Some time ago, I watched a fascinating program on PBS called “African American Lives.” Its focus was the varied, diverse origins of African Americans, and by proxy, other Americans. I watched rapt as several celebrities and scholars obtained the results of genetic admixture tests that revealed how much other genetic heritage they possessed beyond, or in some cases DIFFERENT, from what they had believed.
As I have an interest in this sort of stuff, I am a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and so found the program particularly fascinating. The results of the celebrities, such as Oprah and avowed Trekker Dr. Mae Jemison after the MORE.
Here are the results, as summarized on the notable Booker Rising blog:
Oprah Winfrey: The billionaire talk show host said that she didn’t believe that she had any European or Native American ancestors. Her admixture test showed her ancestry to be 89% sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian (researchers said that Native American ancestral traces show up here too), and 0% European. Henry Louis Gates told Oprah that, no, her other test results didn’t show Zulu ancestry, as she has claimed (and she had to take a breather). She descends from the Kpelle people (who cluster in the Guinea Highlands of what is now central Liberia and Guinea), the Bamileke people (who cluster in modern-day Cameroon), and a Bantu tribe in Zambia. I hope Oprah travels there, and does a show about these findings. Let us not forget that in the previous installment, Ms. Winfrey - born to unwed parents in rural Mississippi - discovered that an ancestor owned land after the Civil War, and had a school for black children on it (and she broke into tears upon hearing the news).
Whoopi Goldberg: Her admixture test revealed her ancestry to be 92% sub-Saharan African, 8% European, and 0% Native American (which meant that family stories about having such ancestry were untrue). The comic / actress descends from the Papel and Bayote tribes, who mainly cluster in modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Apparently, these were popular tribes in the slave trade.
Mae Jemison: The first black female astronaut to go into space (who is light-skinned) had no discernible European ancestry in her admixture test. Out of all the famous guinea pigs, I expected her test to come back with the most mixed ancestry. Not. Her ancestry reveals her to be 84% sub-Saharan African descent, 13% East Asian, and 3% Native American. Researchers were unable to find a conclusive match for her in terms of a specific African tribe. Researchers explained her high East Asian ancestry (for black Americans) to the fact that Chinese laborers were sent to Mississippi - her family’s ancestral state - in the late 1800s, so apparently one of her great-grandfathers may have been such a laborer. She was surprised to be of Asian descent (I wasn’t…has she looked at her eyes?), although she indicated that people had told her such during her travels to Asia. She figured that it was just traces of Native American ancestry
Chris Tucker: The comic’s admixture test came back 83% sub-Saharan African, 10% Native American, and 7% European. He guessed that he was descended from a tribe in modern-day Ghana. His Y chromosome test was the most intriguing of the group: it linked him to the Mbundu tribe, who inhabit modern-day central Angola. In fact, the DNA link was so strong that researchers said it was within the last eight generations…which is rare (researchers were only able to trace his family tree to the 1830s, and you may recall how one of his fascinating relatives kept selling plots of land to keep it in black hands during the Jim Crow Era).
Interestingly, Quincy Jones had 33% European ancestry while Henry Louis Gates had 50% — including European ancestry on both the father’s and mother’s side. Americans are typically of more mixed heritage than they believe or want to believe.
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