National Post (National Edition)
Do ancestry tests reinforce racism?
SOME HAVE TURNED TO DNA TESTS TO PROVE THEIR ‘RACIAL PURITY’
A few years ago Timothy Caulfield mailed off a test tube of saliva, from which his DNA was sampled. In addition to learning he likely had dark hair (true) and was unlikely to flush from alcohol (also apparently true) he was told he was almost 100 per cent Irish, “hence my love of Guinness.”
All fun, perhaps, but Caulfield argues in a new paper that trendy, direct-to-consumer DNA tests promising to uncover people’s genetic ancestry also risk reinforcing crude notions of race and racist thinking.
The marketing of the wildly popular, mail-away spit test kits “goes well beyond finding long-lost relatives,” the University of Alberta health policy expert wrote in Policy Options. “A consistent, underlying theme is that biological difference matters,” he said.
“These companies are selling a history that is rooted in biological variation, not culture or emotional connection. The clear message is that your genes are closely tied, at some intrinsic level, to who you are as a person” — messaging, he argued, that’s moving us backwards, “both scientifically and socially.”
When scientists completed mapping of the human genome in 2003, they confirmed that the three billion base pairs of genetic letters in humans were 99.9 per cent identical in every individual — meaning that people are, on average, “0.1 per cent different genetically from every other person on the planet,” according to the National Humane Genome Research Institute.
Yet research holds that “the more that we suggest that biological differences between groups matter — and that is exactly what these companies are suggesting — the more the archaic concept of race is perceived, at least by some, as being legitimate,” Caulfield wrote.
One 2014 study suggested one unintended fallout of the genomic revolution “may be to reinvigorate age-old beliefs in essential racial differences.”
Some “less-than-progressively-minded groups” have already turned to DNA testing to prove their “racial purity,” Caulfield noted, most famously neo-Nazi white supremacist Craig Cobb, a former B.C. resident who, in 2013, found out on daytime television that 14 per cent of his ancestry comes from sub-Saharan Africa. (Cobb later had his DNA retested, which he claimed declared his ancestry to be overwhelmingly European.)
More than 12 million people have taken DNA genetic ancestry tests, with most living in the U.S., according to MIT Technology Review. Ancestry.com, the market leader, has tested more than seven million alone.
Caulfield said the marketing of the ancestry tests is especially problematic in an era of rising nationalism and populist extremism.
“Race” is a social construct, he said, noting rough racial categories such as “white” and “black” were first proposed hundreds of years ago. Some scientists are urging researchers stop using race as a distinguishing factor in modern biology and human genetic research.
“We’re seeing this rise in nationalist thinking, in this populist mindset, and I think this testing lends itself to that mentality.”
Some have argued testing could make people more tolerant. One recently published study in the journal Genealogy that explored, among other things, how non-African people reacted to “unexpected African results” found 43 per cent of females reported being excited about finding new African DNA in their results, versus 10 per cent of males. While Caulfield said he sees some truth to the argument, “the problem is the marketing is still based around the idea that there are these biologically discreet populations and that, at some level, it matters.”
The companies say otherwise. “As a company, we believe in the importance of diversity and acceptance, as well as the fundamental truth that we are all more alike than not,” Ancestry.com said in an emailed statement to the Post.
The company, like others, analyzes an individual’s DNA and searches its global network of members to identify other people who share their DNA.
“The data-based discoveries,” Ancestry.com says on its website, “will give you a reason to join the growing trend of heritage travel. Or you might use your newly discovered ethnic roots as inspiration for cooking.
“Does your ethnicity estimate show you’re 9% Nigerian? Try making some Jollof rice,” the company says. “Forty-two per cent British? Try whipping up some Victorian sponge cake.”
Michael Yudell, an associate professor and chair of community health and prevention at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is among those urging scientists to stop using racial categories when studying human genetics, given humans are so remarkably similar. Yudell sent his DNA to two ancestry companies. “Although both figured out pretty quickly that I was largely of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry,” he said, “one company believed that I had West African ancestry and the other Irish ancestry” as a complement to Ashkenazi Jewish.
“They’re not perfect and you can play with the confidence of their findings,” Yudell said. “But I think that what they’re doing is reasonable and scientific based on the current science.”
Ancestry is an understanding of from whom, and what parts of the world, our genes come from, Yudell said. Many people are hungry for the information, and many companies have been careful not to use racialized language that can lead to “the kind of racial reductionism Caulfield and others like myself are very concerned about today,” he said.
Still, some of the marketing walks a fine line, Yudell said. “Given historical and contemporary concerns, it is worth considering how these tests might, as Caulfield suggests, push people towards crude and wrong-headed notions of difference.”