Written by: Christa Ventresca
Edited by: Christina Del Greco, Andres Rivera Ruiz, Kate Giffin, and Jennifer Baker
Illustrated by: Saaj Chattopadhyay
This is part two of a three-part blog series on genetic testing and its impacts on personal identity. Make sure to read part one first; part three is coming soon!
Recently, it has become very common to take a genetic ancestry test! But it is much less common to critique them. This is because the study of genetics have become integral to science and public understanding of ancestry. The importance of genetics in society has been furthered by genetic ancestry companies which emphasize the perceived objectivity of genetics to attract customers to their genetic tests (Parthasarathy, 2010).
Despite the fact that genetic data is not nearly as objective as it is portrayed, genetic ancestry testing can have a large impact on individuals’ conception of their own identity as they integrate their genetic information into their sense of self (Benjamin, 2015). Three examples of this within different social groups whose responses have been studied academically are: White nationalists, YouTube users, and African Americans. Each group has a slightly different response to changes in their identity, but they all navigate re-evaluating their identity through conversations with their community, rather than accepting genetic results as definitive.
White Nationalism
White nationalists frequently challenge each other to take ancestry tests and prove their White family history. These tests are relatively high stakes, as any “non-White” ancestry results – usually meaning non-Western European or Jewish – are shocking, resulting in confusion and dismay over their identity and ancestry. Often individuals then reject the validity of the test by claiming that the company is run by non-White individuals seeking to show non-White ancestry in everyone. They can also reinterpret the test, such as by rejecting low percentage ancestry categories (anything below 10% for instance) as invalid “statistical error” (Panofsky and Donovan, 2019). This is striking as it indicates a rejection of the objectivity that the numbers represent.
Alternatively, White nationalists may suggest changing the criteria of what “White” means. For example, someone with ancestry from the Middle East could argue that they have that ancestry from White migrants living in the area throughout history. There have been broader calls to redefine Whiteness so that enough people qualify for the category, such as emphasizing a cultural or political affiliation. However, a lot of the factors that determine the community’s response to the testing results have to do with how they are presented. If the person presenting their test results is apologetic and deferential to the White supremacy logic, and usually female, then the reception is more likely to be positive as opposed to if someone is defensive when displaying their results (Panofsky and Donovan, 2019).
Many members of White nationalist groups are highly knowledgeable about genetic testing, allowing them to make the critiques above which, while not wholly informed, indicate that effort has been made to understand the analyses. The result is that, far from people accepting the results of their ancestry testing as objective, individuals decide how to interpret their results based on a conversation with other members of the community (Panofsky and Donovan, 2019). The pre-existing social identity group determines how much of the data is accurate and how it can impact the individual.
YouTubers
Another study analyzed the response of individuals who discuss their ancestry results on YouTube. Most users commented on any findings of Indigenous ancestry, where usually they were surprised or, on one occasion, rapidly changed their identity to reflect this new information. The results had a strong impact on many of them. Very few users shared their full results – most cherry-pick what they want to share, which further highlights the malleability of ancestry testing to whatever identity individuals want to focus on. Not many videos criticize the tests; in fact, most of them recommend the company that they took the test with and give them free advertising (Marcon, Rachul, and Caulfield; 2021). This creates a cycle where users advertise to others and send them to the same company with very few caveats, and the company continues to flourish.
Because very few YouTubers express doubts about their data, these recommendations serve to bolster the idea of objectivity surrounding the companies and their results. These individuals are getting a strong sense of identity from these tests. Similar to the White supremacists, they alter their interpretation to engage their community. In this case, their community is their YouTube audience and fellow YouTubers, to whom the YouTuber is promoting their own social media accounts and the products they use (Marcon, Rachul, and Caulfield; 2021). In contrast to the White supremacists, the lack of critiques or renegotiation of the results indicates that this group of test-takers is less likely to reject the testing results entirely.
The Black Diaspora
Finally, ancestry testing is popular among the Black or African American populations in the US and UK who have been separated from their family history as a result of slavery. Historically, this population also has a distrust of the biomedical community due to the inherent racism in the field, but this can be overcome if someone charismatic is advertising for the company or the individual is passionate about genealogy (Nelson, 2008).
Black users often make use of multiple techniques to explore genealogy such as family trees and historical record searching. Therefore, their family history is shaped by many different sources, which often leads to conflicting results that need to be resolved. Frequently, Black users will turn to ancestry testing to answer specific lineage questions that cannot be resolved elsewhere. Rather than assuming any one source of identity information as the objective truth, many Black users synthesize other sources of information as well as their own desires surrounding identity and context, such as wanting to find a connection with a particular community the individual is already familiar with. In this case, though, social acceptance and social ties are found to have a strong impact on how an individual decides to identify, whether that is meeting someone from a country they have ancestry from or being congratulated on figuring out their family history (Nelson, 2008). Like the previous studies, we see that identity construction is a conversation with others.
Conclusion
Collectively, these studies indicate that for ancestry testing, while two people could have similar results, they could interpret the results and incorporate them into their identity in distinct ways depending on the context and their community (Panofsky and Donovan, 2019; Marcon, Rachul, and Caulfield; 2021; and Nelson, 2008). These user patterns contrasts with the portrayal of ancestry testing as objective since test-takers synthesize this new information into their conception of their genealogy in different ways. Additionally, these studies highlight how conceptions of family history can be flexible, since individuals take in new information and challenge old information constantly. In the next blog post, we will see how individual user interpretation compares to the use of ancestry testing in international policies.
Christa Ventresca (she/they) is a fifth year PhD student in the Genetics and Genomics program at UMich while also getting a Master’s in Bioinformatics and a certificate in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). This is their first time writing for MiSciWriters!
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