What is Wrong with Your DNA?

This post has been a long time coming and it needs to be said as I’m truly sad that we have so much ignorance among us and tired that people are too lazy to open up that thing called a brain and exercise it properly. This post is to be shared every time you come across an ignorant DNA cousin.

Yes, I need to be mean about this post. To further exacerbate the problem of ignorance, we have intelligent individuals who are afraid to speak up and permit it to continue. This is not okay by any shape or form. Do not tell me you’re accepting your ancestors and then behind the door deny the existence of your ancestors. Yes, the world is watching!

Horray I Have a DNA Test!

So many have taken DNA tests with Ancestry, 23andme, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage. Many have also taken the test to connect to their extended families where connections are lost as the generations go by.

I personally am seeing the effect of losing family within my own very large family I grew up with. Many of my first cousins having children and their children having children. I start to hear the “How are we related?” conversations on rare get-togethers since we now live throughout the country.

We then have people that are all excited to know what they are made up of and take the test just for ethnicity. But wait! There is more to the picture!

Surprise!

Now here is where things go sour and ignorance prevails. While many just want to see their ethnicity breakdown and based on what you know, the last thing they are expecting to see is…African DNA. Why? Well because their phenotype is telling them they are White in complexion or trigueño (tan complexion) and by no stretch of their imagination or lack of intelligence can they connect the two.

In their mind, they go in assuming their darker complexion is due to having Native American or because they have Moorish ancestors. We see this with many within the Hispanic world. Note that it is not unique to Hispanics.

However, how many times many have heard people in the Dominican Republic say, “Yo soy indio con el pelo bueno.”? The translation is “I am an Indian complexion with good hair”. I have seen black people, as in you cannot miss the visual that they are BLACK making such statements. So this statement may seem innocent at first but it is actually extremely ignorant and denial of who they are. It perpetuates a belief in the Dominican Republic that you’re not Black, not of African descent, and that any dark complexion is due to the Moors! And in addition, it helps the narrative that if you are Black then you must be Haitian! Guess what? You are Haitian too! Take a look at your results in Ancestry and see that you will have cousins that have identified as Haitians for generations. There I said it!

Ok, so stop right there, STOP! We are going to talk about the test and then I’m going to provide the proof of this form of stupidity.

Understanding the Autosomal Test

So, first of all, people are taking the test without researching it. They see the commercials or received it as a gift, get all gitty and proceed to provide saliva and send it off. Yeah! Now let’s see what the results say.

Those of us who are into genetic genealogy know that the test provides your DNA history pertaining to the past 500 to at most 700 years. It there is endogamy then you’re probably seeing about the 500 years of potential cousins.

So in other words, you can’t go too far back into history to connect to cousins and the ethnicity breakdown follows the same pattern as you can only attain what was passed down for these number of years. Anything beyond requires documents to prove relationship. I know as I have a cousin where we share a 10th great grandfather but yet we share zero DNA. We happen to share common cousins but we can only connect via documentation.

Now that you understand this, this means that if you’re showing 55% African DNA, that means you’re probably 99.9% a descendant from the slavery era that happened in the Americas, yes SLAVERY! Now why am I pointing out African DNA specifically? Well because we have something in the Hispanic community that people like to pretend doesn’t exist. The fact that they also participated in enslaving Africans and that they themselves descend from slaves. OH MY GOSH!! Did I jus say that? Yes, you descend from AFRICAN SLAVERY!

No, you DO NOT have African DNA from the Moors in Spain. If I received a dollar for every time I hear this ridiculous statement, I would not have to work for a living as I’d be rich!

There is no Moor DNA in you and if there were, it would be extremely minimal if even possible since the Moors were in Spain in 711 and lasted to about 1492. Most importantly, that doesn’t mean that everyone who is from Spain has Moorish DNA.

We carry very little ancient autosomal DNA. There is a pattern within the Hispanic community, not just Dominicans, but also that are even Mexican have denied having African DNA from the slave trade.

Related To Stupidity But Didn’t Inherit It

I have even heard educated people from my own extended family make these statements and I am there ready to shut down that discussion. Just this week alone I have had two incidents happen within a day of each other. Where friends or family are telling me that they have been told outright that they are not related because they have no African DNA from slavery when the results state otherwise.

So I’m here to say, shut up, sit down, and open up a book, and read up on DNA and history. Folks should feel pretty dumb. So, yes I’m putting one incident on full blast to educate the uneducated.

Dummy in Question

The below individual who goes by the last name of Reyes is a BLACK Dominican. He is showing 55% African DNA. This individual denied being related with an African American friend who is a DNA cousin match based on the number of cMs they share simply because he is not Black. Really? Based on having 55% African DNA, I believe most of us would say a huge NOPE! This means that MORE than half of his DNA is of African origin.

Just from the grammar alone tells me this person is uneducated and probably skipped school on those important days when they were teaching important things. Now prior to this, he advises this friend that he has Moorish DNA. But this response just took the cake. This is what you get from an education in the USA. Let’s read this together.

So basically you were born in an incubator on Planet X. Interesting how much you want to deny you descend from slaves by claiming that slaves came from Europe. And, your ancestors were not connected to the slave trade at all tells me you must be an alien from Planet X. To claim that the slave trade was different. Hmmm, how so? Was it that they only spoke Spanish to them? I mean that is the only difference we are aware of.

Slavery was a horrible institution. They demoralized humans. And then to be so ignorant to continue to question the test. Why? What have Black people ever done to you? They did not ask to be enslaved. They did not ask to be ripped away from their families.

But heck, Reyes, you cannot even write a proper sentence and have the nerve to question a test that scientist went to school and studied hard to provide to the public. Reyes, did you sit in grammar or English classes or were you busy sniffing markers? I mean a 12-year-old can write better than this mess but to then get history completely wrong tells me that YOU ARE AN IDIOT. You need to go back to elementary school and start all over.

However, Reyes is not unique. I saw it when I visited the Dominican Republic back in May 2018. I got into disputes with Dominican Black men who wanted to claim they were not Black and they were darker than the girl in the image below.

Speaking of this girl below, she was advised that she was not Dominican but Haitian, which is why she had that look on her face. Yet her family has lived in the town probably since when her ancestors were enslaved. If you get off the plane in the capital, you are surrounded by nothing but Black people because it is like Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr said, 95% of Dominicans are Black.

Dealing with Ignorance

So I am advising Dominicans and any other Hispanic that likes to make the claims. Yes, you are Black! Too bad you do not identify as Black. You may want to lie to yourself but DNA does not lie! As a reminder, humans lie but DNA does not lie. Yes you have Black genetic DNA cousins who share a common great grandparent that neither of you may be able to identify. Learn from your experience and explore the potential of finding that common ancestor. In other words, stop being a bigot to your own.