{"id":57916,"date":"2019-04-17T14:08:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T14:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57916"},"modified":"2019-04-17T14:08:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T14:08:50","slug":"i-dont-need-a-dna-test-to-tell-me-how-black-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57916","title":{"rendered":"I Don\u2019t Need a DNA Test to Tell Me How Black I Am"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Don\u2019t Need a DNA Test to Tell Me How Black I Am<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2019-04-16<\/p>\n

Erin Aubry Kaplan<\/strong><\/a>, Contributing Opinion Writer<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSimone Noronha<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

Tests like 23andMe<\/a> are a fad that distracts us from the reality of race in America<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When my sister called me a few months ago to say, a little breathlessly, that she had gotten back her results from 23andMe<\/a>, I snapped at her, \u201cI don\u2019t want to know!\u201d She kept trying to share, but I kept shutting her down, before saying I had to go and hanging up. Afterward I felt a little shaky, as if I\u2019d narrowly escaped disaster.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been interested in DNA tests<\/a>. I have nothing against people discovering they\u2019re 18 percent German or 79 percent Irish, but I think the tests are a fad that distracts us from the harsh realities of race and identity in America<\/a>. They encourage us to pretend that in terms of shaping who we really are, individual narratives matter more than the narrative of the country as a whole. There is no test for separation and tribalism, and yet they are baked into our cultural DNA.<\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t explain the panic I felt during that phone call. I was a little embarrassed that I couldn\u2019t take the news, whatever that news turned out to be. And then I realized that was it: I didn\u2019t want to \u201cturn out to be\u201d anything more than what I was. I didn\u2019t want my blackness divvied up or deconstructed any more than it has already been, not just in my lifetime but in the history of the Creole people of Louisiana<\/a> I descend from…<\/p>\n

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

Tests like 23andMe are a fad that distracts us from the reality of race in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,459,369,8,20],"tags":[18815,11766,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-57916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-23andme","tag-erin-aubry-kaplan","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57916","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=57916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57918,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57916\/revisions\/57918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}