Alumni Thesis: African American Ancestry Reveals

As Black History Month wraps up, we talk to Faculty of Information alumna Halle Fetwi Imam, who wrote her 2022 Master of Information thesis on the phenomenon of African Americans taking consumer DNA tests to discover their ancestry and then revealing the results in online videos.

What first piqued your interest in this topic?

I was taking a class where we looked at how people were integrating technology into community practice with a focus on storytelling. I specifically looked at how people were going online and sharing their test results. But then I noticed that there was a really specific theme with a lot of the African American or Black American test takers.

For years before, I’d been hearing about how Black Americans were using tests to reconnect their family stories or ancestry. There had been a CBS show, almost documentary style, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I’d seen high profile Black American celebrities, whether it was Oprah or others, where they had done their genetic testing. And it turned into this huge storyline of reconnecting with their roots.

I was familiar with this as a part of American history and Black history. It all just came together through this course about knowledge-making and meaning-making through online communities

When did you notice the specific phenomenon that you discuss in your thesis – people revealing the results of their home ancestry or DNA tests on YouTube?

It was about the end of 2019. Before that, it seemed like something that was out of reach for the average person, who maybe studied family documents, town records, or went to a library, or just learned through family. When I started seeing more takes on YouTube, there was an element of self-discovery that I noticed.

Have you ever done a genetic test yourself?

No, I’ve never taken the test before. And I didn’t have any specific experience with taking the test at all.

Were you surprised by this trend?

I would say that I was really surprised just how in-depth and intense some of the discussions were. People would set the stage and explain their reasoning for doing the test. They would use the video as a space to share their own family’s history and the work that their ancestors had already passed on to them. The test was integrated into the bigger story they were telling.

And then people in the comment sections would jump in and say things like “congratulations” or “this is all false” or “the science isn’t real.” There was a lot of discussion around the science and the value and the meaning behind the test.

Can you give some examples?

There are people that were really excited to be able to share, and they would say, “Hey, I took a genetic test and I found that I’m from this region in Africa, and this is a big deal for me, because there was a lot that was up in the air.” People in the comments would say, “I’m happy for you, it’s awesome for you to know, that’s a huge part of your identity that, unfortunately, due to slavery, was kept from you. This is a running theme – it is great that you got a chance to uncover a part of your history that for so long was deliberately kept from you.

There were also people that would say things like, “This is a privacy concern, you’re handing over your DNA.” Or they would say, “Whatever the database has on file is what you’re getting out so you might not necessarily be from that region, but the closest match in the system would point in this direction.” That was another running theme, people being a bit more critical or a bit more cynical.

I would say every single thing that you could possibly think of, either for or against genetic testing, came up when I was doing my research. People in the comments section were very attuned.

What conclusions did you draw in your thesis?

I looked at the genetic test as a tool that people integrate into the creation of self and their own identity. A huge part of my thesis was looking at how people [in the past] would take their records and then blend them with the stories that they passed down. They would blend all those different tools and sources together, and then they would perform them in traveling caravans. Today, a YouTube video is another way to perform and to package these bits of information, traveling across the world to share that story.

The essence really is how people use tools and technology to tell a story of who they are on their own terms, and shift narratives. It also has to do with everyday people, who are non-experts, being able to gather information, do their own research, and share it with people outside of the scope of quote/unquote official storytellers and scientists.

Is it possible to say what percentage of people were surprised by their results?

I would say, to be honest, there was always an element of surprise. I think seeing European ancestry in their results was surprising for some people. There’s a running theme, not just in Black American folklore but in American folklore, of a native ancestor. There were a lot of test takers that would have one percent native ancestry and say, I guess I’m not native, things like that.

Do you continue to follow new developments in this area online?

For sure. It’s become a cultural mainstay and will not go away. There are now couple reveals where couples get together and do tests. I also started noticing that, at Christmas time, people will gift tests to their family and then say, we all took it together. There’s a ton of ads on TV. In the last couple of years, I’ve noticed so many more ads on TV.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would say it’s not necessarily about the genetic tests, as much as it’s about the reasoning and the intention. The technology is a tool and if you look at how people use the technology, you’ll start to see it’s bigger than just genetic testing technology. Communities like the knowledge-making that comes from it.