DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[johnnyfiber]

Cousin Barack and Me
Published by Friedrich Braunon November 12, 2008in Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity .
ANCESTRY MAGAZINE

How close do two people have to be to claim a relationship? That really is all relative.

Based on America’s peculiar and unfortunate “drop of blood rule,” a
person with a single drop of “black blood” is considered black by the
majority.

That’s why Barack Obama, with an African father and a Caucasian
mother, is described as “black” and is billed as a black candidate
for president. In some alternative world or culture, he might just as
easily have been considered white. In a better world, nobody would
have noticed or cared.

In a stirring speech he noted: “I am the son of a black man from
Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a
white grandfather who survived a depression to serve in Patton’s army
during World War II, and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber
assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. … I am
married to a black American who carries within her the blood of
slaves and slave owners—an inheritance we pass on to our two precious
daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and
cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three
continents.”

The drop of blood rule defined champion golfer Tiger Woods as black.
But Woods refused to have any part of it. Rather, he said on the
Oprah Winfrey Show that he is “Cablinasian” : a mix of Caucasian (ca),
black (bl), Indian (in), and Asian (asian).

I thought that was interesting and reveled in our country’s ethnic
diversity. But as an American, I never thought about myself as
anything other than another white guy.

It would have been different in the countries where my grandparents
were born in Europe. They were Jewish, and the Nazis redefined
religion as a race and slated people like them for death. My
immediate family got out of Europe a generation before the Holocaust.

Most of us who have participated in genetic genealogy testing have
looked at their sex-related heritage: either the mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) passed from mothers to sons and daughters over the
generations or the Y-DNA passed from fathers to sons.

DNA Print Genomics looks at a different sort of marker: autosomal
genes, the markers on genes other than the sexrelated genes. DNA
Print promises to give you a very individual look at your genetic
heritage.

And mine was a surprise to me. The AncestryByDNA 2.5 test showed I
was 98 percent Caucasian and 2 percent Asian. That 2 percent really
grabbed my attention—deep in the heritage of this “white guy” were
genes of East Asian origin. I felt redefined by the drop of blood
rule.

Tony Frudakis, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and founder of DNA
Print, said, “Y and mtDNA only tell you about one fraction of your
ancestors, whereas autosomal tells you about all of them. Thus, Y and
mtDNA are useless for individual ancestry determination— and only
useful for population surveys. Autosomal markers are the only way to
assess individual ancestry.”

I know his competitors in the Y-DNA/mtDNA business dispute that
position.

Meanwhile, while scanning my one million markers from the new deCODE
test, my genetic cousin Ted was stunned to find we had more Asian
links: markers shared with Chinese populations.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. We may think of ourselves as black,
white, or whatever, but we’re all mutts. We are mixes of peoples as a
result of invasions, wars, slavery, and the other winds of history.

Our family always felt that my paternal grandmother had an Asian look
around the eyes. We’d joke that maybe some Mongol horseman was part
of our lineage. Now it turns out that could be true. My sister-in-law
Sue—no fan of Asian food—is convinced that this genetic find explains
why my brothers, my sister, and I never met an Asian meal—Thai,
Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, you name it—that we didn’t like.

I embraced the concept. I now fill in government forms as biracial.
My wife cringes. But why not? I have the tests to prove it.

I also started the “2 Percent Club” with my friends Cara and Angie.
The only entry requirement is a minimum of 2 percent Asian ancestry.

Cara meets the bill. She looks “Asian,” but her dad is white and her
mom is Korean. Angie’s parents are Filipinos. She looks like a
Filipina, but somewhere in there she has a distant white Spanish
great-grandfather.

One time, Angie’s boyfriend, Otis, a Chicago Bears Super Bowl champ,
joined our chowder club. He’s black, but jokes that if he did his
genealogy he might turn out to be related to Strom Thurmond, just
like Al Sharpton.

DNA Print dug deeper yet into my background. It analyzed my 98
percent Euro genes with their new European DNA 2.0 test. According to
them, I am 77 percent Southeastern European, which could include my
Jewish roots, along with Armenian, Greek, and Eastern Spanish
possibilities; 17 percent Continental European, including German,
Belgian, Dutch, British, French, Irish, and Scandinavian roots. The
rest is Iberian and Basque.

A couple of years ago, while researching an article, I wondered if
racists might turn to DNA Print to prove their purity. The company
told me they couldn’t tell people how to use the tests, but the
manual they deliver with their tests demonstrates that the company
disputes ideas about racial purity: “Race is a defining issue of
modern times in the United States, Europe, and many other parts of
the world. The impact of the European colonial period that started
more than 500 years ago has set the tone for the interactions among
diverse populations of the world. Colonization, genocide, slavery,
legalized segregation, apartheid, Jim Crow laws, and concentration
camps are but a few of the atrocities that are the history of our
civilized world, and every culture has its own list of which to be
ashamed. Given the enormity of these events, their long-term
consequences will take generations to overcome. Modern conceptions of
race, racism, and racialization are some of the fallout of these
events.”

The company says it is working toward the abolition of these
misconceptions and social injustices resulting from race.

Thanks to their test, I am reveling in my own diversity now. Maybe I
should call myself HebroSinoEuropeanes e.

Old-fashioned gumshoe genealogy combined with modern-day genetic
genealogy is always full of surprises. Researchers found that Obama
is a distant cousin of both Dick Cheney and George Bush. Obama’s camp
kidded: “Every family has a black sheep.” Comedian Stephen Colbert on
the Colbert Report noted that research showed Obama’s mother’s
ancestors owned slaves and suggested with twisted logic that Obama
should apologize for slavery.

And get a load of this one—I have a genetic cousin, Howard Sachs, who
is a federal judge in Kansas City. We’ll never know exactly how we’re
related, but we shared a common granddad hundreds of years ago.
Here’s the twist ending: Howard’s wife is a Mayflower descendant. One
of her distant cousins is Barack Obama.

So I suppose through a giant stretch I can claim my fellow Chicagoan
as an in-law. And that’s just fine with me.

Howard Wolinsky is a Chicago writer who has been tracking his roots
for more than 30 years. He can be reached at howard@wolinsky. com

http://www.thecivicplatform.com/2008/11/12/cousin-barack-and-me/