Then they find out their tribe's own Chief sold them to a New York slaver for a bottle of whiskey. 
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.
No doubt of that. But the Norwegians came late to the use of family names (Ole Svenson, son of Sven Larson, father of Sigurd Oleson) and my paternal grandfather was the first to bear the family name.
There are two different countries in Africa. One is Guinea-Bissau (its capital is Bissau). The other is called Guinea (its capital is Conakry, but the country itself is usually not called Guinea-Conakry).
Apparently, inhabitants of either country are called Guineans.
But it's amazing that the DNA outfit could establish a unique signature for Guinea-Bissau as opposed to Guinea or Senegal.
When I first looked at your picture, I thought it might have been a guinea pig -- possibly related to this area, possibly not....
Guinea pig
1664, native to South America and is so called either because it was first brought back to Britain aboard Guinea-men, ships that plied the triangle trade between England, Guinea, and South America; or from confusion of Guinea (q.v.) with the South American region of Guyana. (Online Etymology Dictionary).
Then they find out their tribe's own Chief sold them to a New York slaver for a bottle of whiskey.
One of the problems with Africa is that the "nationalities" that appear on the map are for the most part nonexistent.
Actually, except for the UN delegation, there's no such thing as a "Guinean" or a "Sierra Leonean".
> There are two different countries in Africa. One is Guinea-Bissau (its capital is Bissau). The other is called Guinea (its capital is Conakry, but the country itself is usually not called Guinea-Conakry). <
And don't forget the pathetic little African country named "Equatorial Guinea" -- considered by most old Africa hands whom I've known to be the worst of the worst.
Then on the northern coast of South America there were/are:
1. French Guiana (home to the French space-launch program and the prison in the movie "Papillon"),
2.British Guiana (now simply "Guyana," home to James Jones' famous kool-aid party), and
3. Dutch Guiana (now the hyper-corrupt, independent nation called "Surinam").
Finally there's New Guinea, just north of Australia. It's another paragon of ordered liberty and honest government.
Quite a group!
And isn't there a Papua New Guinea? or is that another name for one already mentioned?
> And isn't there a Papua New Guinea? or is that another name for one already mentioned? <
That's the one just north of Australia.
Pretty cool that they can trace your origins using DNA. I'd love to find out more about the migration of my ancestors. My mom traced our side back to Lew Wallace (Ben Hur author) and back to Braveheart. Maybe that's part of why I dislike government so much, lol.
Can you please add me to the genetic genealogy ping list?
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