Pakira
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 Posté le: Jeu 28 Juil 2005 00:20 Sujet du message: test ADN pour retrouver ses ançêtres |
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U.S. blacks using DNA tests to trace their roots to Africa
Some are finding whites are related because of slavery
By AMY HARMON
THE NEW YORK TIMES
All her life, Rachel Fair has been teased by other black Americans about her light skin."High yellow," they call her, a needling reference to the legacy of a slave owner who, she says, "went down to that cabin and had what he wanted."
So it was especially satisfying for Fair, 64, when a recent DNA test suggested that her mother's African ancestry traced nearly to the root of the human family tree, which originated on the continent 150,000 years ago.
"More white is showing in the color, but underneath, I'm deepest Africa," said Fair, 64, a retiree in Cincinnati. "I tell my friends they're kind of Johnny-come-latelies on the DNA scale, so back up, back up."
Fair is one of thousands of African Americans who have scraped cells from their inner cheeks and paid a growing group of laboratories to learn more about a family history once thought permanently obscured by slavery. They are seeking answers to questions about their family lineages in the antebellum South -- whether black, white or Native American -- and about distant forebears in Africa.
The DNA tests are fueling the biggest surge in African American genealogy since Alex Haley's 1976 book, "Roots," inspired a generation to try to trace their ancestors back to Africa. For those who have spent decades poring over plantation records that did not list slaves by surname and ship manifests that did not list where they came from, the idea that the key lies in their own bodies is a powerful one.
But the joy that often accompanies the answers from the tests is frequently tempered by the unexpected new questions they raise. African Americans say the tests can make the ugliness of slavery more palpable and leave the hunger for heritage unsatisfied. Some are unsure what to make of the new information or how to account for genes that undermine the racial identity they have long internalized.
The interest in using genetics to reconstruct a family tree comes despite warnings from scientists that the necessary tools to tell African Americans what many want to know the most -- precisely where in Africa their ancestors lived and what tribal group they belonged to -- are still unreliable. The most that black DNA test takers can hope to learn now, from a DNA database that is far from complete, is that their genetic signature matches that of contemporary Africans from a given tribe or region.
Each test can trace only one line of a person's many thousands of ancestors, making the results far murkier than the promise held out by some testing companies.
Still, the popularity of the DNA tests seems a testament to the unremitting craving for a story of origin.
"There's just something about knowing something after years of thinking it was impossible to know anything," said Melvin Collier, 32, a black student at Clark Atlanta University who recently learned that his DNA matches that of the Fulani people of Cameroon. "It's still pretty overwhelming."
Some African Americans, more interested in finding recent relatives who in many cases can be dependably identified with a DNA match, are asking whites who they have long suspected are cousins to take a DNA test.
When Trevis Hawkins, 37, of Montgomery, Ala., e-mailed a white man with the same surname whose DNA matched his this year, the man seemed excited. But after Hawkins gave him the address to his family Web site, which includes pictures, he never heard from him again.
Charles Larkins, whose great-grandmother was a slave, says proving or disproving his suspicion that her owner was his great-grandfather would be cathartic.
Larkins recently e-mailed Hayes Larkins, the slave owner's white great-grandson, to ask whether he would take the DNA test. Because the Y chromosome, which determines maleness, is passed virtually unchanged from father to son, scientists can use it to determine whether two men share a common ancestor.
"I'm not going to be like the Jefferson descendants, denying anything happened," Hayes Larkins said, referring to a 1998 DNA test that indicated that Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings, which his white family had denied.
The two Larkins are waiting for the results to arrive.
Lisa Lee, a computer programmer in Oakland, Calif., was sure she would find a link to Madagascar when she submitted her father's DNA for testing. But after tests at three companies, the results stubbornly reported he shared genetic ancestry with Native Americans, Chinese and Sardinians -- but no one in Africa.
"Who am I then?" said Lee, who has long been an activist in black political movements. "Am I Sardinian? Am I Chinese? Well, that doesn't mean anything to me. It doesn't feel right."
Ray Winbush, a psychology professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, said being told that his ancestors hailed from Cameroon underscored his disconnectedness, both from an ancestral tribe he knows little about and from an American society that can still be a hostile place for African Americans.
"It's like being lost and found at the same time," Winbush said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/natio...3_africa25.html
_________________
"tout nèg a nèg
ki nèg nwè ki nèg klè
ki nèg klè ki nèg nwè
tout nèg a nèg
nèg klè pè nèg nwè
nèg nwè pa lè wè nèg klè
nèg nwè ké wéy klè
senti i sa roune nèg klè
mè nèg klè ké wéy klè a toujou nèg
sa ki fèt pou nèg vin' blang?
blang té gen chivé pli long?
pou senblé yé nou trapé chivé plat kon fil mang!!!
mandé to fanm...!
mè pou kisa blang lé vin' nwè?
ha... savé ki avan vin' blan yé té ja nèg!
a nou mèm ké nou mèm dépi nânni nânnan...
chinwa soti, kouli soti, indyen soti, blang soti
mèm koté nèg soti
avan yé sotil koté y fika
AFRIKA!!!"
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