Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Consequently, the celebration of “both worlds” in terms of black mixed heritage persons has always been problematic in relation to it being a rather superficial exercise, limited to one’s inner circle of family and friends. It is pretty obvious that most persons of black mixed heritage will hold a deep love for a parent that happens to be white, yet to suggest that having a white parent alone can mean having a stake in whiteness does not hold true with the historical and contemporary experiences of racism. So why is this “best of both worlds” promoted? Maybe because it is a way to bring racialised groups together? Yet often it can actually further divide. For example, it is common knowledge among transracial adoption agencies that children of black mixed heritage are over-populated in the foster care system (McVeigh 2008). Does this not give an indication that black mixed heritage persons are not particularly popular when born? Maybe, or it could be that the experience of some white parents of black mixed heritage children is so difficult that they have no choice but to give them up for adoption. This again leads us to the notion that racialised harmony is a myth when it comes to analysing the growth of black mixed heritage persons as being synonymous with racial progress in society. Somewhere in this espoused perspective lurks an insidious anomaly, especially when we consider the socio-economic plight of black communities throughout the UK as still largely suffering higher levels of unemployment and discrimination compared to their white counterparts.

Mark Christian, “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football,” in Race, Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, ed. Daniel Burdsey, (London: Routledge, 2011): 140.

Woman takes 2 ancestry tests, gets 2 wildly different results

Posted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, United States on 2017-11-07 22:50Z by Steven

Woman takes 2 ancestry tests, gets 2 wildly different results

The Grio
2017-11-03

A Chicago-area woman wanted to test the accuracy of the popular DNA tests that are supposed to find your family history, but when she mailed away her DNA, the results she got were vastly different from each other.

Jennifer Smith was interested in her family ancestry, so she tried out a DNA kit from Ancestry.com, but was shocked when her breakdown showed that she was 97 percent European and 2 percent Asian.

“I’m a Black girl; I am not a Jewish white lady,” Smith told Fox32 Chicago, recalling her utter confusion at her results…

…William Gilliland, an associate biology professor at Depaul University, explained that “DNA tests for ethnicity are entertainment value only,” noting that while DNA tests can connect you to family members, there is no solid DNA marker or “diagnostic nucleotide” for race…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: 23andMe, Ancestry.com, Fox32 Chicago, Jennifer Smith, The Grio, William Gilliland

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Mixed Race Studies

Woman takes 2 ancestry tests, gets 2 wildly different results

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