The Time Bomb of DNA Testing and Race
Do-it-yourself genetic DNA testing kits could be exploiting our curiosity to build the world’s largest surveillance system
When Alex* decided to use a DNA testing service in 2018, her motivation was clear: Like many African-Americans, she was hoping to discover something about her family lineage that predated the trauma of slavery. “It was an itch I’d wanted to scratch for a long time, and one I wouldn’t expect a white person to understand,” she told me. “So often, [they] will have pointers in their last name as to their origin or even years and years of documented family genealogy to explore, which I just didn’t have.”
For a generation consumed by identity politics, it’s no surprise that the new wave of companies offering consumer DNA tests, such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com, have taken off. Spit in a tube and pay around $100, and the company will send back an outline of some of your genetic health traits and a suggestion of where your ancestors came from. And despite some reports of unexpected results breaking up adoptive families or exposing infidelities, the promise of learning something essential about ourselves — and the ease of doing so — has proven tempting, so much so that the consumer genetic testing market has grown from $20 billion in 2015 to a predicted $45…
