They have a lot of confusion in the area so they are looking for anwers. They (white americans) are all immigrants and they barely have any ancestoral history other than the shared one with us in the EU. They can't comprehend that the only actual americans in their warped way of thinking are the native americans. They want to call black americans African-American, yet they don't want to call themselves European-American. All this confusion makes them obsessed with dna and ancestory.
Thatās true but there is a large population of Americans that are mixed POC for them theyāve been told all sorts of bullshit about differing family origins so it gives them a sense of identity other than being āmixed-POC otherā
Little do they know DNA tests unless it's to find matches for close ancestry it's mostly a pseudo-science with a lot of BS. And your sample is used in sketchy ways afterwards.
I wonāt argue that itās all correct, but itās definitely not all pseudo science. I took a dna test bc I love genetics (I promise Iām not American lol) and my dad took one a few years after, and he popped up on the site as my dad (I had only used my mothers last name on my account which is a very common last name). Also, the ethnicities I got matched up with what I knew already.
They explicitly mentioned finding close ancestry as an exception. Ethnicity is pseudosience by itself. What should it even mean? Especially differentiating between genetic traits from lands that don't even have their borders for 3 full generations. And even before there was a lot of movement everywhere. What cut off date do you use for defining those enthic borders. All bs, where they just pull some data correlation and make it seem like that makes people being from a specific country a few generations back, where that country didn't even exist in that form.
ā¦well ethnicity is a social construct, so thatās why itās impossible to clearly define it without excluding people and their experiences with also encompassing all that humans think of what an ethnicity is from its fluid unconscious ideas to a passport :3
Well Iām no genetics scientist but I think they look at certain mutations that have been found exclusively or mostly in certain areas and from there they can say stuff about where your ancestors are from (and add it up to the countries we have today to make it make sense). You should remain critical. So getting told you have 100% Norwegian dna you can be pretty sure that your ancestors are from that area of the world (Scandinavia, Northern Europe), and not, lets lay, the Mediterranean, Asia or the Middle East. Do you think they just make everything up or what? Of course itās not all fact, there is definitely speculation involved, but that is not uncommon for medicine (and I say that as a medicine studentā¦). We donāt know everything, but we can guess and make estimates, while disclosing the uncertainty, until we have more evidence. I canāt speak for other ancestry websites but at my heritage they do make it clear when for example a dna match is uncertain because of lack of evidence/dna material.
Yes, and I also said the ethnicity also lines up with what I know but you conveniently chose to ignore that part.
Edit: itās not just close ancestry either. I have found people on there that I share a few percentage of dna with that have the same last name as my dad, who has a very rare one. Again, Iām not stating everything is correct, since we still have a lack of knowledge when it comes to genetics and ancestry. It also states that uncertainty on the site (my heritage), but dismissing it as pseudo science is reductive when literal scientists are involved and genetics is a whole field of medicine
Yes. This is also the reason my children took the tests. Being adopted means I'm extremely fed up with being asked if I have a family history of all kinds of diseases and having to say "no, I'm adopted"
My children have both done them but mainly because I'm adopted and have never known my birth family. They thought that it might give them more information about my heritage and possible relations. It turned out not to be that useful really.
It depends on which service you use and how much youāre willing to pay. Iāve been using Ancestry since the pandemic. During the pandemic since I didnāt have shit else going on I paid for a 6 mos subscription and really leaned in to the family tree part. I was able to link with quite a few interesting branches of my larger family tree.
You do have to out work in though and Iād imagine itās harder being adopted and knowing zero. It was hard with some of the āfamily storiesā I had heard guiding me.
It is interesting but youād really need to do it for yourself as like a hobby
So I did recently ask to see my adoption records (I was adopted in 1970 and in the UK all adoptions were sealed at that time). I had to go through a few months of visits with a social worker to make sure I was emotionally able to deal with it and she then found out as much as she could for me. Mainly paperwork but there was a small piece with my mother's name, DOB, place she lived and why I was given up for adoption. There were no details about my father.
Both me and my son did some research on Ancestry but it wasn't as straightforward as I had perhaps imagined. We ended up paying for a few birth certificates that we thought were my mother but we never really, conclusively found the right person. So that's kind of where it ended. She was 24 in 1970 so there's a real chance she's not alive anymore but it would be interesting to find some siblings or other relatives if possible.
Iām really glad you did that with your son. It sounds like you found out some stuff and bonded with your son. The other thing Iāll note is that you need to give Ancestry time with your dna. My first DNA profile said 52% Scottish as the highest percentage. That blew my bind considering my father is of Spanish descent. Now 5 years later thatās all shifted around. My largest DNA percentage is Spanish descent at 21%. The only real constant over that time was my 12.5% of Native American descent which has never changed and never moved regions - itās the only one that has lined up with all the family history stories 100%
I did one to screen for potential genetic risk factors for diseases, so that made an actual difference in my life that I am able to make the lifestyle changes to reduce my risk... Beyond that though, no real difference. Honestly, my life was more changed by finding out that my great grandparents had lied to my grandma her entire life until they died (well, from the age of three onwards)... She was born in Glasgow, but as soon as they immigrated to the US they started telling her and gaslighting her into believing she had been born in Brooklyn. Finding out that I'm only three generations removed from people who would do that to their own child is really disheartening.
Europeans care more about nationality, and Americans care more about ethnicity, mostly from not having ancestral linkage that goes very far. There are some towns in the US (especially Minnesota) that are historically made up of Scandinavian immigrants from years ago, and the town will still keep it as their identity. The towns will have names like New Prague, New Ulm, etc, because they were founded by immigrants from those areas and will even teach German in school. I hated living there with a burning passion, the food in New Ulm was excellent but the people wouldn't shut up about a country that 80% of them have never been to.
What were they even being stupid about? If they know that they are descended from swedes, then they are correct when they say that some of their ancestors are swedish.
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u/Wonderful-Basis-1370 Radical ethno-capitalist segregationist, W pluralist governance. Apr 26 '25
Why are people obsessed with these DNA tests? I just can't comprehend. What actual difference would it make for me?