So, we did a bunch of genetic testing a while ago. I got both 23 & me and Genes For Good done. My family had done 23 & me before me, so we were able to match up and compare a whole lot.
The weirdest part of it was that on first reading, while I came back 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, which is to be expected given my father’s background, I only had 49.9% of my genes in common with my mother. Quirks of testing years apart, probably, but still kinda odd.
Now you might assume from my 50% Ashkenazi that my father is 100% Ashkenazi Jew. Indeed, his mother was a Polish Jew born in the US shortly after her parents emigrated legally through Ellis Island. And his father was a “Russian” Jew, though the last place he and his mother lived in that part of the world was actually Ukraine. Growing up in the 70s and 80s people didn’t really distinguish much because it was all Soviet and they fled pogroms that came on the heels of the Revolution.
But his genetic profile showed less than 100% Ashkenazi, and a few tenths of a percent combined of Middle Eastern and North African.
The test proved that he is, in fact, my genetic parent.
Now on my mother’s side, when asked where our ancestors came from it was mostly England and western Europe, according to my mother’s mother, but that a few hundred years ago there might have been a French fur trapper and a Native American woman. That wasn’t the term she used.
None of that showed up. Mom came up 100% European. Was it probably a family story to make people feel better about their entitlement to be here? A chunk of her family came on the Mayflower or not long after, that seems… likely.
I don’t claim to be Native, nor do I claim to be Middle Eastern or African. But just because when we first looked, they had no markers for Africa on my genes, doesn’t mean that I’m not descended from the same people my father is descended from.
We only get pieces, but the lines of descent are still there.
And you’ll note that I said on first reading… It’s been a year or so… and they’ve refined the tests, and sure enough, I’m 0.2% African, with a tenth of a percent each from Northeast Africa and a tenth of a percent from broadly Sub-Saharan Africa. I think it’s one gene for really curly hair (but it only gets that curly at the back of my neck?) I’m the palest white person I’ve ever met. I would no more claim to be Black on the basis of that then I would claim to be neon green based on the fact that I occasionally dye my hair. It’s a curiosity, no more. Apparently Dad is .3% one flavor of “Broadly African” where I am .1% a different flavor of “Broadly African” but he’s the only one I could possibly get it from.
Mom comes up as like, .4% Iberian and I’m like 2.8% and Dad is none and yet they are my genetic parents… and the answer is “They got theirs done years before I did and the chip their results are on is not as complex or updatable as the one mine are on”
So we can infer some further detail for their results from my results.
On top of the mere mechanical issue of different technology over time, every test is hampered by the fact that in order to figure these markers out, we basically have to go by people who know where they’re from or who have lived there forever as far back as anyone remembers, and people have been traveling for as long as there have been people. The larger the sample size, the more information we have. And for a variety of reasons, people of Native descent do not have as large a sample size as they have a right to, nor the resources necessarily to spend money on a test, and there has been so much crossing of genetic lines due to marriage, rape, and every other factor that makes humanity so diverse, that the tests for that lineage may never be as clear as people might like. There are Native people who have had their results come back anything but, but that doesn’t contradict their upbringing, their culture, their ancestry, it just means that like many marginalized and oppressed groups, too much has been lost to maintain accurate accountings over time.
When someone tells me they have a little Native blood, I don’t assume either way. I was told that, but it doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of my ancestors on my mother’s side were colonizers and on my father’s side, refugees. They were all people who traveled very far to find hope and safety and freedom, and I try very hard to take what I have and make sure the path is clear beside me and behind me.
Long story short, genetics are complicated, are never the whole story (we only get half a story from each parent and so on,) and when it comes down to it, there’s little to be gained latching onto family apocrypha and crying foul when the data doesn’t match, when the data only has a small chance of proving the case even if the apocryphal ancestor actually existed.
Also, White* people make way, way too much of the whole genetic ancestry thing mattering at all. Which is part of the problem with racists who actively promote the idea of genetic superiority.
If you’re curious, my results:
European 99.8%
Ashkenazi Jewish 49.9%
British & Irish 27.1%
French & German 8.6%
Iberian (Spanish peninsula) 2.8%
Broadly Northwestern European 10.1%
Broadly Southern European 1.0%
Broadly European 0.4%
Sub-Saharan African 0.2%
(Broadly Northern East African 0.1%)
(Broadly Sub-Saharan African 0.1%)
*The reason I’m capitalizing white here is to be very specific about White Nationalists.
Long story short, if people are trying to make hay of someone claiming a small amount of ancestry they learned about through family stories (but not turning it up on a genetic result) as being evidence of anything at all about that person, they’re probably assholes.
