Mixed Race Studies

The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained

Vox
2019-01-28

Brian Resnick, Science Reporter

Danush Parvaneh/Vox

23andMe wants to sell you vacations based on your DNA. But what are they really basing that on?

Identical twins have virtually identical DNA. So you’d think if a set of twins both sent in a DNA sample for genetic ancestry testing, they’d get the exact same results, right?

Not necessarily, according to a recent investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In fact, the journalists demonstrated that twins don’t often get the same results from a single company. And across the industry, estimates of where an individual’s ancestors lived can differ significantly from company to company.

In one instance, the consumer genetics company 23andMe told one twin she was 13 percent “Broadly European.” The other twin’s test, meanwhile, showed she had just 3 percent “Broadly European” ancestry, and had more DNA matched to other, more specific regions in Europe. What’s more, when the twins had their DNA tested by five companies, each one gave them different results.

One computational biologist told the CBC that the differences in the results were “mystifying.”

So what accounts for these differences? Overall, discrepancies in ancestry testing don’t mean that genetic science is a fraud, and that the companies are just making up these numbers. They have more to do with the limitations of the science and some key assumptions companies make when analyzing DNA for ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Do genetic ancestry tests increase racial essentialism? Findings from a randomized controlled trial

PLOS ONE
Published 2020-01-29
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227399

Wendy D. Roth, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Şule Yaylacı, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow
Identity and Conflict Lab
University of Pennsylvania

Kaitlyn Jaffe, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Lindsey Richardson, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with more than 26 million tests sold by 2018, which raises concerns over how it might influence test-takers’ understandings of race. While social scientists argue that genetic ancestry tests may promote an essentialist view of race as fixed and determining innate abilities, others suggest it could reduce essentialist views by reinforcing a view of race as socially constructed. Essentialist views are a concern because of their association with racism, particularly in its most extreme forms. Here we report the first randomized controlled trial of genetic ancestry testing conducted to examine potential causal relationships between taking the tests and essentialist views of race. Native-born White Americans were randomly assigned to receive Admixture and mtDNA tests or no tests. While we find no significant average effect of genetic ancestry testing on essentialism, secondary analyses reveal that the impact of these tests on racial essentialism varies by type of genetic knowledge. Within the treatment arm, essentialist beliefs significantly declined after testing among individuals with high genetic knowledge, but increased among those with the least genetic knowledge. Additional secondary analysis show that essentialist beliefs do not change based on the specific ancestries reported in test-takers’ results. These results indicate that individuals’ interpretations of genetic ancestry testing results, and the links between genes and race, may depend on their understanding of genetics.

Read the entire article in PDF or HTML format.

So, behold, there is a segment of my audience that freaks out whenever I refer to being Black. To them, I must be white. Music that sounds like that must be made by people who look like them. This cognitive dissonance has haunted me throughout my career. There’s this mental discomfort triggered when their belief (“I’m a fan of Tom! Tom is white!”) clashes with the evidence (“Tom says he’s Black!”). These people don’t sleep well at night. And while I sincerely appreciate the good-hearted fans who chime in with, “I don’t see you as any color, Tom. I’m colorblind. I just enjoy the music” — thank you, but this is America, and you’re missing the whole damn point. And so over the course of 20 albums and three decades I’ve walked the tightrope of rock and race.

Tom Morello, “The Ghost of Hendrix, and Fans Who Think I’m White,” The New York Times, November 3, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/03/opinion/tom-morello-race-music.html.

Deep Dive with Dorian Warren: Passing

The Takeaway
WNYC Studios
2021-11-04

Melissa Harris-Perry, Host and Managing Editor

Dorian Warren, Co-host

This month, “Passing,” a new film by writer and director Rebecca Hall premieres on Netflix. Adapted from Nella Larsen’s 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel of the same name, “Passing” is shot in black and white. It’s a complex film likely to revive old debates and provoke new conversations around unresolved and still unspoken meanings of race, class, gender, power, identity, and resistance. For this week’s Deep Dive, Melissa and co-host Dorian Warren use the film as a jumping off point to explore the thorny questions raised by the concept of passing.

Joining Melissa and Dorian to discuss her film and her family’s history with passing is Rebecca Hall. Adding context on the history of passing is Allyson Hobbs, associate professor of U.S. History and the Director of African and African American Studies at Stanford University and author of “A Chosen Exile.” Karla Holloway, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Duke University and author of Legal Fictions and A Death in Harlem: A Novel, discusses how race has been socially constructed over time. Brit Bennett, author of “The Vanishing Half,” explains how she explored colorism in her 2020 novel. Lauren Michele Jackson, assistant professor of English at Northwestern University and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, discusses the idea of “Blackfishing,” which is when white people and even more notably white women, attempt transgressing racial boundaries by adopting a performance of Blackness through darkening their skin excessively, wearing hairstyles and clothing trends that have been pioneered by Black people. Bliss Broyard, author of the award-winning memoir, “One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life- A Story of Race and Family Secrets,” talks about finding out in her mid twenties that her father had passed as white for most of his life. And finally, Dean Moncel, a freelance writer based in Switzerland and Aryah Lester, deputy director of the Transgender Strategy Center, join the show to discuss the ways passing emerges around gender and sexuality.

Listen to the story (00:59:26) here.

Netflix’s ‘Colin in Black and White’ shows a star athlete reaching toward Blackness

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2021-10-29

Eric Deggans, TV Critic

If you had any questions about where Colin Kaepernick’s activist spirit originated, a look at Netflix’s new limited series, Colin in Black and White, removes all doubt.

These days, Kaepernick is known as the ex-San Francisco 49ers quarterback whose decision to kneel during the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial injustice inspired others and kicked off years of conflicts. He became a free agent in 2017 and remains unsigned by an NFL team, a situation many analysts attributed to political blowback from the controversy sparked by his protest.

But Colin in Black and White makes the case that he’s been fighting those kinds of battles since he was in middle school, facing down clueless coaches, oblivious friends and well-intentioned white parents who adopted a biracial kid but seemed to have little idea how to handle his desire to embrace Blackness…

Read the entire review here.

Paula Patton’s Precious Moments

Women’s Health
2010-01-27

Rory Evans

Precious star Paula Patton reveals all

As surprises go, this one was pretty sweet. Midway through her Women’s Health photo shoot at a New York City studio, actress Paula Patton is interrupted by the unexpected delivery of an enormous arrangement of roses and lilies from a not-so-secret admirer: her husband, R&B singer Robin Thicke, 32. “He’s so good about sending flowers,” she says with a smile. “He does it consistently.”

Yes, it’s nice to be Paula these days. Not only is the 34-year-old enjoying major accolades for her role as Ms. Rain, the heroic teacher in the emotionally powerful film Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, but she and Robin are also expecting their first baby (they got the happy news not long before the aforementioned photo shoot; she’s due this spring). The actress curls up on a leather sofa in the studio and talks animatedly about becoming a mom. “You can get into that cycle of ‘What’s next? What’s next?’ ” she says. “But I thought, I want to have children, and I’m not getting any younger. But I didn’t know if it would be hard for me to get pregnant.” Not to worry. Shortly after going off birth control, Paula was with child, prompting Robin to brag about his supersperm. “He’s so proud of himself, it’s ridiculous,” says Paula with a laugh…

Read the entire article here.