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A DNA Test Told Me I’m White — Here’s Why It’s Wrong
What my saliva doesn’t say about me
I have never identified as white. In my family, being called white is the ultimate insult. I’ve heard the phrases “you’re acting white” and “that’s some white people shit” many times, and the reason it’s difficult to hear is because it denies my Latinidad, it denies my Blackness, my Indigenousness, and it denies who I feel that I truly am. The idea behind it is that if you speak like a white person or do things that white people do, then you are shirking all of your other identities and turning your back on your culture. This piece isn’t about why this particular issue is a problem in communities of color, but it does play a significant role in how I feel about my DNA test results.
The DNA test
Flashback to June 2018, when at-home DNA tests were all the rage: You would see commercials all the time, celebrities were coming out talking about their 2% African heritage, etc. So my family decided it would be super interesting to see our heritage and learn more about our background. We each took the time to gather the saliva sample and ship it off to the DNA testing company. Then we waited a few weeks for our sample to be processed and downloaded all the apps to easily see our results when they came out. When we got our results, my heart sank. They said my ancestry was 35.7% European, 29.7% sub-Saharan African, 27.7% East Asian and Native American, 2.4% Western Asian and North African, and 4.5% unassigned. Based on my sister’s results (she did hers earlier in the year), I had an idea that my ancestry breakdown would be almost evenly split into thirds, but what I didn’t expect was how high my European ancestry would be, let alone that it would be the highest percentage of my DNA.
The testing company we used gives you tons of statistics and science about where your ancestry falls on your chromosomes, what percentage of people identify as Black based on their DNA, and so on. It was data overload, but as a huge history and social studies…
