Maxine Bryant always wondered about her birth family. When she turned 60, she found them through an ancestry site using DNA. Kelly Wilkinson, kelly.wilkinson@indystar.com
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Interest in genealogy has skyrocketed in recent years, but for African Americans, it holds a unique appeal.
The institution of slavery not only ripped the ancestors of many African Americans from their homelands, it also erased them from the history books. Genetic tests can help to recover some of that lost history.
Before 1870 African Americans appear on census records only as property and not by individual names, making that year a hard stop for most people trying to trace their heritage, said Charles Barker, president of the Indiana African-American Genealogy Group, which is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
“The year 1870 was a major, major brick wall for our genealogy,” he said. “One of the advantages of DNA is that it allows us to break through that particular brick wall.”
‘I longed to meet my biological family’: How a DNA test reunited siblings
With or without that brick wall, people are increasingly turning to DNA testing. In 2018 as many people bought these tests as in all previous years, according to an article earlier this year in MIT Technology Review. The article estimates that more than 26 million people have submitted samples to the top four leading companies in the industry.
Aggressive marketing campaigns — including some geared at specific consumer groups, such as African Americans — combined with competitive pricing helped persuade more people to buy the test.
Last year’s blockbuster movie “Black Panther” also spurred interest, particularly among African Americans.
Familiarity with DNA testing combined with faith that the genetic information gleaned will be kept secure also has contributed to the rise in interest, said Gina Paige, co-founder of African Ancestry, which offers testing exclusively for people with African heritage.
Historically African Americans have been wary of the medical profession because of past episodes such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the tale of Henrietta Lacks, Paige said. Lacks unknowingly donated her cells to the study of cancer and other diseases, after becoming a cervical cancer patient herself in 1951.
‘That’s not the only question we want to answer’
Unlike other companies that analyze the DNA of both the test taker’s maternal and paternal families, African Ancestry looks only at a single lineage. Paige recommends that people first run the $299 test on their maternal line, which has a 92 percent chance of being African, because of the high likelihood that African American people have a white father in their past.
The test uses either the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA from the mother’s side. The test can identify from which specific African country and ethnic group or tribe the test taker’s ancestors originated, and the results apply as well to everyone on that side of the family, Paige said. Results from other companies only apply to the test taker’s siblings.
“Black people, we know we’re from Africa. That’s not the only question we want to answer,” Paige said. “We have no idea where specifically in Africa we come from. People with African heritage are the original victims of identity theft.”
Twenty years ago when the Indiana African-American Genealogy Group started, DNA tests were not as widely available. The group formed specifically because of the challenge that African Americans face when it comes to going back more than four or five generations, said Barker, one of the founding members.
At its monthly meetings of about 40 people, the group tackles a range of topics, from discussions of which ancestry DNA test is best to how to handle the knowledge that one might have a higher percentage of Caucasian DNA than expected.
Understanding your identity
Some experts have speculated that the results revealed after delving into one’s past can change a person’s identity. But that’s not necessarily the case when it comes to African Americans, according to Wendy Roth, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied the topic.
Roth conducted a series of interviews with 100 people before and after they received results. She found that the test led to a changed sense of identity for just over a third of the people she interviewed and that those people “cherry-picked” the ethnic and or racial identities they wanted. African American respondents were least likely to report a shift in their sense of their identity after taking the test.
“A lot of white respondents took the tests because they wanted to find something that made them distinctive,” she said. “For African-American respondents … this was really about reconnecting to a past beyond the slave trade, and that was very meaningful and important for them. When it came to identity, they didn’t feel a need to adopt a new identity and embrace something that they hadn’t known.”
‘They feel that something was stolen’
For some people, finding out about their roots is just the first step. Many then go on to visit the countries of their ancestors. Since it started about 10 years ago, African Pilgrimages Inc. has organized about five trips abroad, three to Ghana, one to Egypt and one last spring to Brazil. Many of the 10 to 15 people who go on these trips say they have done DNA testing, said Dianne Stewart, one of the founders of the Decatur, Georgia-based company.
Like DNA testing, such trips can help fill a void that many African Americans experience by providing them with more information about their heritage, she said.
“There is this kind of collective loss and trauma of not knowing — in the words of Malcolm X — the real surnames of your grandparents or great great grandparents,” Stewart said. “They feel that something was stolen, was taken from them, and now they have more opportunities to learn about what that was.”
Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354 or shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.
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