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.
Wow, so someone from Guinea-Bissau is Guinean. Someone from Guinea (could you call it Guinea-Conakry?) is also Guinean.
This statement is so foolish that it casts doubt on the accuracy of any of the rest of it. We all have 1024 ancestors if we count back to the tenth generation. I bet not one in a thousand African-Americans has all 1024 ancestors from the African gene pool.
Hmmmm. I wonder what tribe Gary Coleman belongs to?
From Wikipedia:
The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. On January 1, 1808, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones that were currently in the U.S.
Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining; the overland 'slave trade' from Tidewater, Virginia, and the Carolinas to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas continued for another half-century.
She hitches a ride with John Madden.
Maybe I'm missing something. If they're Black Americans, wouldn't by definition some of their ancestors be from Africa at some point in time?
Hey I wouldn't mind having 1/8th black in me, if only so my son could have a chance at one of those get-into-Yale-free cards.
Maybe I scanned it too quickly.
But please insure that the National Geographic DNA project is included in your list.
Whoop Whoopeeeeee
Not one of my favorite . . . characters.
You *did* scan it too quickly.
Some relatives of ours found out the same as per our English line. I am happy to report that the horse-thieving gene has not been evident from our branch. : )
I wonder if they had the same voice, too.
Thank you, I'm actually armigerous on my father's side, so I'm familiar with the details of heraldry.
Norwegian ancestry is not impossible for an English earl, I believe. For a while the Vikings did conquer and occupy large parts of England. The Vikings really got around so I would not be surprised if someone of English heritage has some Scandinavian ancestors.
Good. Thanks.
I have been doing genealogy research off and on for about 25 years and it is very easy to make an error if you don't know what you are doing. (Not saying I know what I'm doing, but I've learned a lot.) First someone gets some information wrong, then publishes it (especially since the internet came along),then others pick it up and spread it further. Pretty soon you have umpteen family trees online and they all came from that first incorrect one. Since I found a website that says that I'm related to Francis Scott Key, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ty Cobb (that one is for real), I've gotten more careful about having the sources to back it up.
I recently got a copy of Family Tree Maker and a free year of Ancestry.com came with it. I'm afraid a lot of people will be misled by their new offering. You click a link to "Find Famous Relatives", which is based on a database of users family trees.
My 7th great grandparents are Matthias Chitwood and Mary Key. Between the two of them I am supposedly related to folks from Issac Newton to J.P. Morgan to Henry David Thoreau to Audrey Hepburn. One ancester shows a relation to (gasp!) Hillary Rodham. God forbid.
So, for anyone wanting to do research, get those sources. Oh yeah catfish...I got a couple of brick walls that need a sledgehammer. Maybe you have some ideas for me.
I say send a boat to pick her up. Take her over there. Then sink the boat.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.