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Corey Dade: My name is Corey Dade, and thank you, Vence,
for that introduction, and welcome to the first -- the scene setter here for today,
the first session of the day, Understanding the Ancestry of African-Americans. And as
Vence said, my name is Corey Dade. I'm a contributing editor at The Root, theroot.com, and we're
here to talk about, obviously, the ancestry of African-Americans.
And, you know, as many of us know, the history and ancestry of African-Americans has been
a difficult and sometimes tortured work in progress since slaves were brought here to
this land. Slavery, the middle passage, and subsequent oppression here in the United States
severely limited our ability to learn about, and understand, and even properly document
our ancestry and our history here in the United States. And so now we have the advent of DNA
testing, we have websites like ancestry.com, and all these different methods by which more
people are digging into their roots, so to speak, and they're finding more about themselves
and the complicated or the complex racial histories that they had and that they never
thought exists, and this is not just for African-Americans, of course, but any Americans. And that research
also holds, you know, untold potential for science, for understanding health disparities,
but also their ethical concerns. So who better to discuss this than a historian, a geneticist,
and an anthropologist? We're going to have a pretty informal discussion here, a fluid
discussion, and from here, we're going to take questions from the audience.
So, without further ado, I'll introduce our panelists, and each of them will tell you
a little bit about themselves and their work. First, we have, from my nearside to the far
side, Professor Sarah Tishkoff. She's an associate professor in the Departments of Genetics and
Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a geneticist. And we have, in the middle
here, Professor Linda Heywood. She's a professor of African-American Studies and History at
Boston University. She's the historian. And we have the resident anthropologist, Professor
Michael Blakey, who's at the College of William & Mary, and he also is the director of the
Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William & Mary. Please, a round of applause
for them.
[applause]
So we're going to start in the middle with our historian, Professor Linda Heywood. Would
you please tell us a little about yourself and your work?
Linda Heywood: Well, I'm Linda Heywood, and maybe I should
start about sort of how does a historian get involved in genetics and, you know, anthropology?
We are scared of those things because we like dates, and we like, you know, the past and
so on. And I think I should start by saying when I taught at Howard University for 19
years, beginning in 1984, I was told, "Oh, you said you're an economic historian of Africa?
No, you're going to be teaching African diaspora," and I spent 19 years teaching my core course,
the African Diaspora, and I really had to force myself to learn more comparative history
and much more about the African-American experience. I'd been an Africanist studying at Columbia
University.
But this was not only what was important. Issues of identity were also important because
I had students who, you know, I would see a young man in the back of my class, and he'll
be looking at me and not taking any notes and, you know, after class, I would say, "Look,
young man, you should be taking notes. You know, we have midterm and final." And he says,
"You know, Dr. Heywood, this is the first time in my life that I've had a black professor
so I'm just looking at you, and my whole world is being changed, okay?"
[laughter]
So I knew that I had to -- I was having an impact. Just my being there, I was having
an impact. I think this pushed me to learn more about my own identity and my own -- so
I would -- I would send back to my -- Grenada, where I grew up. I was born in Trinidad but
grew up in Grenada. Said to my old aunt to say, "What do you know about our background?
I need to let the students know that I have an identity, and situate that within the African
diaspora," and I'll speak more of that later in the discussion.
But also, at Howard, I got the, you know, opportunities to do a lot of things in connection
with the genetics and biology and anthropology. This was the African Burial Ground to get
to participate in it, and I thank Dr. Blakey for teaching me more about it, in fact, you
know, how to think outside the historical box, and to look at skeletons and try to understand,
you know, dentition and so on. I'm no expert, but I am very much part of that language.
Thirdly, when I went to Boston University in 2003, I became involved in some of the
media and other information that Dr. Henry Louis Gates became involved in, and then I
really had to know about the African background because this was why it was important. If
you're doing African-American lives, and you're trying to identify individual roots of African-American,
not only did I have to know the American story from the genealogist, I had to know the story
of their biological background, their genetic background, so I had to begin reading things
that I've never read before, and I had to go and study much more deeply the African
background to the Atlantic slave trade, exactly which groups of slaves were coming out, where
were they coming from, what are their ethnic groups, et cetera.
So, in a certain sense, these years of that experience have made me much more -- so history's
much more interesting. It's now not only personal, it's communal, it's national, it's identity,
it's part of my being part of the African diaspora, and that's about the background
that I'd like to give. Thank you.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. Professor Tishkoff?
Sarah Tishkoff: Is that on? Yeah.
Corey Dade: I think it is.
Sarah Tishkoff: Okay, so I thought I'd just give you a little
bit of background also about myself and what got me into this area of research interest.
So my background was actually in anthropology; that's what I started out as at UC Berkeley.
And I was there at the time of Allan Wilson, if anybody has heard of him, and he really
helped to found the field of molecular anthropology and got me really excited about that. So I
wanted to use genetic methods to address questions about human origins, about where we come from.
And so, for that reason, I went on to get a Ph.D. in human genetics.
Now, at that time, I was working in the lab, Ken Kidd's lab at Yale, and he had a partner,
Luca Cavalli-Sforza, at Stanford, and together, they had a pretty amazing diverse set of DNA
samples from around the world. Now, in Africa, they had two groups, okay, which everybody
was using as the so-called representative African population, whenever they did population
genetics or evolutionary studies. Those groups happened to be two Central African pygmy populations.
They couldn't be less representative, as it turns out. So as part of my thesis, what I
wanted to do was look at the variation that existed amongst the different African populations,
and to my surprise -- I wasn't expecting this -- I found so much more variation between
any pair of African groups that I was looking at than I would see between Africans and,
say, East Asians, for example. And I realized that we had greatly underrepresented the amount
of variation in Africa.
So after that, once I was a post doc and then I went to South Africa to do research for
a while and decided that I wanted to return to also my anthropology roots and wanted to
do field work in Africa, largely because nothing existed. There were almost no studies of human
genetic variation in Africa. So part of my experience for the past 15 years or so, myself,
my students, and African collaborators have been doing fieldwork throughout Africa, studying
not only to collect blood samples but looking at phenotypic variations, so different traits,
things like anthropometric traits, or cardiovascular, or metabolic that can also have disease implications.
And so my focus has been really the history of Africa and the African people, and then
from that, without that history, I feel like you can't know that much about -- you can't
really know about the history of the African diaspora until we get that settled a bit more
in Africa. That's going to really inform us.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. Professor Blakey.
Michael Blakey: Well, it's a real pleasure to be here and
to introduce myself as someone who began his career here. When I was 15, I worked upstairs
on 50 skeletons analyzing the health of two populations under Donald Ortner, and a lot
has happened since. In graduate school, my fundamental field is physical anthropology,
human biology, but I never felt that was enough. It's not really meaningful to me just to look
at human biology. I don't think I can understand it unless I know the cultural context, the
social context, and the economic context of living populations, and so I worked on issues
of psychophysiological stress, the cultural and, again, social context of past populations.
So I'm a bioarcheologist, biocultural, biohistorical, and the African Burial Ground Project that
I directed is interdisciplinary, involving historians, geneticists, and archeologists,
the bioarcheology, physical anthropology, skeletal biology is at the core of it. And
the Institute for Historical Biology is the one -- a place, a space where we look at the
interplay of biology, culture, and history.
One of the -- for me, one of the best places to look at that interplay is in the history
of biology itself, and so I was also back here working on the Hrdlicka papers studying
how genetics and biological anthropology had evolved, how evolutionary theory had evolved
within society, its purposes, its influences. And it's clear to me that as the sciences
separated from their religious roots, as we really go from the monastery to the academy,
as it were, they brought with them certain ideas about knowledge that are pretty much
based in Christianity, so that natural science takes on a certain authority. Nature takes
on an authority not unlike God. Natural scientists have in their hands a method for ascertaining
absolute presumed objective truth. And all of that was -- you know, these are ideas,
not necessarily facts, and all of that was put in the hands of an ideology of eugenics
of race whose purpose was to establish that the inequities that existed in society were
actually natural inequalities and that we just have to live with that.
So this is a way integrating those things. So when I look at genetics, and I'll talk
a little bit about history, too, I see a field that's had this problem, and I look at -- we
are, as a people, enamored with genetics in a way that turns us away from strong critical
scrutiny. We believe that DNA is who we are. And yet, in genetics today, you know, there
are the ideologues and there are the skeptics, and, on genetic ancestry testing, the skeptics
are telling us that we have no evidence that these tests work. We can take the work of
Turri [spelled phonetically], who, you know, often what happens is that it's statistically
more likely that an individual will be related to a population that has the highest percentage
of that individual's -- of a particular gene or haplotype found in that individual, or
a series of them, and by that, Turri found that Thomas Jefferson is Somali.
[laughter]
And -- but the same gene has fairly high frequencies, though not as high in other parts of the Mediterranean,
and I think the press, and, I don't know, maybe the researchers cleaned that up a bit
by making him -- his ancestry Middle Eastern, which is biblical, right, and possible. But
all of this is really very, very flexible. Ely, Jackson and Jackson found with respect
to looking at Gullah/Geechee that with the haplotypes that they were using -- I'm sorry,
Y chromosome, not the mtDNA that Turri used -- that 10 percent of the -- of African-Americans
might be able to -- 10 percent of the findings would allow one to show even a region in Africa
associated with African-Americans. That means 90 percent of the findings are in error. Now,
90 percent error is not some information. That's something else. There is no study that
tells whether -- what people are really looking for, which is their recent history, according
to the recent work of Royal, they want to know their recent history, the last 200 years,
400 years. There is no study that tests with people who know that history the accuracy
of using DNA on them, but we believe.
Let me say, in closing, at the same time, you know, African-Americans have always been
faced with this problem, resulting from slaveries, attempt to destroy their humanity and their
history and family lineages, have created a historical tradition, historical institutions
as we know, the Journal of *** History early on, and we might have to settle for understanding
that African-Americans are -- represent nearly all of Africa, much of Africa. And so our
children have, uniquely, if you will, have cultural characteristics that come from all
of those places that can be claimed, but they can't understand them; we don't know names
like Wolof, or Igbo, or Yoruba, or Moors, Malagasy. They don't know what those words
mean because there's still virtually no African-American and African history in the public schools,
even in Washington, D.C., Montgomery County, throughout the state of Virginia. And so this
is where one finds one's history. So the abuses of the past continue, and we need to think
about what we might do about that.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor, and thank you, panel.
So the first question, we want to set a baseline here. This is all about understanding who
we are, of course, but as our panel alluded to, or really said, there was no allusion
at all, actually, they're very specific -- you know, there are challenges to understanding
that history. And this is a question for each of you, and we'll start with Professor Tishkoff.
So what are the challenges to understanding ancestry, and where are the holes, and what
are the consequences, what have been, historically, the consequences of not being able to understand
that history?
Sarah Tishkoff: Okay, so as the geneticist here, I'll talk
about some of the genetic, I think, challenges, and I think one of the biggest ones, and this
is one where I've tried to fill a bit of a gap, is just simply not having the data. And
so a lot of the issues, I think, that arose, particularly with some of the early genetic
ancestry testing, those that were looking at mitochondrial DNA, just to -- since we're
starting the day off, I should say that's a genome that's within the mitochondria of
the cell, and that's passed on through the maternal lineage. So a mama passing on to
her son and to her daughter, but then it gets passed on the next generation just through
the mom, okay, so you can trace it back to a common ancestor. And then you can also look
at the Y chromosome, which is passed on from father to son every generation, and then we
can look at the rest of the nuclear genome which we get from both parents.
Now the difference is that most of the mitochondria and most of the Y chromosome is not recombining
every generation. You can trace them back to actually a single common ancestor, but
the rest of the genome is being shuffled every generation, but you have to remember every
piece has its own evolutionary history. It's telling you a little different piece of the
puzzle. And when you trace back mitochondrial DNA or Y chromosome, you're tracing one ancestor
out of hundreds. So if you look just in the past few centuries, all of us, think about
us, we have our mama and dad, they have their parents, they have their parents. Go back
a few hundred years, you have hundreds of ancestors. Go back a thousand, and you have
thousands of ancestors. But those tests that are often relying on mitochondrial DNA and
Y chromosome, they're looking at one of those. And then they're going to look at a database,
and so what they tell you is going to depend on that database, and until we do a really
broad survey of Africa, you can get a very biased result.
Secondly, these tests are based off and on what is the prevalence of this lineage in
a particular region. It's very hard to trace back to any particular ethnic group in Africa.
Now, I'll give you a couple of exceptions. I study a lot of the hunter-gatherer groups
like the San click-speaking populations in Southern Africa, the so-called pygmies in
Central Africa, some hunter-gatherers in East Africa. Some of them have very unique lineages;
I could probably tell you, if you have those lineages that you trace back there. But otherwise,
it's very challenging.
So nowadays, what we're doing more and more is starting to look at the rest of the nuclear
genome, and it's particularly challenging to look at, and we use a lot of statistics
and probabilistic methodology to do that. So I would say -- remind me again, the original
question was the challenges, right?
Corey Dade: The challenges and what the consequences have
been of that.
Sarah Tishkoff: Yeah, so the challenges are much of what we
do, our field, people often don't realize it, is about probability. We use statistics
and probability, and it's not exact, as you said. And what I try to do, what I find most
exciting is when I look at the history of Africa, for example, is trying to integrate
that data with the archeological data, or the historical data, or the linguistic data.
And so we have to keep in mind that we still have a long ways to go to develop proper statistical
methods to be able to interpret this data. And then the data is rapidly changing, so
now we can sequence entire genomes, getting much more challenging. I'll leave it at that.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. Professor Heywood.
Linda Heywood: Well, as the historian, I know that all of
Africa, we do not know the history of various African groups, but during the Atlantic slave
trade, we have a very good idea of which parts of Africa were involved in the trade. In fact,
sometimes we have very precise information on exactly which groups of Africans were,
you know, captured and brought out. For instance, the first group of Africans who came to North
America, to Virginia, we know that they came from Angola. We even know the war that was
fought, the conditions under which that war -- those wars were fought, the actual areas,
and the extent to which these areas were integrated into the Portuguese colony, which the Portuguese
were the ones who brought those -- or captured and brought those Africans from Africa.
In addition, we also have some idea of the linguistic and historical events in Africa.
We, as Africanists, had to study the Bantu migration, and there's a lot of new evidence
about the Bantu migration. In fact, just this week, I read another article "On the Edge
of Bantu Expansion: mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome and Lactase-Persistent Genetic Variations
in Southwestern Angola." And what they are finding out is that some groups, you know,
males with the Y chromosome, seem to be more stable. The women were being brought in. As
a historian who's done Central Africa, that precise area of Mbundu and southern people,
the Nanyuki, et cetera, I can tell you that Mbundu during the 19th century were bringing
into that area people from the Luvali and Eastern Angolan area. They were bringing in
those people from the south, so I could explain, and they were bringing in women because they
were using these women as wives and as slaves, right? So we -- if we work closely with the
historian, the historian can, in fact, provide some of that precision that what we're saying
now, the geneticist might say, or the, you know, ethnographers and biologists might say,
"Well, we don't know." We know the history.
Let me give you one other example. Three different DNA companies did my mitochondrial DNA. They
all turned up the same set of populations in Africa that I had this mitochondrial DNA
match with, my closest, the Fulani from Guinea Bissau. My closest match was Guinea Bissau
but they are Fulanis that go from the Fouta Djallon area and the Senegambia area, all
the way to Northern Nigeria where they are known as Fulani, in the Senegambia area as
Fulbe, in Northern Nigeria Fulani. So if you have this, not only that, I could tell you
precisely what wars that were being fought, jihadi wars that were being fought in that
Fouta Djallon area that would have, in fact, led to the capture of a young woman who the
French took to Grenada. I can tell you that. So I am not as skeptical of those DNA.
Now, I have -- plus the fact as I am reading more and I said, oh, lactate persistence and
lactate deficient. Yesterday, I had this thing, you know, my family, I'm glad, I'm supposed
to have lactate deficiency. I can't drink milk. I drink milk every morning for my whole
life, okay, for my whole life.
[laughter]
I'm still drinking milk, okay. Then they have these things. Oh, you know, as a black person
-- a doctor told me that -- you cannot have, in fact, you know, osteo because this is really
Asian and European. Guess what? When I was in my 30s, I was diagnosed with, you know,
this, you know, osteoporosis, and I have -- I'm taking -- I have to take tablets to strengthen
my bones. Where did this come from? Maybe some sort of I have European in me, too, 17
percent. So I'm saying that every one of you could, in fact, begin to do your own research,
and you can take these, put them together, the family history, you put together the history
-- the African or the European history -- and you put together those little things, and
you begin to get a sense that you fit somewhere. That's where my identity fit.
So no skeptic could tell me, "Well, you're not related to the Fulbe." I said, yes, I
carry that marker. I don't know which woman it is, but I know I carry one marker because
we cannot see everything, as she said. All the things -- the only thing that you can
possibly see, mitochondrial DNA you inherited from your female ancestors going all the way
back. That's what I know is a certainty.
So I'm not skeptical. So when I assert to people my identity, I said yes. Somewhere
in Fouta Djallon, my ancestor was captured and brought to Grenada. And I think we should
be doing much more of that, joining with the historians to try to figure out and narrow
the possibilities. There'll always be skeptics. There'll -- you are not going to get everything
complete, but you're going to have some more certainty than just telling me you come from
the bush of Africa. I did not. My ancestors did not come from any bush in Africa. Africans
have history.
[laughter]
Corey Dade: Thank you.
[applause]
Michael Blakey: Let me -- Can I say?
Corey Dade: Yeah, we have shots fired, shots fired already.
This is good. This is good. The historian scores one. Okay.
Michael Blakey: Let me say --
Corey Dade: We're going to hear from Professor Blakey
but we're going to bring it back because I know Professor Tishkoff wants to weigh in.
Michael Blakey: Let me say that it is by the study of history
that you understand Africans have history, not by the study of DNA.
Linda Heywood: Oh, yes.
Michael Blakey: And that history is fascinating and should
be available to all of our children. You know, I'm interested in that. Although the SOLs
require what looks like, really, an extensive West African history, that that be taught
in Virginia schools, none of my high-performing William & Mary students knows anything because
somewhere between that and the teacher in the classroom, it doesn't happen. So I've
enjoyed that history. I know that Africans have history. There are a lot of folks who
don't, but it's about whether they've been taught history or not.
They also say if you use the same method, you'll always get the same result. Compare
the same haplotype against the same comparative database, and you'll always get the same result.
So if we were to use this SDR haplotype that was used on the Y chromosome for Thomas Jefferson,
he will always come back Somali.
[laughter]
And -- but if you apply some historical limits as I imagine are done, and say, well, let's
leave out the Africans, he will always come back somewhere in the Middle East, and if
Jefferson were alive today, he would also probably disregard the skeptics because that
sounds right to me, you know. Now I know my relationship to my ancestors.
I've heard in talking around the country from a couple of people who've sent in -- asked
for genetic ancestry tests and gotten completely different results. I know with the African
Burial Ground -- and some could accuse us of starting this business of ancestry tests
because we were working in -- on skeletal populations with regard to this, and I remember
Jeff Donaldson, the artist, and Congressman Hilliard said, "Well, you know, if you could
do this with living people, you know, that would be really powerful. I think somebody
said you'd make a lot of money." We said, "Well, we don't think that it works like that.
We don't think we can do that, but let's keep open the conversation."
And when our first test was done, we did it with individual skeletons that also had African
cultural traits, way speeds [spelled phonetically], filed teeth, and a significant number of these
came back as Europeans and Native Americans. We had to think about, well, how could that
be? Then our geneticists, one of -- Kittles in George [spelled phonetically], tweaked
their pipette skills and took three -- that was with one haplotype, the three L1, L2 and
L3 haplotypes, ran those for 40 individuals, and they all came up West African. Then we
look to you and I think, well, and in your history, you may emphasize Central Africa
more --
Linda Heywood: No, I do West Africa --
Michael Blakey: -- than I would because that's what --
Linda Heywood: No, I do West Africa, too. I do West Africa.
Michael Blakey: Who says, "But there should be Central Africans
in here, in New York, in this period." So we wonder, where are they? Maybe -- is this
the West African part of the cemetery? What we realized is that these comparative databases
were accrued by the history of genetics research that have been done, and none of the geneticists
had an interest in -- had asked the question what is the origins of African-Americans.
So when they go to Central Africa like Luca Cavalli-Sforza, he is interested in, what,
pygmies.
Sarah Tishkoff: Pygmies.
Linda Heywood: [affirmative] Yes.
Michael Blakey: Not complex societies that are involved in
international trade.
Linda Heywood: Yeah.
Michael Blakey: They're interested in evolution. Again, it
gets back to this thing. So when you compare a database that might have DNA related to
them, to the African Burial Ground, to that database, nobody from Central Africa who could
be related is at home to welcome them. And so we said, "Okay, as Fatimah Jackson began
to do, we need to expand the comparative database." Still, the problem of probability is there,
the same problem I raised, said with respect to Jefferson, is the -- and the problem of
probability that can make the data lie. It's always there, going to be there, and the way
to find out, I think, ultimately, and I can't emphasize this more, too much, the only test
of whether these work to answer the questions that people actually have about their last
couple of hundred years, 400 years of ancestry, is to take populations, maybe the Wolof who
have Creoles who know their history, maybe the royal families in Europe or Asia, who
know 200, 300 years of their history and test those same thing we use on random African-Americans
on them and see how reliable it is. That is simple. That is science. It is skeptical,
and it has never been done.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. Professor Tishkoff.
[applause]
Sarah Tishkoff: So I just want to say that I am not at all
surprised that you have Fulbe ancestry. This is not a surprise to me, and the reason why,
and I'll say from the genetic perspective what we found, is that I was involved in a
very large study, I think the largest to date, of African genetic variation. And then we
also looked at African-American populations and we found a significant, not huge amount,
but significant amount of Fulbe ancestry in the African-American community. So that, to
me, doesn't entirely surprise me. Now, it was funny what you said about lactose tolerance
because, as a matter of fact, that's one of the things my lab has studied. We found new
mutations that regulate lactose tolerance in Africans but mainly in East Africa. So
this is a trait that's adaptive, and it rose to high frequency in populations who've practiced
pastoralism and dairying. Now, the Fulani or Fulbe practiced pastoralism, right? And
we're actually studying that group because it turns out that they can drink milk and
they are lactose tolerant.
Now, interestingly, in that group, they do not have the East African variant. They have
the European variant. Now, they probably have other variants that we still have yet to identify,
so I was just saying that I'm not surprised that a lot of people, as you said, make these
generalizations. Nobody -- no -- people from West Africa can't drink milk, and this is
a great example, but you have to look within Africa there's a lot of different cultures
and a lot of different genetic variation.
And then also touching on what you were saying, Dr. Blakey, is that you're absolutely right.
Much of what we interpret is dependent on the database. Now, one of the issues that
I'm concerned about, maybe some others will talk about this later today, has to do with
the data being made publicly available. So, as a research scientist, one who's also getting
money from NIH and NSF, I'm obligated, and I also believe for moral reasons, I make my
data publicly available, okay? Now, that doesn't mean that the companies can then grab it and
use it to make some money.
[applause]
Oh, you like that? [laughs] Okay. I've always tried to think of ways that we could put some
of that money back to the people who contributed, but as it turns out, it's quite complex. But
-- so we made this publicly available. Now, many of the companies aren't going to do that.
This is their -- what do you call it -- this is, what, their priority database that they
have, and so if we don't share that data, it's going to be very hard for the different
-- that's why different companies are coming to different conclusions, so I just wanted
to make that comment.
Linda Heywood: Can I have one second --
Corey Dade: Sure.
Linda Heywood: -- to just -- the thing is, Angola is one
of the least, you know, tested countries in Africa. Cameroon and the areas around there
is one of the highly -- most tested. So when people have certain markers, LC, you know,
mitochondrial, and they just tell them, "Oh, you're from the Cameroon," we know that no
slaves were coming from the Cameroon, and, in fact, Cameroon entered the slave trade
after America started, you know, exporting, you know, stopped the import of slaves. And
I'm not saying that a few, you know, people from that area would not have come, but the
bulk of Americans -- Afro-American ancestors did not come from what is today the Cameroon.
We got to know that history. And I absolutely agree history, African history should be taught
at every level as European history is. And I am --
[applause]
You know, my students, the first time, "Oh my gosh, these words, Wolof," I said, "Look,
you learned about Azerbaijan, you know, I can't even pronounce it. All these different
words, you're going to have to learn it. It's like a language you're learning. You learn
German. There're some words in German that give you three pauses to say. So don't tell
me African words are too difficult." I think there are some biases, some biases about Africa,
and we got to get that, and you cannot get that starting at the college level and specialized.
Right now, we have a decrease in number of students taking African history at college,
I'm telling you. And forget it. It's very prominent among people of African descent.
They don't take the course. I am telling you, I've taught for all this years, and I can't
understand why it is that this reticence to sort of enter that field. You have to expand
your mind if you are going to know what you are and really be comfortable with yourself.
Corey Dade: It's interesting you say that, Professor.
I remember when I was in college, we -- I was in an African-American history class,
and it was -- the majority of the class was one of those huge lecture halls, majority
of the students there were African-American, or they were certainly black from the diaspora,
and they were the ones not taking notes often. There was a conceit among the black kids that
they knew this history, so they were there to get an easy A or B, and that, you know,
the white kids who were there, they're the ones who had to work, they're the ones who
had to study, so let them study. It took failing one -- maybe one test for them to figure out
that this is real --
[laughter]
-- so I'd like -- and to that point, I'd like you all to weigh in on this. You know, there
is, you know, there's this notion that America -- it's a false notion, of course -- is in
a post-racial society, so there's that. But even beyond that discussing race, not so much
racism but discussing race, racial differences, racial diversity has become snake bitten.
Not just discussing racial oppression but race in general. There's this notion, "I don't
see race," which is personally just idiotic. We should see race, we should see cultural
variations, and understand them and appreciate them. The idea is not to be colorblind; the
idea is to take all the tableau in and work it into you.
So as you all have done your research, can you all talk about whether or not you have
seen sort of this societal pushback. You know, coming out of the civil rights movement, for
example, there was this sort of explosion of African-Americans entering the workforce,
African-Americans entering academia, and even the history of African-Americans starting
to become, and the scientific research of African-Americans starting to gradually become
a little bit more prominent. But can you all talk about any societal pressures, or resistance
or fatigue you all are seeing to your work? I'm going to start with Professor Tishkoff,
maybe?
Sarah Tishkoff: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there seems to
be a continued interest, I think, in learning about human evolutionary history, African
ancestry, African-American ancestry, so I don't think there's a fatigue yet so far in
that area. But remind me, what was the first part of your question again?
Corey Dade: Well, just looking at, are you all seeing
the --
Sarah Tishkoff: Oh, right, you asked about the concept, though,
of race, right, and whether --
Corey Dade: Yeah.
Sarah Tishkoff: So that's actually, I think, important because
Corey Dade: Whether that resistance to discuss race in
America influences --
Sarah Tishkoff: Well, and that comes up a lot, actually, in
a lot of the classes that I teach. So I teach both at the undergraduate level in the University
of Pennsylvania, and I have taught at the medical school level. And in the medical school
course, we try our darned best. They really resist it, like, every level, but we're trying
to teach them about genetic variation and why they should know about population genetics.
And one of the things I talk about is race, and a lot of people have been afraid to even
mention it, you know, because there's either it might offend somebody, and then you're
going to get some negative reaction and so on, or people would say race doesn't exist.
But the reality is, most of the doctors out there are putting in their charts -- so they're
asking you, right, when you go to the doctor's office, how many of you have been asked, what
is your race. They're putting it down there, okay? They're taking that into consideration.
So one of the things I try to talk to them about is, first of all, it's very problematic
because race has, by definition, both biological and cultural annotations. There has been this
horrible intertwining through history. It's also been used often in a very abusive way
so that it's now very difficult to talk about that. And what I explain to them is what we
really care more about, perhaps, is ancestry. But what you want to know, knowledge about
ancestry, and if you don't have any knowledge about ancestry, self-identified race can be
informative, at times, as a physician or perhaps as a biomedical researcher. There's no doubt
about it because there are going to be some diseases that might be more prevalent in certain
populations, there might be different risk factors and so on. I don't think we can simply
ignore it, okay?
At the same time, you have to be careful of -- I call it "racial profiling" by doctors
or anybody else because what they forget is, I think you were saying, like you're lactose
tolerant, right, and many of the doctors would just assume not. And again, let's say somebody
came into the doctor's office, and they're suffering from anemia, okay, and the doctor
might say, you know, they self-identify as African-American so the doctor immediately
thinks, "Oh, you must have sickle cell trait, or, you know, some G6PD, or something that's
very common in Africa." Now, had that doctor asked that person about their ancestry going
back maybe a couple of generations or whatever, they might have said, "Well, actually, I have
a grandparent who's from Italy," okay, so, "Ah, maybe they have thalassemia, you know,
maybe that's what I should've been looking at." So they can misdiagnose, you know, things
if they're ignoring that, and ultimately, I think as Carlos Bustamante's going to talk
about and some others, the ultimate goal is to be able to say at any region of the genome
what your ancestry is, or maybe at any particular gene because that's going to be much more
informative in terms of making medical diagnoses and maybe for proper treatment and things
like that.
Linda Heywood: We certainly are not in any post-racial anything
because what I see is that there's a burden of race in America, and, look, I am -- even
though I'm from the Caribbean, yes, we have race there. But as I tell people, okay, my
race, so I saw these Brits, but what I was getting in my Caribbean history is about the
Caribs and Arabs and Iraqs and so on, and, you know, we were not directly burdened, but
the discrimination is constant. And you come to America, I go to my church, and I'm not
going to mention anywhere, and, you know, people will say, "Oh, you're Episcopalian."
They don't expect to see me there. My great-grandmother was Episcopalian, so obviously I'm going to
be Episcopalian unless I go and follow my aunt who is now a strict Seventh-Day Adventist.
She doesn't do anything on the Saturday.
[laughter]
What I'm saying is that -- what I'm saying is that we shouldn't categorize people, and
we have to break through that, and the only way we can break through that is to start
with the children at the very young age, to make all populations -- America is not made
up of just Europeans, Native American and various kinds of Europeans. You know, there
was a time when the Irish was black. I hope you know that. There's a time that I could
tell you I looked in the document in the 1623, 1625, you know, muster rolls on some of those
deeds, and guess what I'm seeing? Six Irishmen, five Negroes, so these two categories; these
were just people who were not English. The Irish were not English in those years. We've
become, you know, Americans, and the whiter Southern Europeans, and the others who were
marginal to the core English have become American. But I think we ought to accept that we have
to always work towards, you know, the post racial, and, in fact, always be conscious
that we're doing it.
So in my class, my students who come at the end of the class, I wanted them to tell me,
as this young man last semester, I was so -- last year, I was so happy. He's a young
white student. "Dr. Heywood, why did not I learn this African-American history in elementary
and high school?" He said, "This is American history. This experience of what African-Americans
went through is, in fact, part of American history so I could understand myself and my
place." That, to me, is a validation of the teaching, the core, you know, redoing the
way in which we approach the teaching of history, and, in fact, make Afro-American history part
of, you know, the legitimate, on the same level as, you know, American and European
history.
Corey Dade: And you know, you say something -- Professor,
go ahead. I want to -- I was going to throw to you on something.
Michael Blakey: Well, this is maybe reinforcing, but to also
relate this conversation clearly to some of the things we've been talking about. There
are no racially private genes. There are no genes that are exclusive to a race.
[applause]
There are no ethnically private genes, and there are no regionally private genes. We
all share our genes in different proportions. But the misunderstanding about that is part
of what would seem to be the power of the idea of genetic ancestry in people's minds,
that this is a gene that goes only with, you know, the Fulani. But it is also a way of
searching the ancestry, but one has to do that, you know, in a very qualified careful
manner. Very often, the ancestors we're looking at are thousands of years old, have nothing
to do with the slave trade, you know, in the immediate sense of it.
Racism certainly exists. Race exists as a cultural construct. Racism, there's much evidence
that it is thriving in the inequities that are increasing upon income groups and so-called,
you know, culturally-defined racial groups, and research that focuses on that would help
us understand that, you know, things like hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic
diseases that are increasing or changing over time are doing that because the society is
increasing and changing over time. That they vary by these groups does not indicate the
genetic basis of these diseases. There is no evidence of genetic basis for African-American
hypertension, but any physician will tell you, of course, it's true. It's not. It's
been disproven several times. It takes our attention away from what might be seen as
evidence of racism, the stresses and the poor adaptation to them with poor foods and obesity
and so forth that contribute to hypertension and diabetes, represent the oppression of
those people. Instead, it becomes, you know, something genetic.
So -- and then I do want to just add one more example of how this sort of feeding frenzy
can occur when, you know, when you combine -- let me also follow up on the issue of history
in schools. The absence of an African and African-American history in schools may be
the most profound expression of the continuance of the production of white supremacy in this
country. It is direct, it is blatant, and what are we doing about it? When I was in
high school, Coolidge High School up the street here, we organized, in the late '60s -- I
got out of there in '71 -- to have black studies. We had African music, we had African-American
literature, we had a number of things. Kiswahili, I took two semesters of Kiswahili, of African
history. When my group left, three years later, it was removed. I went up there not long ago
and find they don't have -- these African-American students with an African-American principal
do not have African-American history. That's not just accidental. That is an institutional
-- that is institutional racism.
Corey Dade: Professor Tishkoff.
Sarah Tishkoff: Yeah, I saw -- I'm going to move away from
that last part, but just one comment from a genetic perspective about -- you were talking
about that there aren't any population-specific or population-private genetic variants. And
I would say that's not entirely true nowadays with the more sophisticated genetic technology
and particularly sequencing. And what we're finding is, you're absolutely correct, that
most of the genetic variation we see is shared amongst -- we all have a fairly recent common
ancestor in Africa within the past, I don't know, 50,000 to 100,000 years, and all modern
humans share an ancestor 200,000 years ago in Africa, and we know that most of the genetic
diversity is within populations relative to between, so there's no doubt about it. But
as we're getting into sequencing technology, for example, we are starting to find variants
that are private to either ethnic groups, self-identified ethnic groups, but then again,
at the level of the individual, right, each of us is unique at some level, that's what
makes us us, right? But we are starting to find some, and I think that as -- and another
example is lactose tolerance.
So when you have natural selection acting in different regions of Africa or different
regions of the world, that can shift variants to perhaps very high frequency in one region
and very low or absent in another. So these genetic variants we find for lactose tolerance
in East Africa, they are only in East Africa or in places where there've been migrations
such as in the Southern Africa. Very, very specific. So I think that because of natural
selection, you can get some population specific variants, and with today's sequencing technology,
we're finding more and more.
And I would argue that, hopefully it will be a discussion later today, I think the sequencing
technology may enable us to do a little bit more fine-scale resolution of trying to determine
ancestry, although, as I think some of you alluded to, it may be somewhat dissatisfying,
because what is going to happen, and we've already had a hint of this, is that you may
be able to -- right now, when we look at West Africa and we look at people who speak Niger-Kordofanian
languages, for example, they're genetically very similar as a whole. When you start looking
at a more fine-scale level, we can start seeing some subtle differences, but there's been
a lot of migration in West Africa, right? That's part of the issue within the last few
hundred years. But let's say we could even identify some variants that are maybe not
specific to an ethnic group but maybe a region, possibly, and then if we were to try to look
at African-American genomes and look at any particular region of the genome, what are
we going to find? We're going to find that at this particular region, they can trace
back to that region or ethnicity in Africa. And at this region, they can trace to another,
and at this region, they're going to trace to another. I mean that's what -- is that
going to be satisfying? That's what I want to know --
Linda Heywood: Well, I think --
Sarah Tishkoff: -- if people are going to find that satisfying,
and am I telling you anything you didn't already know, right?
Linda Heywood: I think what some of us are concerned about
-- and I agree with Dr. Blakey that, in fact, that these variants in the genetic coding
is then subsumed under the issue of race, and that, in fact, racial identifying, you
know, blacks as having it, that's what I think the concern is. That if you go -- because
if you do not educate the public, they'll just -- we just fall back on what we know,
the categories we know. And the categories we know are black, white, Asiatic, or all
of these, which have been abused in the past and which were socially constructed. So we
have to be --
Corey Dade: So Americans have become more comfortable
Linda Heywood: Right.
Corey Dade: -- going with what they're familiar with --
Corey Dade: -- which are these racial constructs.
Linda Heywood: Right, right.
Corey Dade: It reminds me of an article I found that you
were in, Professor Heywood, in the L.A. Times. The writer, who's white, talks about their
family origins, and I think the last name was Mozingo?
Linda Heywood: Mozingo, yes.
Corey Dade: Mozingo, and so he was able to trace -- there
was one person in the family who knew the origin of that name, you can imagine which
continent it came from, but he kept it quiet. He would not -- he published a regular newsletter
to his family about their family history, their origins, et cetera, and some elders
in their family asked him to keep that information quiet. They had daughters they wanted to marry
off, and they didn't want to get shamed by that information and ruin their chances of
a good marriage. They had -- right. And they had been told that name was Italian. They
had been told that name was anything other than African. Mozingo, all right.
[laughter]
It can't be African. And so not only did this writer go and find the history, and realize
that, you know, they did descend from Africa, at least that part of their family, but they
were -- he was able to find that that name actually descended from an African prince,
but more specifically, from a slave. And it was one thing for them to realize that they
had African ancestry, and even identifiable African ancestry; it was another thing for
this white family to come to grips with the fact that they had descended from slaves,
African slaves here in America. And, you know, so -- and, of course, Professor Heywood is
quoted in there explaining, you know, the historical origin of Mozingo, and what part
of the continent they're from and --
Linda Heywood: Angola.
Corey Dade: -- and the fact that just by virtue of the
fact that that name came through the middle passage to America signified that this person
was literate and knew enough to keep their name. And the fact that they're literate implied
even more than that, suggested even more than that based on history. So it got to how moored
people are, especially whites, to separating their own lineage from non-whites here in
America, and that seems to have ruinous consequences, not only just for our understanding of our
own historical background, but even when we talk about understanding our genetic coding
and even the health implications of that. Can someone jump in on that, please?
Linda Heywood: Well, I can tell you that the new article,
and I just came upon it a few days ago even though it was published in 2011, "Melungeons:
A Multi-Ethnic Population," by Roberta Estes, and he is, in fact, one of those Melungeons.
These -- I'm sure you've heard about the Melungeon. You know, they were -- we believe, you know,
in a certain part of Virginia where some of these Angolans, some of those early Angolans,
as racial coding got into place with slavery not being -- with women, slave women and men
not being allowed to marry whites, which they had, for a certain time, you know, domestic
indentured servants, a white indentured servant married a black, you know, slave. It took
place, not a lot, but it took place. That's where you find in the, you know, Obama's maternal
ancestry, you know, has that root. In any case, what we find is that when the sort of
-- as American history became more racialized, these Melungeons had to make decisions about,
you know, where they would lie in the, you know, in the social ordering, and some of
them decided to become white, and that's where --
Corey Dade: Right.
Linda Heywood: -- this family ends up. But some of the Mozingos
are, in fact, you know, non-white, blacks, and they end up in the black population. So
there's a fascinating set of movement now on the part of young, you know, descendants
of these families to sort of try to find where did my -- in this case, where did my name
come from, you know? And the family secrets, and that's why it can be very unnerving. One
Corey Dade: And for those who don't know, what Professor
Heywood is talking about Obama is his maternal ancestry has been traced to the person who
is regarded -- and this is the white ancestry, of course, the white American ancestry -- has
been traced to the person who's been identified by some records as the very first African
slave in America dating back to the 1600s, before actual, you know, slavery as we knew
it took over the colonies and certainly the South. But I was going to say, if, you know,
the dynamic of passing -- anyone who's African-American knows the story of passing. I have it in my
family, generations ago, people who were light enough they passed, that creates a whole another
dynamic, you know. So if you are seeking medical care, if you're looking at, you know, your
own history if you're trying to get treated for something, they assume that you're Caucasian,
they assume that you're white, and, as you put it, Professor Tishkoff, the medical care
changes, perhaps for the worst.
I'd like to shift now a little bit. Dr. Blakey sort of alluded to this earlier about sort
of, you know, the popularity of us trying to find out more about our ancestry, ancestry.com,
you name it, and that a lot of this work that this panel is talking about is work that goes
back thousands of years, or that's the -- at least the effort. But many of us here in America,
especially if you're African-American, want to know about our history 300 years back.
And can we talk about sort of the popularity of this type of testing, and, you know, the
ethical issues and the accuracy issues. What are the problems there, potentially?
Michael Blakey: Let me, if I could get right to that, but
I do want to say with regard to the blockage between -- against our tax dollars being used
to teach all Americans the history of Africa and African-America, I have a project called
Remembering Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom. It's a partnership with William & Mary, Virginia
Foundation for the Humanities, and the Virginia General Assembly, and we've talked to people
all over the state. And we've, you know, coming to an understanding that there is a contradiction
between the narrative that whites cling to of the virtue of their ancestry, of the sort
of valor of what is framed as American history, and African-American and African history,
that African-American history, the history -- and of slavery, if -- and you can read
Jefferson, and he will tell you that these were the people who built the country in the
colonial and early antebellum period, that they were abused, that they prevailed with
their humanity despite that and so forth. So -- but if you write that out, you have
a very clean, valorous, white history in which it appears that white people are really creating
everything, and sometimes they can decide to give other people a part of the national
wealth. So that barrier, that contradiction has somehow to be broken because it is clearly
standing in the way of the truth.
With regard to the -- I would just set one example, as we're here to kind of stimulate
discussion, I guess. So I've talked about the power, the awesome power of this almost
godliness of natural historical explanations, and, i.e., therefore DNA. And if you add with
that celebrity, marketing, business, and the television program, and the imprimatur of
even an English professor from an elite university, you get what the geneticist, Geoff Harrison,
at Oxford used to call, although I'm using his words a little differently, used to call
"big magic and high sorcery." That's how he described the statistics: big magic and high
sorcery. So that Oprah Winfrey -- some of you know this story -- working in South Africa
can be told authoritatively that she -- her background is Zulu.
Linda Heywood: Yes, but you know we corrected that. She is
Kpelle. We did correct that on film.
[laughter]
Michael Blakey: Is Zulu, can obtain that result from the DNA
testing and --
Linda Heywood: She didn't do a test. No. She just asserted
that she was Zulu. She did not do a test for Zulu. No, she didn't.
[laughter]
Michael Blakey: Well, I was reading something, actually, I
will tell you, online that said she did do a test, okay.
Corey Dade: The audience is saying --
Michael Blakey: Okay.
Corey Dade: -- she did do a test. The results have not
come back yet, so she's --
Linda Heywood: She did but --
Corey Dade: -- she's preemptively asserting --
Linda Heywood: No, no, no.
Corey Dade: -- her Zulu heritage.
Linda Heywood: Oprah Winfrey's test -- "Finding Oprah's Roots,"
John Thornton and I were the historians who were sent the information, genealogy, the
DNA results, and then we had to frame a context in which the closest match that she had for
the region, and that's how we identified the group today called Kpelle in Liberia as the
most possible likelihood of her maternal ancestry, and this is what Oprah received from Skip.
So I don't know if you've seen the film, the video, but please see it. "Finding Oprah's
Roots," and the earlier video "African-American Lives," and John Thornton and I and other
historians as well, but we were sent all the -- that is why we had to try to be more familiar
with all your scientific as historians. So we did the best we could in terms of the historical,
the history of the slave trade, the regions that were supplying slaves, a certain region,
the historical names of people that, you know, linked to the present-day names of ethnic
groups today. That's why we gave Skip a list of 50 possible ethnic names that had the -- we
gave the names in the slave trade period and the regions in Africa where they are today.
So I think we are, if we can have more, you know, organized collaboration, setting up
an institute and so for this. That's where you would have much more precision and much
more possibilities.
Secondly, I want to take this opportunity to say I think that we should think seriously
about looking at the DNA roots. I'm not going to dismiss it. What I'm saying is we can use
that to give stories, historicize African presence here. That's what would, in fact,
allow, you know, a much better comfort level with the African background. And we have stories
that we can give. We have historical developments that were taking place at any one time when
a Wolof copy [spelled phonetically], when you find these ancestries, various ancestries,
then you have to say, "Let's look out for an African story that we can contextualize
this." So if you go to the Smithsonian African line, you would see the story of the Mayflower
from the Gold Coast where John Thornton and I helped to develop that particular story.
You can have other stories but you'll have to have the historian who is trained in Africa
with African history, because sometimes, when we have it from the American side, people
afraid to do African history, you have a lot of distortions.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. If we can pause for
just a second, we're running short on time. If you have questions, we're going to try
to get some in. Please line up at either mic on either aisle, okay? Let's come on now,
let's not wait, because we don't have much time. Come on and start asking the questions,
or line up and we'll start taking your questions, and we'll go back to Professor Blakey. Go
ahead. You were --
Michael Blakey: Well, I was going to say that --
Corey Dade: -- talking about genetics.
Michael Blakey: -- apparently, I'm in error about that. I
was misinformed about the Oprah Winfrey story. Nonetheless, you know, the same problems,
you know, and I give Jefferson as my example, these same problems, they persist. Whatever
those societies that are possibly related to Oprah Winfrey or anyone else, are possibly
related, but you can't know for sure. And you know, there's also the -- so -- and with
your, you know, tests, you know, I don't think you would think that your background is just
Fulbe.
Linda Heywood: No, because I know my father's background.
I mean, I sent it to my brother. I said, "I want to know." So I know that somewhere in
Dahomey some guy gave that Y chromosome to my father's family. So you just have to do
-- you're only given a limited series of it, you cannot know every ancestor. Why don't
you take the one that has the nearest possibility of accuracy, and then run with it and do what
you can. I'm not a Fulbe but I might go back in Fouta Djallon and say give me my little
village here and my cattle. I want my cattle, you know.
[laughter]
Corey Dade: What's your African equivalent, 40 acres and
a mule?
All right. Why don't we pause and take a question? This gentleman here, please.
Heath Carelock: Can you hear me? Are we working?
Corey Dade: Yes.
Heath Carelock: All right. My name's Heath Carelock. I'm a
visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, College of Arts and Science. I want to -- I
think everyone would say this has been very engaging, utterly remarkable. You all have
allowed us to correct some things with our own beliefs, especially myself. That said,
the subject of teaching African-American history in schools, there's an education technology
company right here in the district who, last month right before the 50th anniversary of
the March on Washington, launched their platform. They're called EverFi. I don't know if anyone
here is familiar with them. EverFi launched the 306 platform, if you go to everfi.com.
I happened to attend that product launching, and they had there the first black mayor of
Tuskegee, Alabama; he spoke. And there were other things discussed. 306 is symbolic of
the Lorraine Motel number that Dr. King was shot in front of, and it's also symbolic of,
during the Harlem Renaissance, there was a space, 306, I believe that was the address
for where some heady people met in the Black Renaissance movement there in Harlem.
So I just wanted to throw that out there that this is an effort launched by EverFi, and
it's something to get behind, someone you should be able to contact, and some technology
you can push as well. So I wanted to put that out.
Corey Dade: Thank you. Not so much a question, more like
a plug. That's okay.
[laughter]
All right. We have a question on this side, please.
Female Speaker: I have another just comment. I wanted to read
something, a quote from Oprah Winfrey that opens up an article in Chance, a magazine
of the American Statistical Association. The article is called, "Is Oprah Zulu? Sampling
and Seeming Certainty in DNA Ancestry Testing." "I always wondered what it would be like if
it turned out I am a South African because I feel so at home here. Do you know that I
am actually one? I went in search of my roots and had my DNA tested, and I am a Zulu."
Corey Dade: All right. Thank you. We're looking for questions
somewhere in here, somewhere.
[laughter]
Linda Heywood: Well, obviously, you know, that is not new
to me, but I thought we corrected it.
Corey Dade: Thanks, Professor. Ma'am, your question.
Fatimah Jackson: Fatimah Jackson, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, and Howard University, and I think it's wonderful that you got the panel.
These are all my friends. I think in terms of setting the stage for understanding ancestry
of African-Americans, we have to understand that African-Americans are an amalgamation
of African peoples with modest gene flow from North Atlantic Europeans and Iberian Europeans
and Native American peoples. That means there's going to be complexity in our heritage, and
the techniques that are developing can only help us better refine, but the techniques,
the genetic techniques have to be combined with anthropological knowledge, with historical
knowledge, and, ultimately, the people who are discussing have a say in their identity.
This is very important because identity is more than just the science. It's also the
culture. It's also the sociocultural constructs.
So I don't have a question for you, but I do want to say --
[laughter]
-- one more thing in terms of Oprah's Kpelle ancestry, the problem is, is that these mitochondrial
DNA haplotypes are 80,000 years old. This is before any of the ethnic groups that we're
talking about ever existed. So there's a mismatch between the timeline of the genetics and the
ethnicity of the groups. In fact, Oprah's DNA, which I've seen, matches a number of
groups, about 30 different groups in Africa. So we choose which one we want.
Corey Dade: Thank you.
Linda Heywood: But we know that no South Africans came to
America as slaves, so it's not just choosing any one. We then eliminate those that are,
in fact, outsiders, outliers. Right.
Corey Dade: Thanks, Professor. Question over here.
Emma Ward: Yes. My name is Emma Ward, and I represent
102,000 seniors that we have here in Washington, D.C. What I would like to know is if you all
have ever targeted our group of seniors who have a wealth of knowledge, and because we
are retired and 60 and above, it doesn't mean that we're still not here ready to do things.
We have very few groups who contact us to try to get us involved, so I'm here to suggest
that you get us involved in some of the things that we can help you with.
When I go, and I go to the schools, and I talk to the students about Harriet Tubman,
I want to weep when they ask me, "Is she still living?" I mean, this is real. And you ask
them about the states in the United States, they don't know it. I say, "How can you become
president if you don't know history? You have to know history."
So one of the things that we are suggesting again let us have one minute, 60 seconds in
it. That's all we need. I can ask you in one minute who am I, and I can tie it in, we can
tie it in with the black history person, or we can tie it in with our history from Washington,
D.C. up into Canada. So I'm suggesting to you, get in touch with our D.C. Office on
Aging here, and every state. We have 44 states now, but we have one representative who represents
the seniors, and these are the things that we need to let them know. We need to talk
to them, they need to talk to us. Okay?
Corey Dade: Thank you. And the oral tradition has always
been important in the black experience. Let's take this question over here. Ma'am? Hello?
Hi.
Female Speaker: Yes, I have -- I'm the president of the Southern
California Genealogical Association which has numerous interest groups, including African-American
and Chinese. Many of the issues you're talking about if we're trying to make connections
back to a homeland are present in both of these groups, and we need resources. So is
there some way that I can get some resources that could be available that would help us?
I'm with the group that runs the DNA interest group as well, and so I'm hearing this --
Corey Dade: Money.
Female Speaker: -- we're getting more data --
Corey Dade: Could she get some money?
Female Speaker: -- et cetera, so --
Corey Dade: Any ideas from the panel about grants, any
kind of funding --
Female Speaker: No, I'm not looking for money --
Female Speaker: -- I'm looking for books or something people
can read --
Female Speaker: -- so I can get better educated so I can help
people.
Corey Dade: Okay, I thought you meant financial resources
to continue to work. Okay.
Linda Heywood: Certainly. I think what I find is that high
schools and lower levels of education, really, the textbooks are like 20 years behind --
Female Speaker: Right.
Linda Heywood: -- what you can find. So we need more interface,
and I could suggest that, you know, we develop a common bibliography, and I could get us
a list of books together for that. The type of things on the Melungeon, that's one.
Secondly, I think young people here need to begin to take advantage of the technology
that you have on your cellphones and so on. There are a lot of apps now available. In
fact, one that -- my own daughter just finished an app with a British company, you know, "Timeline
of the Civil War," and when she was beginning her involvement as one of the producers, in
fact, the core producer for the actual materials that are there, she called me, and I said,
"Make sure that in that you have the African-American experience in the Civil War." So in that app
-- and I could give you the name of the app. It's just five something -- but what is important
is she has a whole section on African-American, and it's wonderful to kind of compare day
to day in every state what the African-American presence was during the Civil War. We need
more of that.
So we need people who are in technology, who are in the history, to begin combining a little
company. That company you talked about, let's get together and form this thing where you
have the sort of -- the technology that young people are now -- they're not going to read
a lot of history books but they're definitely going to get involved in the apps and learn
that. So those stories that I'm telling you about could be dramatized in the way of, you
know, through the apps. So that's the suggestion I have.
Corey Dade: Thank you.
Linda Heywood: And especially for people with funding to
look into creating apps of African-American, African, and European history because the
Europeans, Chinese, they were coming in all at the same time. So it's like the immigrant
project on tech. That's what it has to do.
Corey Dade: Thank you.
Linda Heywood: America is made up of immigration -- immigrants.
[applause]
Corey Dade: Thanks, Professor. We have a question over
here.
Eugenia Pinkney: Yes. Good morning to those on the panel and
good morning to those in the audience. My name is Eugenia Pinkney, and I'm a student
with Trinity University here in Washington, D.C. My question is directly towards Dr. Tishkoff
-- I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly -- but I noticed something that you had stated
earlier, and I just want to know if you can elaborate a little bit more about it. You
mentioned that you're doing research and study from a standpoint of the medical side of DNA,
and tracing our history back directly or precisely to find out exactly where we come from.
I want to know -- I would like to know your web address where I can find more information
about it. And also, too, how is that really -- how is that going at this point, as far
as accuracy and precision, as far as finding out African history as far as exactly where
we come from. I know you had talked about the Y chromosome that you probably can go
back from a hundred years, from a thousand years. Is that -- how is that really being
accomplished right now? Where is the setting of those taking place?
Corey Dade: Thank you. Professor?
Sarah Tishkoff: Yeah, so it's an ongoing effort by many different
research groups and, of course, it takes a lot of funding, a lot of money. Nowadays,
our funding is in serious trouble, thanks to sequestration and other things like that.
Hopefully, we'll be able to continue but -- so, as I was saying, one, my group and a few others
are going to Africa to study the people there because if we don't actually go to Africa,
there're no resources. There's nothing. Many of the people that I work with or study, they've
never been included in any studies before. They're being completely left out, and that
also has negative consequences for them in terms of better biomedical health care and
treatment and things like that.
The other interesting thing is I find that in Africa, when I do my research, they care
more about their ancestry. They love knowing about their ancestry. They have no problems
with that. They want to hear about it. They say, "Wow. That reminds me that my grandparents
said -- yeah, you know, these two ethnic groups, they used to intermarry," and so on. And in
terms of, I think you were asking what's sort of the state of what we know? Rephrase again,
you wanted to know --
Eugenia Pinkney: Well, you said you've been doing this research
for about 19 years, is that correct? Going down to South Africa, finding information
regarding the Y chromosome as far as finding out genetic information, as far as relating
to the medical field, as far as helping or assisting us in -- I guess you --
Sarah Tishkoff: Okay, I'm having a little hard time hearing,
but do you mean -- you want to know resources where you can find out those --
Corey Dade: Yeah, two things. She wanted to know, since
you make your information, your data publicly available, where she could find that. But
also, basically, what your progress is in being able to look at the genetic coding that
you're finding in Africa and attach it to --
Sarah Tishkoff: Trace it.
Corey Dade: -- health disparities, disease, you name it,
the medical implications of it.
Sarah Tishkoff: Okay. So first of all, in terms of the data
that we're making publicly available, this is a huge problem in terms of the layperson
being able to access it. Even other scientists have a hard time being able to do this. This
is a major problem across our field. Each one of our labs, there's many people here,
we all have labs, we're studying something in Africa, we're depositing it maybe in a
public database, maybe in our own database, but it's very hard to get them joined together,
and you even either have to do it yourself, at your lab; it's very time consuming. There
are very few public databases. But one thing that NIH has done, one of the missions of
NIH is to make sure that there are publicly available databases.
So I deposit all of my data in something called dbSNP, is one of them, and another one is
called dbGaP. Anyone with the knowledge could go out there but it's not super accessible
to the layperson. It would be very, very challenging. And I get people writing to me all the time
saying, "Can you help me? Can you tell me more about my ancestry?" And I have to point
them to some company and not one in particular, I just say, "Well, there's a lot out there
and, you know, just be cautious about how you interpret this," is usually what I say,
but there is a lack of that. I wish we had more of that.
And in terms of progress being made to look at disease, my own group, for example, is
very interested in trying to understand genetic and environmental risk factors for diabetes,
metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease, for example. And if you can compare, say,
people who are living an indigenous lifestyle in Africa to those who are living a westernized
lifestyle here in the U.S. or even in urban areas in Africa, we may be able to learn something
to distinguish genetic and environmental factors. Because when I study some of these groups
that are living in very remote regions, living an indigenous lifestyle, I do not see diabetes,
I see almost no obesity, I see very little cardiovascular disease. Then these people
move into the city, even in Africa they move into an urban area, and, boom, it's just going
up, you know, shooting through the roof, the rate of these diseases. So there are efforts
by NIH and others, and hopefully continued funding so that we can be studying that.
Michael Blakey: Well, let me -- I want to just --
Corey Dade: Yeah, Professor Blakey, and then we'll -- I
think we have room for one last question over here after Professor Blakey.
Michael Blakey: -- say -- thank you -- that, you know, very
often -- I remember when there were issues about Native Americans wanting to have the
right to determine the disposition of their dead and the 18,000 Native American skeletons
here at the Smithsonian. Colleagues at the Smithsonian said, "Well, you know, we can
learn so much that would help them. We can learn about diabetes and so forth," and, you
know, I said, "There are no methods in skeletal biology and paleopathology to get at any understanding
of the etiology of diabetes, of the genetics of diabetes." It's very often we see our -- as
I've -- I don't know if I suggested this about the Human Genome Project, you know, that it
did a great job of just describing the human genome, which needs to be done, to take further
steps. But the promise that people thought it had was it would lead to give us the answer
to the causes of all kinds of disease and social problems, which it has not done.
So, you know, I think this is -- you know, Professor Tishkoff, you're suggesting also
by what you're saying that the cause of diabetes may not have anything to do with genetics.
It has to do with what you're calling western lifestyle, and the differences in rates of
diabetes have to do with one's condition within that industrial capitalist western society
Sarah Tishkoff: Or the interaction of the genes and the environment.
Michael Blakey: Well, of course, it -- if all biology -- if
all biology is made by genes, of course there's an interaction. But the differences may have
nothing to do with interacting with variation in genes. So I think it's important to show
the efficacy of these ideas about health, as it is to show the efficacy of the ability
to show recent ancestry, not 80,000-year-old, not 1,000-year-old ancestry, but 500-year-old
ancestry by sampling all of those people. Now, I think sampling all of those people
is important and is sort of circular in working that out, but there is a point now where some
tests can be made, and the feasibility of doing that can be established better so that
we know whether, you know, this research is going to serve the purpose of health, is going
to serve the purpose of African-American ancestry, or evolutionary interests that geneticists
have that have nothing to do with that.
And then, finally, I would say to the woman who spoke earlier, I just hope that genealogists
do not give up their archival research, that they do not give up collecting oral histories
as I've seen them do. You know, one of my -- some of my -- the thing that stirs my blood
about the African Lives thing I was beginning to talk about with Oprah Winfrey is that a
number of these celebrities throw out precious family histories because someone has given
them the word of God in a genetic assay, that, as I have emphasized, we have no evidence
of the validity of, and the evidence we do have shows that we are often misled.
Corey Dade: Thank you, Professor. Professor Heywood, if
we can pause?
[applause]
I want to give as much opportunity for questions, and this is the final one we have here, so
you may get a chance to score another point.
Linda Heywood: I hope I can address.
Corey Dade: Hang on.
Bonnie Shrek: Okay. Hi. Can you hear me? I'm Bonnie Shrek
[spelled phonetically], and I want to thank Ms. Heywood, first of all -- Dr. Heywood -- for
the suggestion of an institute where we could get a better combination of historical and
genetic genealogy research. That's a great idea, especially as applied to African-American
history.
I have to say with Dr. Blakey that you and I have a lot of differences, and that when
you're talking about quotes such as saying that Jefferson's matches would be in Somalia,
that sounds like probably a very old publication, perhaps. There's been incredible --
Michael Blakey: 2007.
Bonnie Shrek: -- progress in the resolution of our knowledge
of the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, and I just want to cite a paper here, "Increased
Resolution of Y Chromosome Haplogroup T Defines Relationships Among Populations of the Near
East, Europe, and Africa," by Mendez, et.al. That just came out in 2011, and the quote
from that, just very, very brief, says that, most likely, Thomas Jefferson, based on his
matches in their extensive data, it supports the hypotheses that this belongs to an ancient
rare European Y chromosome lineage rather than ones that recently migrated from the
near East. So that's state-of-the-art science.
Michael Blakey: The data were there in 2007. The problem is
that the same problems that exist within genetics existed within craniometry, that these are
-- there's overlap between all of these populations, it's always a matter of probability, and there
are a number of other problems that I've talked about. You know, I've been doing the science
for a long time. With regard to the phenomenal capacity of genetics, promises 400 years,
and they are often not kept, and they are not kept in this case, demonstrate that a
person who knows 200 years of his family history can be typed accurately. That's science. It
has not been done.
Linda Heywood: Okay. Just let me add, and thank you for your
Sarah Tishkoff: Okay, we are working on that, in fact.
Linda Heywood: -- comments. One thing from the former questioner,
mentioned about, you know, the availability of these databases. I read a few weeks ago
that, in fact, the NIH, I think on the case of Henrietta Lacks, and the, you know, that
they, in fact, have now -- the family is now part of, in fact, the decision making to,
in fact, make her cells, you know, Lacks cells all over. And in fact, the book that came
out on Henrietta Lacks I actually use in my class, and it's for those young students reading
a journalist, very well done, and the way in which the family, you know, is engaged,
and what they found out about the family is just fantastic.
Sarah Tishkoff: Yeah, it's very helpful, yeah.
Linda Heywood: That's how you bring the DNA and those family
stories. And you contrast it -- my students are going to contrast that with the autobiography
of Ralph Bunche, a much more clearer, you know, kind of academic. It's fascinating.
There's a lot that we can do to bring these stories, and there is now, you know, things
available from both the science and the humanities from the journalists -- many of those are
journalists -- doing their biographies. That's all. Thank you very much.
Corey Dade: Well, I'm going to do the journalist thing
and be bossy. We have to end this. Professor Tishkoff, Professor Blakey, Professor Heywood,
thank you so much for a good start to this day. A round of applause for everyone.
[applause]
And we're going to wrap it up here. Of course, they'll be here all day, so if you want to
buttonhole them in the corner, I won't be there to --