I just listened to an NPR piece (unfortunately, I do not have a link) on how the DNA Ancestry tests from Ancestry and 23 and Me are causing the census and policymakers all kinds of problems, because they don’t capture racial identity accurately. It turns out that more and more people are identifying as multiple and other races because they have found ancestors of those races in their family tree. And sometimes, those ancestors are pretty distant.
As a lifelong genealogy researcher, I know that distant ancestors comprise a very small part of who you are. Even a relatively close-sounding 4th or 5th greatgrandmother is less than 1% of your DNA. Each great great grandparent is only 6.25%.
But. It’s undeniable that finding an ancestor in your own family tree, no matter how distant, is distinctly defining for most people. Think about Elizabeth Warren, who Trump (and many of his followers) really hated on for claiming native american ancestry. Because she is a politician, and was a professor (I had her at Penn for three or four semesters when I was in law school myself), people looked down on her claims. But as a human, being native american was a source of pride for her, even if it turned out to not be correct. I think this same concept applies to most people who find out they have really any novel ethnicity or race in their background. Once you find out that you are even 1% black or 1% jewish, for example, it really does change how you think about those populations.
And, crucially for policymakers, it changes your perception of your identity. There is no doubt that someone who finds out they are partially black because their great great great grandfather was African American will either try to hide it if they are racist or will embrace it and start to talk about it. I think most people in 2021 are far more likely to embrace it and call it out than ever before. And it becomes a part of who they are.
So when I heard this professor on NPR talking about how your ancestry test isn’t a true indicator of who you are for purposes of the census, I had to scoff. I mean obviously, a DNA test is the best evidence of who you are for purposes of non-sociological science. This gets into the idea of race as a social construct, which, in fact, is what race is. I heard a similar concept yesterday on the radio when another professor was talking about “street race” or “street identity”, which is how you are perceived by others when walking down the street, and how that is the important one for policymakers.
I smell a rat in all this moving of the goalposts. Before we had the DNA tests, the census and policy forms were oh so simple. You were black, white, asian or native american, and then either hispanic or not. But the DNA tests, and actual ancestry, show what you actually are physically. And it shows that you had ancestors who were a specific ethnicity or “race”, or really more accurately that your ancestors were from a specific region of the world, and that you are related to a bunch of people from that place or of that ethnicity.
This DNA evidence is very hard to argue with from a policy perspective. If someone is 1% asian, and claims that they are multiracial or asian on a form, who is to say that that person is wrong? The woke ideologies of the left are all about defining yourself (Rachel Dolezal excepted). The look backward ideologies of the right are all about keeping clear categories of MAGA and white america restored.
What should policymakers do in response to this trend? Encourage awareness and let the genealogy become a part of identity. Yes, there are groups of people who are historically disadvantaged and yes certain people are perceived to be in those groups and certain people who are not. But the geneaology and ancestry is critical path for getting to the facts on who people are if policy is centered on types of ethnicities, nationalities, and race. It’s one of the more important facts that should be dismissed by policymakers only at their own peril.
The native american populations have been dealing with this for quite some time, and long ago some US policy maker decided that you had to be a certain specific percentage native american to call yourself that. While that is a useful fine line for purposes of defining entitlement to tribal benefits (and similar fine lines can be drawn in all kinds of policy areas on other races), I think these fine lines are becoming decidedly less useful in most policy context today.
