Posted on 02/24/2007 4:43:52 PM PST by Pokey78
LIKE many other black Americans, Whoopi Goldberg, the actress and comedian, recently embarked on a quest to trace her African roots. When the results of DNA testing indicated that she was descended from two tribes in the tiny African state of Guinea-Bissau, there was a flurry of excitement at the country’s modest diplomatic mission in Washington.
An official letter was swiftly drawn up by the Guinea-Bissau tourism ministry inviting Goldberg to visit the home of her ancestors. The letter took some time to reach her — perhaps because it was addressed to “Your excellency Hoppy Goldberg” — but prominent local officials proudly proclaimed the 51-year-old star to be “our daughter”.
Sadly there was to be no happy outcome for Guinea-Bissau’s unexpected brush with Hollywood celebrity. Goldberg is famously afraid of flying and has not been on a plane for more than 20 years. Her agent said this month she had no plans to board a boat to west Africa and would not be visiting Guinea-Bissau in the foreseeable future.
Goldberg’s experience symbolised both the rewards and the potential pitfalls of a vogue among black Americans to undergo DNA testing in the hope that their genetic codes can be matched to specific African tribes.
In a 21st-century twist on the epic feat of genealogical research described in Roots, Alex Haley’s worldwide 1976 bestseller, thousands of African Americans are paying up to £300 for DNA tests that claim to offer them the chance of identifying the tribes and nations from which their ancestors were sold into slavery.
The trend has provoked joy and controversy. Melvin Collier, a graduate student from Atlanta, was thrilled when DNA provided a link that none of his research into family trees and slavery documents had uncovered: his genetic profile matched the Mbundu people of Angola.
Yet critics have warned that private databases used to make the DNA matches are incomplete and potentially flawed. Some black Americans have received nasty shocks when it turned out that they were not African American at all: their ancestors came from Europe and in some cases were white.
“Before you go opening any genetic doors, you need to ask, am I really ready for what might be behind them?” said Melvyn Gillette, a member of the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California.
Among the pioneers in the flourishing online African genealogical industry is Rick Kittles, a professor of genetic medicine who studied the remains of about 400 former African slaves recovered from a 17th and 18th-century burial site in Manhattan in the early 1990s.
As Kittles attempted to match samples taken from the remains against the DNA of modern Africans, he discovered that there was no definitive African database to search. So he set out to create his own.
African Ancestry, the company he helped to found in 2003, now claims to control the world’s largest collection of African DNA with at least 25,000 samples from tribal groups.
Interest in Kittles’s techniques exploded when one of America’s foremost black academics recruited a team of celebrities — Goldberg among them — for African American Lives, a television series exploring their roots.
“We thought if we could get eight prominent African Americans from a variety of fields and trace their family trees back as far as the paper trail allows, back beyond slavery, and then when the paper trail disappears, do their DNA and tell them where their ancestors came from in Africa, what a great contribution that would be to education,” said Professor Henry Louis Gates.
One of the highlights of the four-hour series showed Chris Tucker, an actor and comedian, tracing his roots to Angola and visiting the tribe he was linked to. Tucker was stunned to find that many of the tribesmen looked like him.
Gates’s series inspired a flood of ordinary black Americans to send their DNA to African Ancestry, which has performed more than 10,000 tests.
Critics argue that the test results offer only a partial glimpse of a family tree that may extend to 1,000 ancestors from 300 years ago. Hank Greely, an ethicist at Stanford Law School, said that DNA matching was being “oversimplified and oversold”.
Yet the doubts have not stopped a parade of prominent African Americans from attempting to determine exactly which part of Africa they originate from. Goldberg learnt that at least some of her ancestors belonged to the Papel and Bayote tribes. The letter from the Guinea-Bissau government informed her that “we simply cannot remain indifferent to the news of your Guinean heritage”. They may be waiting some time.
Lol! Whoopi knows better.
"African Ancestry, the company he helped to found in 2003, now claims to control the world’s largest collection of African DNA with at least 25,000 samples from tribal groups...
Critics argue that the test results offer only a partial glimpse of a family tree that may extend to 1,000 ancestors from 300 years ago. Hank Greely, an ethicist at Stanford Law School, said that DNA matching was being 'oversimplified and oversold'."
So what we have here is another example of black-on-black crime on a more sophistiated level.
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Genetic Genealogy  |
| Send FReepmail if you want on/off GGP list Marty = Paternal Haplogroup O(2?)(M175) Maternal Haplogroup H |
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| GG LINKS: African Ancestry DNAPrint Genomics FamilyTree DNA mitosearch Nat'l Geographic Genographic Project Oxford Ancestors RelativeGenetics Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation Trace Genetics ybase ysearch |
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| The List of Ping Lists | |
"..Plagiarism and other controversy
Alex Haley researched Roots for ten years; the Roots TV series adaptation aired in 1977. The same year, Haley won a Pulitzer Prize for the book and the Spingarn Medal as well. However, Haley's fame was marred by plagiarism charges in 1978; after a trial, Haley settled out-of-court for $650,000, having admitted that large passages of Roots were copied from The African by Harold Courlander.[2.."
Only because, according to the article , that Whoopi is afraid to fly. And hasn't flown in 20 years.
Really? That is very interesting...
The new Nigerian Bank Scam:
Dear ________,
I am a solcitor in Nigeria and I disocvered that your DNA matches that of a recently deceased foreign national in our country...
Could you add me to your ping list for genetic genealogy? I am interested, although it seems to currently have massive limitations.
Uh-oh........disqualified from "Reparations" ????
does she DRIVE from California to New York or what?????
I wonder if DNA will show that Alex Haley was related to MLK, since they both shared the "plagiarism gene."
I love that movie.
Could be.
I don't blame them. The study of genealogy is incredibly rewarding, and there is quite a thrill in going back to the place your ancestors came from to find that they speak, move, and look like you, even at the remove of centuries. I'm speaking from personal experience here. Genes are amazing in the ways they are expressed.
Heh, Whoopi may have made a mistake.
My office mate who is a wonderful person but very very misguided politically and culturally was talking in his office to a very successful black woman. He started in on some liberal bs about the horrible white man and Indians. I mentioned that I had two Native American ggggreat grandmas and the woman, who had been looking totally bored, brightened right up and we started chatting, totally ignoring Pat. hehe. I've had that happen before. You ignore the lecture from whomoever on whatever and connect directly to the person who in this case, also had Native American ancestry. We bonded in about ten minutes.
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