Supporting the use of genetic genealogy in restoring family narratives following the transatlantic slave trade

Abstract

The inferred genetic family tree can be used as a reparative tool to contribute to a more cohesive family narrative after the mass trauma of the transatlantic slave trade (TST). There are weighty social implications to finding such relatedness. Genetic genealogy reconstruction and social interactions with newly discovered relatives may influence identities such as roles (e.g., distant cousin), family (e.g., extended family membership), community, ethnic, and national (e.g., citizenship) identities. They may also influence identity characteristics such as identity status, family narrative, significance, continuity, belonging, and behaviors. Genetic genealogy reconstruction is a viable area of anthropological pursuit that also serves as a form of reparations for people of African descent some six generations after the last recorded slave voyage from Africa to North America.¹

As with other types of archives, human genomes can be used to help people discern information about their family history. One of the primary reasons that African Americans engage in genetic genealogy is to discover the ethnicities of their African ancestors (Dula et al., 2003; Nelson, 2016; Winston and Kittles, 2005). At the “African Genetics and Genealogies: Looking Backward to Look Forward” symposium sponsored by the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota in 2002, Annette Dula stated that “tracing genealogies is important philosophically, ethically, and politically… . It is an attempt to reclaim history, to regain culture, and to gain knowledge and a sense of place that has been denied us” (Dula et al., 2003, 134). While Dula objects to using genetics to reclaim identity, they acknowledge that genetic genealogy testing can provide information about family history (Dula et al., 2003) that could not be obtained any other way. In the same symposium, geneticist Charmaine Royal suggested that because of the psychological weight that some African Americans attribute to genetic genealogy, “we must give this information as much care as we do any other genetic counselling” (Dula et al., 2003, 137). Royal asserts that it is imperative to understand the motivations and expectations of genetic genealogy testing (Dula et al., 2003).

Before the historic diaspora began finding African relatives through autosomal genetic genealogy, the expectation of results regarding African ancestors centered on ancestral ethnicities and homelands. Lineage genetic testing is used to pursue ancestry (Nelson, 2008, 2016; Nelson and Robinson, 2014; Winston and Kittles, 2005), genealogical research (Abel, 2018), reunions and kinship (Fehler, 2011; Nelson, 2008, 2016), ties with ancestral homelands (Fehler, 2011; Nelson, 2016; Schramm, 2012), recasting history, and citizenship (Nelson, 2016). Information from lineage testing sometimes is accompanied by a sense of completeness (Nelson, 2016) or disappointment (e.g., learning that an ancestral lineage in Africa could not be identified from the DNA test results) (Winston and Kittles, 2005). Nelson's (2016) ethnography and other research demonstrate that African Americans are using lineage testing to develop or deepen their sense of genetic kinship among Africans in the ethnic groups inferred by their results (Nash, 2004; Nelson, 2016). While those studies are not about finding African relatives, they are informative about the use of genetic genealogy by members of the historic African diaspora to inform their sense of self.

Highlighting the experiences of the historic African diaspora identifying African relatives, I refer to a quantitative measure of genetic similarity that indicates having a genetic genealogical relationship between an African individual and an African diaspora individual such that their immediate ancestors lived on separate continents for multiple generations from the present time, and their most recently shared ancestor(s) lived within the last 4 to 20 generations (Coop, 2022; David, 2023). Given that human trafficking during the TST ended only about four generations ago for a 50-year-old person or six generations ago from the present day,² the advances in genomic technologies, and the large sizes of consumer genetic genealogy databases, African Americans are using autosomal genetic genealogy to find living African relatives and to infer family networks over several generations (e.g., the relative from Africa is related through which great grandparent?). Furthermore, while there is room for improvement, we have tools for genetic genealogy reconstruction. For example, Tractor (Atkinson et al., 2021), a statistical framework that extracts haplotype segments by assigned population, addresses the issue of working with individuals who descend from multiple ancestral populations that vary in allele frequencies. Using input from maximum-likelihood estimation of recent shared ancestry (ERSA) (Huff et al., 2011) and pedigree reconstruction and identification of the maximally unrelated set (PRIMUS) (Staples et al., 2014), pedigree-aware distant-relationship estimation (PADRE) (Staples et al., 2016) extends our ability to infer genetic genealogies “by correctly detecting up to 83% of seventh- through 13th-degree relationships” (13th-degree relationship is approximately 6th cousins) (Staples et al., 2016, 158). Bonsai is an algorithm similar to PRIMUS that uses maximum likelihoods to infer genetic pedigrees (Jewett et al., 2021).

Mass trauma interrupts a population's ability to develop a cohesive family narrative (Stein, 2009). A person's awareness of their family history profoundly affects their sense of continuity and psychological well-being (Epp and Price, 2008; Kramer, 2011; Stein, 2009). For example, beginning in the 1970s, middle-aged children of Holocaust survivors increasingly developed their family narratives through memory work, such as heritage tourism and oral histories from surviving relatives, to learn about unknown ancestors after war and genocide disrupted their sense of continuity (Stein, 2009). These experiences are informative about African Americans’ drive for genetic genealogy testing. Like the descendants of Holocaust survivors in Stein's (2009) study, African Americans are descendants of ancestors who experienced capture, disruption of family ties, torture, or death (e.g., Hurston, 2018). One important difference is that Africans enslaved in the US experienced mass trauma for multiple generations, ending four to six generations from the present day, making genetic genealogy testing the only means of establishing ancestral continuity for the historic African diaspora in almost all cases.

Identifying relatives from Africa is historically significant because the nature of slavery in the US involved separating enslaved Africans from their kin groups and communities in Africa and attempting to stop them from retaining African names, languages, customs, social organizations, and traditions (Dula et al., 2003; Winston and Kittles, 2005). Slavery made it difficult or impossible to pass down cohesive family and community histories among African descendant peoples in diasporic locations. Producing a coherent family narrative through traditional genealogy is difficult because African American ancestors enslaved in the US were most often unnamed and counted among estate property (e.g., five cows, seven slaves) in the archives used in traditional genealogy. The Slave Schedule of the 1850 and 1860 US censuses most often listed enslaved individuals as a quantity without names but with other demographic information such as age, sex, and color (Ancestry.com, 2004, 2010). Narratives by or about the formerly enslaved relay the horrors of being separated from family members and their quest to find them (for example, Jacobs, 2012). “Last Seen: Finding Family after Slavery,” a project that identifies newspaper ads placed by the formerly enslaved from the 1830s through to several years after the emancipation of 1865, has identified and transcribed over 3,500 ads of individuals looking for family members they were separated from.³ In Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery, Heather Andrea Williams (2012) explains that most quests to find family members remain unanswered.

African Americans are still searching. According to a survey conducted in 2021 by the Pew Research Center, 43% of Black adults in the US searched for information about their family history by speaking with other family members, researching online, or using consumer genetic testing services such as 23andMe or AncestyDNA. Looking specifically at DNA testing, 15% of Black adults have used consumer genetic testing to learn about their family history (14% of non-Hispanic Black adults and 23% of Hispanic Black adults in the US have used consumer genetic testing to learn about their family history) (Cox and Tamir, 2022). Based on another survey by the Pew Research Center in 2019, Black adults use consumer genetic testing at the same rate (i.e., 15%) as all US adults (Graf, 2019). Of that 15% in the 2019 survey, 87% percent tested “to learn more about where their family came from” (Graf, 2019).

It is a false narrative that African Americans do not want to be involved in genomic research. Rather, the demand is to make the research relevant to them. In “A Review of African Americans’ Belief and Attitudes about Genomic Studies,” Scherr et al. (2019) argue that African American distrust of research was a major contributor to their low participation in genetic research (Scherr et al., 2019). The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis is often named as the main cause for this distrust despite the multiple counts of abuse in nonconsensual medical, chemical, and pharmaceutical experimentation, grave robbing for research, forced sterilization, and other forms of documented discrimination that affected African Americans, from slavery times to the twentieth century (Washington, 2008). African Americans are justifiably concerned about the risk of genetic discrimination if they participate in contemporary genomics research projects (Jackson, 1999). Still, in January 1994, an African American group produced the “Manifesto on Genomic Studies among African-Americans” in which it was stated that “African Americans expect full inclusion in any world survey of human genomic diversity” and “a priority will be given to genomic studies that examine the linkage of African Americans to continental African and other Africans of the various diaspora” (Jackson, 1999, 186). The manifesto indicated a clear African American desire for participation (Jackson, 1999). This desire is further evident when considering that Black Americans test with commercial genetic genealogy companies at the same rate as other US adult demographics (Cox and Tamir, 2022; Graf, 2019). In actuality, “admixed individuals [e.g., African Americans] are systematically removed from many large-scale collections … due in large part to the lack of methods and pipelines to effectively account for their ancestry such that population substructure can infiltrate analyses and bias the results” (Atkinson et al., 2021, 195), which was the motivation for the development of Tractor (Atkinson et al., 2021).

Using genetic genealogy to identify living relatives, genealogists studying African American families have used genetics to place contemporary African relatives in their family tree (for example, Collier, 2017). For members of the historic African diaspora, the experience of identifying and interacting with relatives from Africa contributes to changes in family narratives (David, 2022). The shift in social context includes a new group of people with whom to consider personal belonging and familial roles. Consumers can expect that changes in significant others or substantial changes in family messages could lead to a change in family identity (Stets and Tsushima, 2001). Given that the family is also one of the critical agents of ethnic-racial socialization, a change in family identity may also lead to a change in ethnic identity, both of which influence psychological well-being (Else-Quest and Morse, 2015; Hughes et al., 2006; Umaña-Taylor and Hill, 2020). As such, genomic research in genetic family tree inference as a reparative project contributing to a more cohesive family narrative for descendants of families separated by the TST may also contribute to increased psychological well-being among the descendants living in diasporic locations (David, 2022; Nelson, 2016).

Evidence indicates that pursuing genetic lineage is a deeply emotional and introspective journey for participants. This exploration will inevitably unearth painful historical scars. In the case of those of African descent, delving into ancestral genetic genealogy will likely make stories of forced separation, slavery, and various other traumatic events that were endured by their ancestors much more personal. These revelations can stir up emotions of sorrow, anger, and distress. For researchers, anticipating and adequately addressing the emotional weight of these discoveries may pose challenges far more complex than expected in genetic anthropological research. It is essential for researchers to be prepared not only to provide factual historic information but also to offer appropriate guidance and support for individuals confronting these often-painful reveals. And yet, there is indication that the benefit of receiving more personal specifics about African ancestral family history overwhelmingly outweighs the risk of harm given the rate that Black Americans still pursue genetic testing for family history (Cox and Tamir, 2022; Graf, 2019).

Return of results is common practice in professional and personal genealogy practices, and I support returning personalized results to participants in anthropological genetic genealogy as well. However, there are two points of consideration that I will mention here. The first area of consideration is that researchers should carefully avoid reinforcing biological essentialism in their return of results. Genetic testing results require nuanced interpretation within appropriate socio-historical contexts. Researchers should take care to not reinforce the false ideas of biological race, biological ethnicity, or discrete biological groups based on race or ethnicity.

As anthropologists, we must guard against imposed notions of familial or cultural belonging based on the genetic genealogy results. Furthermore, building genetic family trees could be interpreted as an overly simplified technical approach that decontextualizes complex lived experiences. Genetic analysis will always only provide a partial story and should be complemented by oral histories and archival and ethnographic work when possible. Whereas the biological connection becomes evidence of finding family that a research participant's ancestor was a member of in Africa before that ancestor or a close relative of that ancestor was taken in the TST, this should not be interpreted to mean that they have reduced the family to biological relatedness or have elevated biological relatedness over social relatedness. Rather, it is a means of garnering more information to further develop a more comprehensive ancestral family narrative. In an African American population where having fictive kin is a norm, the emphasis on genetic relatedness is a factor of a historical recovery of kinship networks before the mass trauma occurred and not necessarily biological essentialism.

The second area of consideration is for privacy and confidentiality when providing personalized return of results. Like focus group discussions, some types of genetic genealogy research are contexts in which participants are made aware of each other and may be given knowledge of specific DNA segments shared with other participants or become aware of each other's family histories when participants are members of the same genetic network. Distributing results that would typically remain confidential poses ethical dilemmas informed consent and potential emotional or social repercussions. Such interactions necessitate a reconceptualization of traditional research boundaries, ensuring that both the integrity of the study and the well-being of the participants are upheld. This work must be guided by the self-determined interests of African-descended communities themselves. The process of genetic testing might begin a reparative journey for people of African descent, but they are not completing this journey in isolation. We should be attentive to the wishes of African relatives who participate in the research and absolutely adhere to rigorous ethical protocols that center the welfare, dignity, and rights of all individuals and groups involved. Community oversight and participatory action research methods can help safeguard against potential harm as we navigate this reparative terrain.

Genetic genealogy reconstruction is a viable, feasible, and timely anthropological pursuit to reclaim a more cohesive family narrative for descendants of those who were enslaved in the TST (David, 2023).

The ability to do so holds profound implications for members of the historic African diaspora. On a personal level, it facilitates transnational and transcultural bonding, allowing individuals another way to connect with extended kin despite centuries of separation. More broadly, it fosters community development and psychological healing from the intergenerational trauma of slavery, displacement, and racial discrimination. Some may even pursue dual citizenship through a sense of regained heritage, as has been done with lineage testing. While I am never suggesting that genetic ties replace or compete with psychological identification with Africa, genetic ties can provide other psychologically meaningful evidence of specific family connections predating slavery's severing of families. Overall, the quest for healing and belonging motivates this work. Though complex ethical issues remain, thoughtfully applied genomic technologies can restore generational links severed by enslavement's ruptures. By honoring the resilience of ancestors who endured unimaginable cruelty, their children's children move forward on the path toward reparative futures.

I recognize and acknowledge that a substantial portion of this essay was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, which is on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. These lands were the traditional territory of these Native Nations prior to their forced removal; these lands continue to carry the stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity. As a land-grant institution, the University of Illinois has a particular responsibility to acknowledge the peoples of these lands, as well as the histories of dispossession that have allowed for the growth of this institution for the past 150 years. We are also obligated to reflect on and actively address these histories and the role that this university has played in shaping them. This acknowledgment and the centering of Native peoples is a start as we move forward for the next 150 years.

I also recognize and acknowledge that the University of Pennsylvania, where I refined the ideas of this essay, stands on the Indigenous territory known as “Lenapehoking,” the traditional homelands of the Lenape, also called Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indians. These are the people who, during the 1680s, negotiated with William Penn to facilitate the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania. Their descendants today include the Delaware Tribe and Delaware Nation of Oklahoma; the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Ramapough Lenape, and Powhatan Renape of New Jersey; and the Munsee Delaware of Ontario.