An interesting look at the rise and fall of the DNA-testing company, 23andMe: "What 23andMe Told America About Itself".
Back in 2017, with victimhood associated with blackness, brownness, or another minority racial status, white people were conversely assigned the role of society’s Bad Guys. Reactions varied: Certain white Americans leaped at the opportunity to confess, repent, and pay through the nose to self-flagellate at events like the infamous “Race2Dinner” parties where, for several thousand dollars, a real, live person of color would come to your home and call you a racist.
For those of lesser means but similar dispositions, 23andMe offered another path to redemption, by promising to find “surprises” in one’s ethnic makeup. As one white man, who discovered he had “Hidden African DNA,” wrote reassuringly in the 23andMe blog: “Our histories are not as black and white as we believe.”
I just deplore my own racism and go about my business.
ReplyDeleteDoes that make extra racist?
I think that's aggravated racism.
DeleteI don’t think those genetic profiles are foolproof either. I bought two Ancestry.com kits, one each for my daughter and son, and they came back with slightly different profiles.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is all the criminal cases in which suspects are generated through the comparison of crime scene DNA to data bases containing massive amounts of info on families.
ReplyDelete