"I just don’t like to see black people getting duped.”
Normally I’m calling or e-mailing Rainier Spencer, founder and director of UNLV’s Afro-American Studies Program, about race-related topics. This time, I get the call (preceded, incidentally, by a handful of e-mails). He’s animated. Unusually so, for him. Normally a determined whisper, his voice now carries a stentorian tone. The normally deliberate spacing of his verbal delivery—complete thought, breath, complete thought—has been replaced by a hardtofollowstreamofconsciousnessflow.
Spencer goes slowly enough for me to discern the source of his irritation. On June 21 at Greater Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church in West Las Vegas, Washington, D.C.-based African Ancestry will host “Trace your DNA, Find your Roots—The Reveal.” The event bills itself as a “journey of exploration and transformation.” Spencer sees it in another light—possibly a black-on-black rip-off. By purporting to link American blacks to their African lineage through DNA (for a $200 fee), the company is commercializing a promise it can’t truly keep, Spencer says.
“Given the massive disruptions of the transatlantic slave trade and the massive disruptions of the internal American slave trade, anyone who tells you that you come from this or that African people is lying,” Spencer says. “I am concerned that poor black people in Las Vegas are going to probably end up framing a meaningless piece of paper on their walls.”
Using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA—the unchanging chromosomes handed down by your mother) to scale an ancestral family tree is nothing new; nor is the controversy surrounding the science. Pamela Boyer, director of education and publication for the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Virginia, says mtDNA tests help narrow down ancestral lineage but don’t provide all the answers. They’ve become popular in recent years as a handful of Native American tribes have become flush with casino wealth. “People are looking for the Indian princess in the family.”
Gina Paige founded African Ancestry in 2003 by commercializing the research done by geneticist Rick Kittles, former director of the National Genome Center at Howard University and an associate professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine. (Kittles is the company’s scientific director.)
Marketing materials trot out a list of luminaries who’ve taken the test—Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Tina Turner, Chris Rock. Spencer worries that blacks unfamiliar with the limits of DNA testing will see the celebrity endorsements as irrefutable proof of its accuracy. Just swab the inside of your cheek, send it in and await answers as to whom—and where—you came from.
African Ancestry official Byron Harper doubts Winfrey or other celebrities would support something dubious. “It’s kind of hard to denounce when you have the largest sampling of African lineage in your database; 12,000 people have taken the test.” Adds Paige: “It has the highest level of reliability and accuracy.”
Osagie K. Obasogie, project director for the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, is familiar with such boasts. “This is a concern for almost all direct-to-consumer genetic tests: The public often takes genetic testing as an exact, infallible technology while the field is in its infancy. So, we not only have to be aware of the fine print, but also that this fine print is communicated in accessible language that accurately reflects the current limitations of these tests.”
Harper and Paige concede there are limitations. Their samples come from Western and Central Africa. “If your people are from East, South or North Africa, we wouldn’t be able to state specifically where you’re from,” Harper says.
Both tout a psychological benefit of discovering your roots. Clients have organized trips to Africa and started schools and day-care centers on the continent. Paige says knowing something about your heritage is better than knowing nothing. “We’re the only group that can point to who you are. We claim the whole continent.”
Spencer’s breathy reservations about the June 21 event have prompted one of the people who recruited African Ancestry here to clam up. Greater Evergreen pastor Weldon Smith says he learned about the company from a PBS documentary and welcomes use of his sanctuary. He’s well aware of the controversy surrounding mtDNA testing and admits there are skeptics among his 1,000-plus members. Some see it as a Big Brother-ish way to get more information about blacks. Others, like him, hew to the storyline of helping fill in historical blanks. Targeting churches is natural, he says.
“You won’t find more black people anywhere else,” Spencer says. “Because of the brokenness of our family trees, there’s a strong desire to look into our ancestry with clarity. I, myself, want answers to a lineage I can only trace two generations.”