“Go back to Africa.” These are the words many African and Black Americans hear from those who have animosity toward the color of their skin. But how can African Americans even consider returning when their ancestors were forced to come to the United States, and little to no records were kept? The United States has a history and a foundation built by hands that were forced to work against their will. These peoples’ origins were never documented and failed to get passed down. Much of the United States’ history has been unanswered for so many people, but now Black and African Americans are finally having some of their questions answered.
Slaves cutting sugar cane on the island of Antigua in 1823. British Library. Unsplash.
Thanks to the DNA testing site 23andMe, the lineage and heritage of many African Americans have been identified, and key genetic traits are appearing. Joanna Mountain, senior director of research at 23andMe, began on this project before the company even existed. For over 10 years, she and her team built a genetic database of mostly 23andMe customers whose grandparents were born in a geographic region linked to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Although medical experimentation and research on African Americans has often not been performed for their benefit, all participants consented to have their DNA used in the research.
Essentially, the company created this project to shine a much-needed light upon the genetic impact that slavery has caused and to confirm historical accounts. The report, which includes more than 50,000 people and 30,000 of African ancestry, confirms where people were taken from in Africa and where they were enslaved in the Americas. What was found is significant not only in the sense that so many unknown lineages were tracked, but also regarding the fact that distinctions in genetics have been made. The centuries of mistreatment against Africans brought to America has impacted the structure of their genetics and DNA.
A map of African Slave Trade Regions during the time period of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Queen Mother Kradin Goree. CC BY-SA 4.0
To conduct the current study, researchers compared Mountain’s genetic database with a historical one, Slave Voyages, which holds massive amounts of information about slavery, such as numbers of enslaved men, women and children along with embarkment and disembarkment points. From this historical database, researchers were able to align information. This allowed historians and scientists to discern that 5.7 million people were forced to migrate from West Central Africa to the Americas, explaining why so many African Americans today trace their lineage to Nigeria.
Another finding was that women’s DNA made up much more of the current population’s DNA than males, and European ancestry was common in African American descendants. The study reveals that enslaved women in the United States gave 1.5 times more to the modern-day gene pool of African American people than enslaved men. Additionally, European women contributed three times less to the current gene pool of African Americans than European men. Eric Depradine, a Kansas City, Missouri, resident who participated in the study, said, “It’s part of us, whether we like or not. It’s painful; it sucks having to talk about how our grandmothers were treated a long time ago. Unfortunately we can’t do anything about that in 2019 but just recognize that’s part of us and just don’t let those stories fade into oblivion.” This reveals how deeply rampant sexual assault by European owners was against female slaves, and how that impact on the heritage of many African Americans cannot be ignored.
The 23andMe study has helped merge historical and genetic findings together to bring forth the realities of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. According to the project’s website, the researchers intend to expand the study with the help of funding from the National Institutes of Health in order to “help alleviate some of the existing disparities in genetics research between people of European ancestry and people of African, Latino and Asian ancestry.” Their ultimate goal is to provide genetic insights for populations underrepresented in the studies of genetics and health.
Renee Richardson
Renee is currently an English student at The University of Georgia. She lives in Ellijay, Georgia, a small mountain town in the middle of Appalachia. A passionate writer, she is inspired often by her hikes along the Appalachian trail and her efforts to fight for equality across all spectrums. She hopes to further her passion as a writer into a flourishing career that positively impacts others.