“Roots in a Test Tube”

On the heels of the acclaimed 2006 PBS series African-American Lives- where Harvard's Henry Louis Gates Jr. uses genetic ancestry testing to trace several prominent Blacks' genealogies - comes the second installment, African-American Lives 2. Here, Gates brings out a new all-star cast of Black entertainers, athletes, and other icons to demonstrate how genetic ancestry testing can subvert the genealogical disconnect created by the slave trade and tell African-Americans which tribes and regions they came from - all with the presumed pinpoint accuracy of DNA technologies, or what Gates calls "roots in a test tube." For an interesting discussion on these technologies' promises and pitfalls, check out Troy Duster's review of the series' first installment. Duster makes an interesting observation that might be helpful to keep in mind:

. . . the series performs a disturbing sleight of hand. Conventional wisdom has it that we can choose our friends, but that our families are a given. But with long-term genealogical work, there is a sense in which this can be inverted. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. As Gates points out . . current technology permits us to link via DNA analysis to only two specific lines. On the Y chromosome, one's father's father's DNA, going back as far as we can locate the genetic material, can be determined with a high degree of certainty. . . .On the female side, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can link one's mother's mother's mother going back as far as we can garner the DNA. So, while we have 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents, the technology allows us to locate only two of those 64, if we're going back six generations, as our real legacy and genetic link to the past. But what of the other 62? Those links are equal contributors to our genetic makeup, and we ignore them only because we do not have access to them. What an arbitrary "choice" of a branch on the family tree!