RACISTS SHOULDN’T DO DNA: I Celebrated Black History Month… By Finding Out I Was White. “I found out I was White. Not just 13% White, my husband’s percentage when he too completed the ancestry composition report. Not just 25% White, since the average amount of DNA in an African American’s genome traced back to West Africa is about 75%. I was damn near 1/3 White. That’s significant. . . . It can remain a theory for the rest of my family, but as someone who has become a Black millennial marketing expert… this s*** matters. It’s as if I’ve obscured the one thing which has guided me since I was nine years old… my heritage. Even back then I believed in Black power, creating drawings in art class titled “A Strong Black Nation”, featuring black construction paper hands reaching for the sky. Along with being a millennial and being a woman, being Black enlivens me. I’m personally and professionally compelled to clarify misconceptions and elevate all three of my squads. As inappropriate (but honest) as it sounds, I’d discovered I had the so-called ‘superior’ race running through my veins, and never before had I felt so inferior. Then, in a startling and unexpected twist, shame surfaced.”
Related: White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests. Some don’t like what they find.