Genes and the Problem of Historical Identity

1

Who Am I?

Genes and the Problem of Historical Identity

KEITH WAILOO

13

A fundamental conundrum at the heart of the new genetics is the question Who

am I? Despite what we may believe about ourselvesbased on our family lore, our

photographs, our documented past, or the recollections and memorabilia of our

ancestorsgenetics makes possible bold claims about self and family that may be

at odds with these long-relied-upon artifacts of identity. When seeking historical

guidance as to who we are, we can look backward in multiple waysthe matrilin-

eal line, the patrilineal line (along which names are often, but not always, trans-

ferred), some combination of family lines (the mothers fathers family line, for

example), or in ways totally outside the biological family. Genetic science has

emerged from the laboratory and clinic in recent years to add new complexity to

this already complex process, and to revise our self knowledge.

No longer promising only that new breakthroughs can cure diseases and save

lives, genetic technologies have entered the courtroom, the genealogy business,

and popular culture, posing profound challenges to older ways of knowing ourselves.1

For Americans like me, who look back across an ocean for links to ancestry and the

past and who pine for answers about heritage, the possibilities inherent in the

new genetics have been exciting. With a cheek swab, a thousand dollars or less,

and a sophisticated analysis, comparing my genes to those in the companys

database, which have been gathered from several populations around the world,

the mystery of my roots can be unlocked.

Over the past decade or so, popular mediafor example, multiple covers

of Time magazinehave suggested that DNAs insights are far reaching. DNA,

some speculate, may define our religiosity and our compulsion to seek a higher

power; infidelity, too, may be in our genes; an I.Q. gene just might explain

our intellectual capacity; and a gay gene might explain our sexual orientation.2

Whatever I believed about myselfmy behaviors and predilections or other

features of who I amcan be opened via genetic analysis. Or, so we are

relentlessly told.

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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Spencer Wellss 2002 National Geographic documentary, Journey of Man: A

Genetic Odyssey, begins with an audacious assertionthat the blood coursing

through my veins is the greatest history book ever written. Such narratives of

genetic insight and omniscience have taken a new turnwith the rise of genetic

genealogy now also claiming to reopen ones past and to divulge new realities

about my family heritage or about the true lineage of a community. The argument

at the heart of this was simple and shocking: that

none of us can truly know who we are without genetic analysis. We might speculate

and dream, but the blood and genes would reveal the truth. The power of Wellss

program stems from skillfully borrowed science fiction tropesin this case, a merging

of the time machine/time travel theme of H. G. Wells (no relation) with the mar-

velous 1966 into-the-body motif of the film Fantastic Voyage, in which a miniaturized

team of scientists venture into a mans body in order to destroy a blood clot and

save his life. As Spencer Wells travels the world, collecting blood and comparing

its patterns to the vast database of already-collected samples, he stages a new fan-

tastic voyagean odyssey, not only into the body, but back in time, weaving a com-

pelling set of stories about how each of us is connected to one another, how we all

have migrated out of Africa, and yet how we have come to be so different today.

Before geneticists began to visit the past in this fashion, each of us had well-

established and complex, often conflicted, ways of knowing ourselves, of pointing

to a past, and of situating ourselves in the present. The fierceness with which we

hold onto these older beliefs about ourselves explains, in part, the skepticism that

confronts genetic revisionists. In what follows, my argument is simple: Rather

than seeing a fundamental tension between genetic knowledge and other non-

genetic ways of answering the question Who am I? there is rather a curious way

in which genetic knowledge gains plausibility, not through any inherent power of

science, but by reinforcing already-existing cultural and political forms of imagin-

ing self and the past in films, popular media, public commemoration, family lore,

nationalistic display, and so on. Yet, all efforts to connect to the past are bound to

be speculative, fraught with supposition, and troubled by problems of evidence.

Indeed, selective editing and interpretation is just as prevalent in the fashioning

of historical identity using genetic analysis as it is in the use of other evidence,

from family photos to genealogical archives. To put it another way, whatever

the data we draw upon to answer the question who am I (whether photographs,

family trees, birth certificates, or genetic analysis), we engage in a willful paring

down of multiple lines of descent, choosing between mothers and fathers in crafting

the story of ones self. Genetic analysis, then, like other forms of historical memory,

is as much about making meaning in the present as it is about the past. Hence

it is as deeply mired in the politics of identity as are these other forms.

LET ME OFFER A PERSONAL CASE in point on the complexities surrounding

who I am. Since I was eight years old, my identity has been that of a migrantan

immigrant from South America, and (by sixteen) a naturalized American citizen.

KEITH WAILOO14

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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Despite appearing to be phenotypically and culturally African American, the fact

of my coming into this identity has been something I know about myself, but

something that is not obvious to most people. Where I emigrated from is less

relevant here than the fact that it was to the United States that I emigrated. My

coming to America immigration narrative still figures in the stories I choose to

tell my children about who I am. Because of my age when this journey took place,

the transition to America was traumatic and memorablemore so than if I had

been a five- or two-year old with few vibrant recollections. I can still recall forty

years later the way my accent (even though I was an English speaker) marked me

off in elementary classes. I can recall having to explain where it was that I had

arrived from. Even as time passed and I learned to speak like an American (merg-

ing different intonations from my New York City surroundings), I knew I was from

somewhere else even if others did notor chose to forget. But at some point,

people ceased asking, because I had learned a new way of talking. My parents, by

contrast, still retain the old world lingomarking them distinctly as from

somewhere else. For many new Americans who come from somewhere else,

that old place is marked by ones parents ways of speaking, by ones memories,

and by ones family. Like many Americans, I have relatives who remain back

home, linking me to one version of who I am. For me, this form of identity is still

powerful and resonantstrong enough for me to want to pass the knowledge on

to my children and to keep it alive, so that they know where they are from. Before

genetics and even after the rise of genetic genealogy, this remains one of the

powerful ways in which I know, perform, and understand who I am.

Geneticists might argue that this is a fable, a myth I tell myself because, in

truth, my people were only passing through South America on our way to the

United States. In the ultimate truth of genetics, no one can truly, historically be

from South America because South Americanseven indigenous peopleare

migrants and new world beings. In history as told through genetic analysis, there

must be a deeper historical story. Against this backdrop, the language of genetics

makes a bold claimthat this knowledge that I have carried for decades about

who I am, could be richer and deeper. It could also be plain wrong. Why stop in the

old country? Why not go further back or travel in different directions to build a

more expansive sense of myself, especially by reflecting on ancestors I have never

met and who lived thousands of years ago?

Genetic analysis promises to take me back even further. How should one

think of this option? And are these opportunities offered by genetic genealogy

truly radical departures from the pathways previously available to me? My strong

sense is that the difference is not as great as one might think. Indeed, the genetic

options available to us are filled with all of the same interpretive complexities

associated with the conventional sourcesthe photographs, family lore, and

documentsthat we commonly use to decide who we are. As it happens, all ways

of answering the question, Who am I? contain false narratives based on incomplete

samples, and they are false in surprisingly consistent ways.

GENES AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL IDENTITY 15

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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Starting Points and Stopping Points

When I am asked where Im from, first I pause to decode what the questioner is

asking and to decide where to begin. Does he mean where was I born? Where I

grew up? Or does the questioner mean the name of the country, the state, or the

region of my birth and early years? How specific should I be? I usually choose to

speak about the country of my birtha small country with a British colonial past

and a diverse population defined by the in-migration of South Asians, Africans,

and Europeans during the century-plus of British imperial rule. Based on what I

know about my grandparents and great-grandparents, I can point to an obvious

African heritage. I also point to a South Asian ancestry which, although a small

percentage of my family tree, is still attached to me by way of my nameprivileging

my patrilineal descent, as is the custom where I come from. Usually, I skip the

details unless asked for them and point to the country of my birth. Doing so

appeals to my sense of self; it feels right in most situations. Yet, I know that

I have relatives (on one side) who make different choicespointing for example

more insistently to South Asia. I have always believed that the important feature of

the country of my birth is that it provides these multiple avenues for anyone

confronted with the question, Who are you?

By contrast, what are the starting points and stopping points of genetic analy-

sis? In order to place myself in the most distant past, the world of genetic geneal-

ogy must create that past. It is a past largely defined by genetic material gathered

from contemporary individuals around the globematerial contained in vast

archives and databases against which snips and sections of any particular persons

genes can be compared. As Peter Chow-White explains in another essay in this

volume, these data sources (composed by each company or compiler from popu-

lations they have selected as representative genetic populations) have become a

biomedical and informational paradigm around which new ideas of race and iden-

tity are generated. Since the human genomes in these databases (each genome

with 3,000,000,000 base pairs, spread across our 23 chromosomes) are 99.9 per-

cent similar to one another, the starting point of genetic differences analysis is the

0.1 percent (or 3 million base pairs) where the variations and differences are

notable. In most studies, as in one 2004 report in Nature Genetics, an even smaller

selection of the 0.1 percent provides the raw material for locating the sources of

our differences. Analyzing just over 100 selected markers in small population

samples from sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia, the authors

(a collaboration between a genetics department, a pediatrics unit, and a pharma-

ceutical company) observed that many studies confirmed that there is a relation-

ship between patterns of genetic variation and geographical ancestry, with a high

degree of accuracy and reliability, using a relatively modest number of multilocus

genotypes, individuals can indeed be allocated to groups that represent broad

geographical regions.3 The power to situate individuals in the past and, in particular,

places, based on genes, however, was more limited for certain people and regions,

KEITH WAILOO16

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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because of the data itself and because of the complexities of certain populations.

As the authors observed, for example, the sampling of individuals from many

parts of the world (such as sub-Saharan Africa, India, North and South America)

has been extremely limited, even though genetic diversity in some of these

regions (such as Africa or India) seems to be higher than in many parts of the

world. This very diversity of population raises a set of conceptual problems

at the heart of the new genetics/ancestry business: what sources of data are best

equipped to link us to the past we seek to create; what populations exist in the

genetic databases and how does this shape what past will be found; and if we are all

from Africa originally, as genetic genealogy insists, then what should be the end-

point of my quest for an ancestral home? As most historians know, these questions

about sources and limitations of evidence are not specific to genetic data; rather,

they are inherent to the use of any data linking past to present identity.

Choosing a Lineage

When I speak about who I am, I have the option of choosing among a range of lin-

eages. I can speak about my mothers side of the family or my fathers. Beyond that,

I can recall the story of my fathers father life as an East Indian child of immigrants

to the South American continent, or I can speak of my fathers mothers mixture

of African and Native American roots, or I can point to my mothers own four

grandparents all with their own cultural lineages. I have physical markers on my

own body linking me, in highly selective ways, to each of these lines. My skin color

links presumably to one line, an inherited oddity on the little fingers of my hands

is clearly inherited from my mothers mother and has been passed to my daughter,

and so on. One cannot, then, speak of a single ancestral lineagebut of many

lineages (four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen for the next gene-

ration, and thirty-two after that). The lineage chart is a tree pointing back in

multiple directions, ever expanding into the past and comprising the individual in

the present. Choosing which one of these lineages to speak about is often a situa-

tionally shaped social act.

Genetic testing offers specific yet highly limited entry into this complex past.

As the authors of the 2004 Nature Genetics article noted, much of the genetic

data available on many populations is limited to genotypes of the mitochondrial

genome and the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome.4 The first type

of genetic data points backward along one line (the paternal or fathers fathers

fathers line), offering insight into that portion of the genome passed down along

that hereditary pathway. The second type of genetic data points backward along

another line (the mothers mothers mothers line), offering insight into that por-

tion, and analysis of its frequency elsewhere in the world. These two types of test-

ing provide one way of situating oneself in the pastbut only if one is concerned

about the matrilineal past or the patrilineal past. In my own family, the collective

memory, evidence, and lore point patrilineally to India (whence my surname) and

GENES AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL IDENTITY 17

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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matrilineally to somewhere in England or Europe (owing to my mothers mothers

mothers mothers place of origin). Ironically, these two forms of testing would not

place me where the bulk of my own family history and phenotypic appearance

would place me, a self-identified first-generation African Americanin Africa. To

boil down my complex DNA another way, a third type of analysis might be useful.

Called Ancestry Informative Marker (AIM) testing, it offers a general statistical

comparison of ones markers with those gathered in company databases from

populations around the world. AIM testing (each company has its own database)

purports to tell me statistically what percentages of supposedly pure old-world

identities I embody. These forms of testing were used in the popular American

television show Faces of America, in which Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (and

founder of AfricanDNA.com) has the genome of famous Americans tested before

presenting them with a dubious pie chart representing their ethnic makeup. The

Mexican American actress Eva Longoria is told that she is 70 percent European,

27 percent Asian, and 3 percent African; and when she is told that this percentage

makes her genetically similar to the Parisian-born American cellist of Chinese par-

ents Yo-Yo Ma, her bemused response (Hes Mexican?) captures the impossible

tension between genetic claims and personal modes of identification.5

Genetic analysis raises the same question that I raise for myself: Do I privilege

my mothers mothers lineage or my fathers mothers line (while playing down

the significance of other ancestors) in telling the story of who I am? As the essays

in Part One of this volume illustrate, the high-tech memory-making of DNA

analysis contains the same kinds of uncertainties one finds in many other forms

of historical reconstruction. The true difference is that mitochondrial DNA

ancestry and Y-chromosome ancestry leave these ambiguities about ones true self

unstated and unarticulated.6 Genetic analysis, as we also learn in chapters ahead,

blurs the question of starting points and end points of analysis, preventing me

from seeing South America clearly and locating that continent as my point of

origin, or from understanding the more complex story of who I amthat is,

how many still genetically-invisible strands of my family dispersed over time from

several regions and countries that are as yet unmapped genetically, how this

process unfolded in highly specific ways and how these many ancestors combined

to make me who I am.

Any one of us has multiple pathways for building a strong historical sense of

self. Genetic analysis offers its own multiple pathways for self-knowledge. In some

ways, the social logic of ancestry is not so different from the logic of genetic ances-

try, for both depend on selective data that require us to make deliberate human

choices in reconstituting the past. Both also depend upon complicated social

machinery that makes the past available to us in the present. Finally, both depend

upon assemblages of arbitrary databases, mixed with suppositions and memories.

The essays in this volume take us, then, into the world of how genetic knowledge

is selectively made. They also allow us to examine the question, How different is

this new form of analysis from more conventional ways of knowing who I am?

KEITH WAILOO18

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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NOTES

1. Genetics: The Future Is Now, Time magazine cover (January, 17, 1994).

2. The God Gene, Time magazine cover (October 25, 2004); Infidelity: It May Be in Our Genes, Time magazine cover (August 15, 1994); The I.Q. Gene, Time magazine (September 13, 1999).

3. Michael Bamshad, Stephen Wooding, Benjamin A. Salisbury, and J. Claiborne Stephens, Deconstructing the Relationship between Genetics and Race, Nature Genetics 5 (August 2004): 601.

4. Ibid.

5. Alessandra Stanley, Genealogy for a Nation of Immigrants, New York Times (February 9, 2010) tv.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/arts/television/10faces.html?_r=1.

6. Troy Duster, Deep Roots and Tangled Branches, Chronicle of Higher Education (February 3, 2006): B13.

GENES AND THE PROBLEM OF HISTORICAL IDENTITY 19

Wailoo, Keith, Nelson, Alondra, and Lee, Catherine, eds. <i>Genetics and the Unsettled Past : The Collision of DNA, Race, and History</i>. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. Accessed September 8, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from uci on 2022-09-08 23:19:17.

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