You took a DNA test and it says you are Native American. So what?

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Black people have always accepted mixed-race people as part of their community. With [Barack] Obama, I think white people needed to be OK with voting for him. They needed to feel that he would look out for them. One way to do that was to emphasize the white part of his identity … With Meghan Markle, people want to correct the cognitive dissonance where [in their minds] black women aren’t princesses or duchesses. If she’s half-white, then that’s closer to the reality that makes sense. There’s a lot of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of a black person in such a position. It’s a way to set the world back right for them [by focusing on her white heritage]. —Camille Z. Charles

Valerie Russ, “In an increasingly mixed-race America, who decides what we call ourselves?,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 18, 2017. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/meghan-markle-race-camille-charles-biracial-post-20171218.html.

You took a DNA test and it says you are Native American. So what?

You took a DNA test and it says you are Native American. So what?

PRI’s The World
Public Radio International
2016-11-24

Andrea Crossan, Senior Producer
Boston, Massachusetts

Have you been tempted to try one of those genetic testing kits, like the ones sold by Ancestry.com or 23andme.com?

Maybe you’ve seen a commercial featuring Kim Trujillo.

In it, Trujillo talks about how she discovered she was part Native American.

So you get the kit, swab your mouth, mail it back and you find out you are Native American. Then what?…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:05:15) here. Download the story here.

Tags: Andrea Crossan, Kathryn Marlow, Kim Tallbear, PRI, PRI's The World, Public Radio International

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2016 at 16:05Z and is filed under Articles, Audio, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Mixed Race Studies

You took a DNA test and it says you are Native American. So what?

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