintained by genealogy organizations and hobbyist groups. She confirmed what she had long believed: Her ancestors included a white planter in 18th-century Virginia. She also found "DNA cousins" — families with the same genetic pattern — in England, Ireland, Wales and Russia.

 

 "I knew our family's history was complex, but I really had no idea," Wills says. "DNA showed me."

 

 Melvin Collier, a graduate student at Clark Atlanta University, suspected from his family's oral history that a great-grandfather on his father's side had been a white slave owner. So he had DNA from his mother's side of the family tested instead. Collier was delighted to learn that it matched the profile of the Mbundu people of Angola.

 

Collier knew a Mbundu who lived in Atlanta and who invited him to an Angolan celebration. There, Collier says, he was encouraged to get up and dance "for the family." Collier says he's "not much of a dancer," and was unfamiliar with Angolan music, but he says he obliged, to loud applause.

 In Catonsville, Md., DNA tests helped Angela Walton-Raji confirm stories of a Native American ancestor that she had been told as a child.

 "I knew it was true in my heart," says Walton-Raji, who researched her ancestry through paper records for 20 years. But "with DNA, there's no denying it."

 

 

 

DNA TESTING TRUMPS OVER SOME CLAIM OF 15 GENERATION OF SYSTEMIC PLANTATION SYSTEMIC BREEDING.

 

3 out of 10 Black American’s that took a DNA test found that About 30% of black Americans who take DNA tests to determine their African lineage prove to be descended from Europeans on their father's side.

 

 3 out of 10 Black American’s, does this constitute a NEW RACE OF PEOPLE?   7 out of ten of Black Americans was called PHONY. 

 

Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Monday, February 9th 2015 at 10:30AM
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