Blog Post:
Small Bits of African DNA in My White European Genome
“Trace Ancestry”
In 2014, I learned that I had “0.4% trace ancestry”.
About two years later, after more people tested their DNA, the database grew, which allowed for the identification of specific regions where specific ethnicities lived. My “trace ancestry” became Nigerian. I shook my head in disbelief. Which one of my known ancestors contributed African DNA to my genome?
My first thought was American slavery, but with what I had researched of my family history, slavery did not seem right. None of my ancestors, not even in colonial times, were involved in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Living up North in Buffalo, New York, near the Canadian border, I thought I was as far away from slavery as possible. I tried to convince myself there were no enslaved people in my lineage.
I felt repulsed by slavery when I learned about it in high school and college. As college students, we watched the 1977 TV miniseries Roots, based on the book by Alex Haley, in the dorm’s lounge. I watched one episode at home with my parents.
In 1984, for the 100-year-anniversary of the publication of Mark Twain’s 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, a film adaptation of the book aired on PBS, American Public Broadcasting System. Both of these films gave me a sense of the suffering endured by enslaved people in my country’s past.
But how did American Slavery in the United States fit into my ancestry?
Could I be jumping to conclusions? Maybe there were couples who met and fell in love. Maybe this is not as bad as it seems.
I simply put it in the back of my mind to research my African ancestry sometime in the future.
Updated DNA Results
The future arrived in July 2022 when 23andMe.com offered an upgrade chip for a more detailed ethnicity analysis. I paid for the upgrade. The results were posted to my online account in August of 2022, but I did not retrieve the information until October and did not fully comprehend the new breakdowns until January 2023.
My updated DNA analysis tweaked my previously known Germanic, French, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Scots-Irish, and English percentages, and revealed previously undetected ethnicities from the Southern European peninsula of Iberia:
- 3.8% Spanish and Portuguese
The next surprise was more of a shock. My previously detected sub-Saharan 0.4% Nigerian ancestry disappeared. Four smaller distinct ethnic ancestries were present in my DNA:
- 0.2% unassigned (unidentified)
- 0.3% Levantine
- coastal Mediterranean Middle East:
Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Palestine
- 0.3% North African, along the Mediterranean coast:
- Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria
- North African people are a mixture of southern European, Western Asian, and Sub-Saharan ancestry, with genetics from Arabs and 16th-century peoples of the Ottoman Empire.
- 0.2% Senegambian and Guinean
- West African: Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau
- The Mandinka people live in The Gambia along the Niger River basin.
- The Wolof people live in Senegal.
- The Fulani people live in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. They have genetic links to North Africa and western Asia (The Levant).
These four small percentages add up to 1.0% and represent the first time an individual entered my genome from a particular ethnicity. These small percentages most likely existed in one person whose parents were a mix of these four ethnicities.
I Have Been White All of My Life – I Do Not Know How to be Part African
This is an unexpected, disorienting, shock. I have been white all of my life. I do not know how to be part African. What is the best way to talk about this? Do I say I am mixed race? But there’s no genetic basis for socially constructed racial categories.
When I stumble with my words sharing this news, most white people are positive. Some reciprocate with stories of their own unexpected DNA results from Africa or Western Asia that changed their perspective of their own diverse ethnic background. Mixed-race people and interracial couples are delighted. Black women and men smile brightly as they raise a hand giving me welcoming fist bumps. One black woman said with a smile, “Hi Sis!”
A few people see my fear of rejection. They comfort me with words of kindness, “Don’t worry what others think. If they reject you, you don’t need them anyway!”
Other people are dismissive. One smug white woman flippantly replied, “We ALL came from Africa thousands of years ago.”
Some people are angry. Others go straight into public shaming.
Public Shaming
On January 22, 2023, I attended a live, national, online Zoom hour-long discussion on race with about 60 people. It was a follow-up to an in-person, day-long seminar in Buffalo, New York on November 5, 2022, with Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, and Nanette Massey, a local African American lecturer on diversity, equity, and inclusion. DiAngelo and Massey were together again, on Zoom, on a chilly Sunday afternoon for a follow-up meeting titled “Ask Me Anything”.
Three hours prior to the meeting, Massey sent out an email to paid registered participants asking us to send in our questions for review. In her opening remarks, Massey told the attendees that she and DiAngelo chose a specific emailed question to begin the session. The way she avoided stating the topic outright and the tension in her voice, I knew my topic hit a nerve. She signaled for DiAngelo to take the lead.
DiAngelo announced the subject of the first email was a white person discovering small percentages of African DNA in their genome. She said she would not call out the name of the person who submitted the question, but if that person wanted to identify herself, she could.
She was clearly baiting me.
I sat in silent horror. My anxiety levels rose as she glared at me through her computer’s camera. Within seconds, I was in a full-blown PTSD response, frozen in place with my heart pounding and blood pressure rising. I sat very still, aware that 60 people saw my face. I took in a deep breath.
DiAngelo authoritatively snapped at me, “You’re not bi-racial. The percentages of African DNA in your genome are so small; it’s minuscule and not relevant.”
I felt red-hot anger at her insult and the assumption that I committed a grave offense against black people. Neither one of these women understood my question.
What harm did I cause by asking what terms should I use to talk about this? If they had opened up the discussion to the rest of the participants, these women might have heard other white people share their DNA revelations, too. They singled me out for committing a perceived offense. I soon witnessed I would not be the only white person harassed by these co-facilitators.
What followed next were harsher condemnations directed at other attendees who they grilled to admit their racism. DiAngelo and Massey lectured to, demeaned, yelled at, and told us we must fess up to our racism and pledge to be “less racist.” Nanette Massey sharply warned us white people to “show up, shut up, receive and affirm, listen and validate” what blacks have to say, yet, it was clear that neither Massey nor DiAngelo showed the same courtesy to the white participants. We were already committed to work for improved race relationships; otherwise, we would not have signed up. It was their intention to make us feel guilty for being born white and raised in a culture of racism.
They Missed My Point Entirely
Maybe these women thought that I was bragging about my less than 1.0% African DNA, carrying it around like a badge of honor or trophy. Maybe they thought I wanted to be seen as African American so I could start acting black and talking black and wearing my hair in cornrows. Maybe these women thought I was using my DNA as a status symbol to gain street cred, or I wanted reparation money.
They missed my point entirely. I do not want street cred. I am not bragging. I am not wearing my African DNA as a badge, trophy, or status symbol. I am not changing my personality to act and talk black or wear my hair in cornrows. I do not want reparation money. I will not be checking the African American box for my race on questionnaires. I am not applying for scholarships under my newly discovered African ancestry. And I’m not wearing Black Face.
I am Naming, Claiming, and Owning Precisely What’s in My DNA
On the contrary, I am naming, claiming, and owning precisely what is in my DNA. Because it is there, in my genome, I am part West African and North African. I am bi-racial. I am part Spanish and part Portuguese. I am part Middle Eastern. No amount of indignant reaction directed at me will change these facts.
These two women do not want me to talk about the small percentages of North African and West African DNA in my genome. Why not?
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. calmly and compassionately addresses hidden African DNA with his white guests on his PBS TV (Public Broadcasting System Television) show Finding Your Roots. Dr. Gates encourages open and honest discussion about white people learning that they have African DNA in their genome. He says, (I am paraphrasing): “The percentage number of 1.0% or less of African DNA is very significant. This DNA came from one person, the one person who brought African ethnicity into your genome. How does this make you feel?”
Unlike some white people who are not ready to accept what is in their DNA, I am facing ugly truths as to why African DNA is in my European white genome.
Read Up on DiAngelo Before Attending Her Workshops
When I read online reviews of DiAngelo’s two books, I read many scathing reviews of DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility, and its sequel, Nice Racism, and of her seminars.
One of the reviewers explained a term I had not heard of before.
This reviewer initially praised the book White Fragility for naming the racist behaviors white people do to black people, but then, the reviewer pointed out major flaws in DiAngelo’s thinking. She said that Robin DiAngelo does not explain the differences between ADOS – American Descendants of Slavery and BIPOC – Bi-Racial People of Color – who are recent immigrants to America [or BIPOC-adopted people who were brought to America by their adoptive parents]. By lumping these two groups of people together, DiAngelo completely erases the specific American history that resulted in the social and economic conditions of oppression and discrimination experienced by ADOS blacks in America today. Their enslaved ancestors have been in America for 200 to 400 years. BIPOC people do not experience the same racism that ADOS black people experience.
If I had done my internet research homework on Robin DiAngelo’s negative reputation (for verbally attacking white people to force them to admit they are racist), I would never have bought her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Nor would I have paid to attend her first seminar ($40), nor paid to attend the follow-up Zoom discussion ($5).
To her credit, DiAngelo initially does a great job engaging her audiences with a 6-hour presentation based on her book. She co-led the seminar I attended in November 2022 in Buffalo, New York with Nanette Massey, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion workshop facilitator. Both women engaged participants in lively, thoughtful dialogue with introspective exercises, all the while using humor. At the end, they posed for photos with participants. DiAngelo chatted with fans and signed her books.
These are the hooks used to lure unsuspecting progressive white people into her further seminars, with admission fees, of course. Nanette Massey organized these workshops in Buffalo. DiAngelo travels around the country, with her workshops hosted by other diversity co-facilitators.
Once you have bought into the “cult” (as author John McWhorter calls it and I agree), it is in the follow-up session that the niceties disappear, revealing the cult leader’s real intention – with or without a secondary co-facilitator. Once they have you seated in the second session, these women grill participants as to what we learned from the first 6-hour session. They demand to know what racist slights we have committed in the recent and distant past, and what we are doing today that is racist. They go into an attack mode not seen in the first session.
I have witnessed with my own eyes and ears the vicious verbal attacks, demanding answers, and yelling at participants to admit their racist actions. I certainly will not give Robin DiAngelo or Nanette Massey a second chance to humiliate me publically for telling me I am racist when I ask a sincere question. I do not want to witness them barrage others into submission.
My advice to rational thinkers is to read the reviews posted on Amazon for DiAngelo’s books, and other outlets online, and read the many critical essays of not only the books White Fragility, and Nice Racism, but spot-on assessments of Robin DiAngelo herself.
Watch Out for Nanette Massey, Too
I may be Nanette Massey’s first public critic, as I have not found any published critical essays of her work.
At the end of her 6-hour seminar with Robin DiAngelo in November 2022 in Buffalo, New York, I asked Nanette how she learned to give these workshops, and what her credentials were. Instead of answering, like anyone who has just given a presentation should be open to answering such questions, she sat there with a tight, forced smile on her face, rolling her eyes at me. Her evasive refusal to answer my question is a misguided response to her message to white people: “Don’t ask blacks to answer your questions because we aren’t responsible for educating you”.
Okay, from a race perspective, I can see that point. Black people do not have to explain race issues to white people.
However, that was not my question to her. I had not heard of diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops until that day, so I was genuinely interested as to the training needed to conduct these workshops. My intention was not to insult her. Nanette certainly does not know how to return professional courtesy. She does not give common decency to session participants.
I am a social worker by profession and had a professional interest in Nanette’s training. Over the years, I have been to many trainings outside of college: teens acting out, teen pregnancy and parenting, mental health, suicide prevention counseling, homelessness, food insecurity, adoption psychology, adoption laws, and adoption reform. With my experiences as both a conference attendee and a presenter at adoption reform conferences and seminars for adoptees, natural parents, adoptive parents, social workers, and psychologists, I am familiar with open questions and answers between presenters and attendees, sharing our life experiences, educational backgrounds, and qualifications. People who attend adoption reform conferences come in all different sizes, shapes, ethnicities, races, and income brackets. We treat each other with respect by answering questions without racial indignation.
Nanette’s silent treatment with eye rolls and staring back at me with a smirk on her face leaves me to read her mind as if I should automatically know what I “did wrong”. She gave me the impression that she is conceited and misguided. Instead of hearing what I asked her, she immediately blocked out the context of my words. She was insulted that I dared ask her a question and refused to treat me like a human being. Nanette saw me as a white woman and not as a person.
Yet, that is exactly what she demands of white people: “Just to talk to blacks like we are people because we are people”, she said in an angry tone of voice to her audience. Massey’s indignant response to my simple question tells me she cannot talk to white people as equal human beings to her. This game-playing behavior does nothing to advance communication or improve race relations. Her attitude makes the situation worse.
The same goes for Robin DiAngelo.
Follow-Up Workshops Are Aggressive and Hostile
The format of the follow-up session titled “Ask Me Anything” was non-productive to improve race relations. It was aggressive and hostile. What is the point of organizing a follow-up session in which the leaders badger and belittle participants for asking reasonable questions? If the point is for white people to learn, then why harass us when we ask intelligent questions?
I do not recommend reading White Fragility, or Nice Racism, nor do I recommend attending DiAngelo’s and Massey’s workshops.
Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay away – from these women.
Looking back now, I think DiAngelo and Massey confuse themselves with their own negative thought loop. If their goals are to instruct white people to be “less racist” to ultimately eliminate racism from American culture, they need a different approach.
Native American Approach to Instructions on Racism
For a very different methodology and antidote to racism, I have been to presentations on The Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny given by Native Americans at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Amherst. The presenters’ approach to largely white audiences was more respectful, honest, and egalitarian than the two workshops I attended by DiAngelo and Massey.
The Native American speakers were aware that their presentation would address sensitive matters that could trigger shame and guilt in their non-Native audience. They were quick to say before, during, and after their presentations that the material addressed the past as well as the present but was not an attack to make non-Native people feel guilty or stressed in any way. The purpose was to educate, to inform, not to attack. As a result, the audience was receptive to critical thought and discussion of how history affects the present. We learned how policy affects Native peoples, which leads to prejudice and discrimination. The presenters did not verbally attack white people in the audience. As a result, while it was hard not to feel guilty about the racism that our ancestors perpetrated, white people were not made to feel we carried the blame. We were not required to examine our own behaviors in the past or in the present. We felt better about ourselves. By the end of the presentation, we all had the sense that we could work together for positive change.
The Most Likely Scenario
This is my maternal line leading down to my great-grandmother, grandmother, my mother, and to me:
Between 300 to 500 years ago, a Portuguese slave trader forcibly kidnapped my African ancestor from her homeland and transported her to Portugal. She was raped and impregnated. Her daughter and granddaughter met the same fate.
When Portugal abolished slavery in 1761, my mixed-race maternal ancestor was sold to a Spanish slave trader who then raped her and fathered a daughter with her. That daughter had a daughter who met the same fate. At some point before Spain abolished slavery in 1869, a Spanish slave owner freed my female ancestor. She moved to France where my 3rd great-grandmother was born. She married a French man (I know this by her surname). In 1854, this couple had a daughter – my 2nd great-grandmother. She was born 36 years after France abolished slavery in 1818. My 2nd great-grandmother married a German man. They immigrated to America in 1870, and settled in Rochester, New York, before moving to Lockport where they had my great-grandmother. She gave birth to my grandmother in Buffalo, New York. My mother was also born in Buffalo. She had five children. I was her youngest. Mom died. And Dad was talked into giving me up for adoption.
I am a descendant of the Trans-Atlantic African Slave Trade that took place in Portugal and Spain. If my 2nd great-grandmother continued to live in France, she and her descendants would be African Portuguese and African Spanish, or African Hispanic. This is an important distinction. Though I live in Western New York State, in the United States, I do not descend from American slavery, so I am not part African American, Latin American, or Hispanic American.
It is not easy to come to terms with this most probable history. This horrible history is an educated guess. To borrow a phrase from a fellow writer who is Native American and White: I am a descendant of both the Oppressor and the Oppressed.
I may never know the names of the generations of mothers and daughters who endured sexual slavery, or the names of the Spanish and Portuguese men who impregnated these girls and women, but these ancestors left their DNA in my genome.
My goal is to investigate this as thoroughly as I can. I would like to find five, six, or seven generations of marriages between loving couples who were mixed-race couples living along the Mediterranean Sea coast, however, this doesn’t explain how West African DNA mixed in with the rest. The historical evidence points to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Portugal and Spain. If I cannot locate historical documents to prove my theory or show marriages instead, then all I have is DNA and a great deal of speculation. This DNA gave me my brown eyes, frizzy brown hair, blood type, and unknown inherited characteristics. This is not minuscule nor irrelevant.
References
- “White fragility is real. But ‘White Fragility’ is flawed.”, Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post, June 18, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/18/white-fragility-is-real-white-fragility-is-flawed/
- “The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility,” John McWhorter, The Atlantic, July 15, 2020.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/
- “Our Endless Dinner With Robin DiAngelo, Suburban America’s self-proclaimed racial oracle returns with a monumentally oblivious sequel to “White Fragility””, Matt Taibbi, Racket News, June 30, 2021.
https://www.racket.news/p/our-endless-dinner-with-robin-diangelo-806
- “Nice Racism by Robin DiAngelo review – appearances can be deceptive”, Ashish Ghadiali, The Guradian, July 11, 2021.
- “What’s So Bad About Robin DiAngelo”, Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, July 19, 2021.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/whats-so-bad-about-robin-diangelo
- “Robin DiAngelo’s Fragile Narrative”, Rachel Lu, Law and Liberty, August 9, 2021. https://lawliberty.org/book-review/robin-diangelos-fragile-narrative/
- “White Fragility: Unpacking the Kafka Traps of Robin DiAngelo’s NYT Bestseller”, Julian Adorney, FEE.org, April 17, 2022.
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo, Beacon Press Books, Boston, Massachusetts, 2018.
- Nice Racism –How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm, Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2022.
- Nanette D. Massey, Writer, Diversity & Inclusion Workshop Facilitator, Buffalo, New York, 2023. https://nanettedmassey.com/
FORBIDDEN FAMILY 