DNA Tests May Increase Census Count Of Multiracial Population
npr.org
npr.org
However, I increasingly question why I should care about my ancestry and what it says about me. I'm generations removed from those who arrived from foreign countries. I know less about what it means to be some of the ethnicities in my blood than those those that I'm not. I feel greater fellowship with others based on common interests than I do race.
Next census I'll probably write in "American" or "Human", since these stats just seem to be used to advantage or disadvantage people based on group identity, regardless of their actual individual situation.
I never used any of these tests, it freaks me out a bit to be in some database. That said, My family of origin did too and had a similar experience.
It's all a scam there are YouTube videos of identical twins taking tests from the major players.
The data science was flawed because there is no science or regulations. All these startups are winging it, it seems.
For example, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5801754/
> Overall, the data analyzed suggests that ethnic-specific associations are involved in the genetic determination of vitamin B12 concentrations.
Disclaimer: I am a biology dilettante
Use a fake name.
I don’t personally care, but scholarships care, the government cares, boards care, universities care, employers care, etc and I otherwise look white but am really only half, so the few times I have been asked about it, the tests have been quite valuable.
One came from a recruiter with a diversity quota who mostly cared that I would be consistent and the other was for a scholarship for people with Jamaican background.
I had a larger than expected percentage of African and native American ancestry but I'm not foolish enough to think it has any impact on who I am or my cultural biases.
We've all seen those moments where an American goes to a country like Ireland and tries to awkwardly connect with them on a cultural level. It's silly and embarrassing because they are dramatically less Irish than a person with zero Irish ancestry who was raised there by immigrant parents. Not unlike the fact that an African American person has vastly more in common with an American of European ancestry than they do with any person in Africa that shares their genetics.
I have my doubts that the improved locations @ 23andMe are actually improvements.
This is the problem though. If you can get into a better college, get a scholarship or get a better job because of it, then wouldn't you take advantage of this? I think a lot of people would.
"Race" as a social concept is still meaningful and I'm glad the US census measures people's self-identified racial categories. But it's a complicated topic.
"In the future there's gonna be a little brown in everybody"
If I were a white person discovering any degree of non-whiteness in my genealogy, I would sure understand the appeal of clinging to it.
I personally think race is a wholly made up concept, so it's a bit vexed to add it into how institutions deal with folks.
What you're writing made me think about something that's omitted from what you're writing:
almost all of the benefits I've had from how folks interpret my race have come from -not- having to say explicitly how my race should be interpreted.
So, while I get what you're trying to say, where I live most racism exists in the unspoken assumptions about how people act. As such much of that racial bias is very difficult to point out to people because it's like trying to point out water to fish.
There's plenty of white people in Latin America, and race is, if anything, much more rigidly stratifying there than it is even in USA. It's not a coincidence that if you visit Miami, you'd imagine Cubans were a fairly white-dominated population, but if you visited Cuba itself you'd find that's not at all the case.
Also there's no contradiction between being Hispanic and white, so I'm assuming that you're saying that you have some ancestors who were here more than 600 years ago.
Just imagine how much fun the intelligentsia would've had with DNA tests say 150 years or more ago. They thought they had it with phrenology.
But of course, we're following the science, and can thus be confident of our lack of error.
> "this is so american and pointless" "the U.S. is SO obsessed with race"
- actually, please don't do it regardless of the topic is. We want substantive comments and thoughtful conversation.
It seems like a risky decision to make, as if those laws ever return your entire family tree could be punished for that box you checked.
Conversely all the discrimination against white people is formal (companies say they want to hire more non white people for diversity, government programs for minority owned businesses, etc).
So from a game theory perspective, the best possible position is one where you are informally perceived as white (so you don't face any of the unwritten biases) but are formally listed as a marginalized group (so you benefit from formal policies intended to help those groups).
Not surprising people who can, would use a DNA test as an excuse to put themselves in that group.
The part you're forgetting is that is incredibly simple to prove you have racial diversity, you can just provide your DNA test results. But if you're formally listed as diverse, it is impossible to then prove you aren't.
Isn't it seen as lying purely because of her ... genetics?
Citation needed. South and East Asia have arguably been economic powerhouses for most of humanity. What we generally identify as white or western civilization has dominated economically during the past few hundred years, and arguably during the Roman Empire.
> It may come as some surprise to learn that, based on studies by the renowned economic historian, Professor Angus Maddison, the Asian economy accounted for nearly 60 percent of the global GDP before the Industrial Revolution which began in the late 18th century
From: https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/press/koen_2015/data/...
"Most cases of human history" was too broad. I was referencing since the age of exploration. The European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and some parts of Asia was the economic dominance I was referring to. My point is that it's actually fairly recent and aside from a maybe a few hundred more years of riding that wave, there's no reason to think white people will continue to be a dominant group.
Ignoring justifiable attempts to increase diversity on campus, Asians find that being Asian American immediately docs points off as compared to White students. Of course I want to find the bit of white in me via DNA tests, so my child can get into a great school with, say, 2200 SATs (standard) vs the 2300 they would require as Asians.
Completely unfair. I would vastly prefer to walk into any college campus in the United States and be vastly outnumbered by Asians who earned the privilege to be there than to see them be more representative of the population as a whole by changing the standards for different groups.