{"id":48116,"date":"2016-07-05T18:10:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T18:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48116"},"modified":"2016-07-05T18:10:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T18:10:07","slug":"a-dna-test-wont-explain-elizabeth-warrens-ancestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48116","title":{"rendered":"A DNA Test Won\u2019t Explain Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Ancestry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A DNA Test Won\u2019t Explain Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Ancestry<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Slate<\/a>
\n2016-06-29<\/p>\n

Matt Miller<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019re not 28 percent Finnish, either.<\/em><\/p>\n

Our genes dictate certain things about us, but ethnicity is not derived from a single gene.<\/em><\/p>\n

Scott Brown<\/a>, the former Massachusetts<\/a> senator who lost to Elizabeth Warren<\/a> in the 2012 election, has decided to dredge up old accusations that may have ultimately cost him that race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you know, she\u2019s not Native American,\u201d Brown told reporters this week. \u201cShe\u2019s not 1\/32 Cherokee<\/a>.\u201d He then called on Harvard University, where Warren was a law professor, to release records that allegedly indicate Warren benefited from affirmative action (there\u2019s no reason to believe this is true<\/a>), before suggesting that \u201cshe can take a DNA test<\/a>\u201d if she wants to prove her roots.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: DNA testing cannot definitively prove whether a person is Cherokee. Or a member of any community, at least not reliably. To assume it can is to assume that there\u2019s something inherently different in the genetic makeup of tribal members and that this thing is universal within that community. That\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n

Our genes dictate certain things about us\u2014there\u2019s a gene that programs the color of your eyes, for example. But ethnicity is not a trait derived from a single gene, because ethnicity is mostly our perception of a collection of traits, rather than a trait itself. So a genetic test that looks at our genes and comes back with an assessment of our ethnic roots isn\u2019t honing in on a specific gene and reading what it says because there\u2019s no such gene to read. Instead, the test is comparing snippets of our DNA to snippets of DNA of people of known origin and looking for similarities…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A DNA Test Won\u2019t Explain Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Ancestry Slate 2016-06-29 Matt Miller You\u2019re not 28 percent Finnish, either. Our genes dictate certain things about us, but ethnicity is not derived from a single gene. Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who lost to Elizabeth Warren in the 2012 election, has decided to dredge up old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,3015,26,20],"tags":[11846,24418,7435],"class_list":["post-48116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-politics","category-usa","tag-matt-miller","tag-matt-w-miller","tag-slate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48117,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48116\/revisions\/48117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}