When Genetic Ancestry is Given Social Power
Written By: Samiksha Lingan | May 1, 2025
Brief intro by Benita Arun:
This essay explores the way genetic ancestry testing, when given social superiority, can distort our understanding of race, culture, and identity. It highlights how the sole reliance on DNA to determine our identity and personality can overshadow lived experience, cultural heritage, and community connection — all of which are vital components of mental and emotional wellness. When identity is reduced to biology, it can create confusion, disconnection, and even harm, especially for students navigating questions of self and belonging. True wellness involves honoring the full, complex story of who we are — not just what’s in our genes. And that is what Samiksha, a 2nd year college student studying in UC Berkeley, conveys through her intellectual, insightful, and very well-researched essay.
In a world becoming increasingly data-centered, it is no surprise that we as humans are growing more focused on the knowledge and history stored in our cells, in the over three million kilobase pairs we call DNA. This natural, internal data is so valuable that some go to great lengths to piece together the stories it tells, putting their trust–and DNA–in the hands of genetic ancestry testing. It must be made clear that genetic ancestry and race are not identical. DNA ancestry tests are a type of genetic test ordered by and sent directly to consumers that typically involve mailing away biological information in the form of saliva samples. Genetic ancestry testing is a fairly new industry whose attractors are the ability to “fill in one’s family tree”, understand one’s abilities to metabolize various pharmaceuticals, etc. This industry capitalizes on many consumers’ desire to understand their genetic background, and its marketing tactics seem to tie genetic information to identity, “familial, geographical, or personal”, and even reinforce the idea that one’s genes are closely connected to one’s personality (Jones et al., 2020). In some cases, results are used to stake a claim in communities that an individual otherwise would not have identified with. Similarly, even minute patterns in genetic data can be hyperbolized in political arguments, as for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2018 and 2019 (Nilsen, 2019). The insights offered by genetic testing undermine the value of ethnic and cultural legacy via genetic inheritance and the Western glorification of science above non-Western tradition, oral history, etc. Genetic ancestry testing has the potential to inspire meaningful conversations about our similarities. Yet, many of its mainstream applications reinforce long-standing Eurocentric narratives about “biological race” and trivialize public discourse on race with arguments made by individuals who have fallen victim to pseudoscience.
The treatment of ancestry test results as primary influences on identity and narratives associated with one’s race perpetuates the prioritization of science over non-European customs in our understanding of identity and race. For example, in one 23andMe advertisement, a man expresses that “fifty-two percent of [his] DNA comes from Scotland and Ireland”, and in the next scene, the same man is wearing a kilt (Parvaneh, 2019). The advertisement is about more than adopting attire tied to a region featured in one’s test results. It promotes the idea that when one identifies a region in their results that they previously were not aware they had any ties to, it is acceptable to suddenly identify with this region and its people, altering one’s identity, yet excluding personal experiences or environment. Furthermore, these results have varying levels of accuracy depending on the reference genomes available to each company, and one company’s analysis can differ from another's. If genetic makeup determines race, as many argue, and these genetics are disputed by different tests, how, then, can race be deduced? This outlook further prioritizes scientific research in identity formation, effectively invalidating oral tradition and lived experiences that many marginalized communities use to define their history and kinship.
Many communities whose genomes are sequenced as references for consumer genetics have been exploited by the processes collecting their data, resulting in a distrust of the industry’s colonialist practices. Oral narration and the inheritance of cultural history for many indigenous communities have also been wrongfully discredited by Western scientists in the past. For example, Thor Heyerdahl, an experimental archaeologist, claimed that the Polynesian islands were populated by South American natives rather than individuals who sailed out of Taiwan thousands of years ago, setting indigenous Polynesians’ “culture ... and acknowledgement as the greatest seafaring communities in human history... back a while” (Fox, 2025). When one takes an ancestry test and learns part of their genome is linked to a community, it is ironic to suddenly identify with that community through a practice that exploits the community’s data and devalues its kinship.
Furthermore, ancestry test results can be used to support theories that have harmed underrepresented groups. Eugenics is a pseudoscience built on genetic determinism and the claim that characteristics such as behavior, cognitive ability, and socioeconomic status are the result of “undesirable” DNA. Eugenics expanded to apply to certain races and individuals with various conditions thought of as “inferior”, and the pseudoscience eventually infiltrated governments in the United States and Nazi Germany, where there were forced sterilizations and mass killings of “inferior” individuals (Nielsen 2025). W.E.B. Du Bois worried that race was being employed as a biological reason for social variations among different groups in the United States, asserting that labels like “black” and “white” disregarded human variation. Today, many scientists agree that “race is a social construct without biological meaning”, especially because variation between different supposed “races” is smaller than variation between individuals (individuals are only 0.5% genetically different) and because many communities define their races using shared lived experiences and values (Gannon, 2016). In other words, these “races” previously thought to be determined by genetics are more similar than eugenicists and other scientists, like geneticist David Reich, claim. (Kahn, et al., 2018).
R.A. Fisher, the father of modern statistics, expressed that races vary greatly “in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development”. Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times contributor, in A Troublesome Inheritance, claimed “there is indeed a biological basis for race,” and described that each race has different genes influenced by natural selection that control “some aspects of brain function”. (Nielsen, 2025) When influential figures frame DNA as the determinant of race and attribute behavior and cognition to genetics, the public gains a new perspective with little basis in true science. Many use this new perspective and manipulate scientific findings to further discriminate against marginalized communities and prove the “superiority” of their “genetic race”. In 2017, white nationalists openly guzzled milk to highlight the ability to digest lactose after childhood, a trait “more common in white people than others”, and urged individuals who “can’t drink milk” to leave the United States (Harmon, 2018). While this application of misrepresented science seems trivial, it speaks volumes about modern white supremacists. Although there are no “biological races”, hateful people dedicated to a fabricated hierarchy aim to incite pride in harmful rhetoric using data uncorrelated with the “biological race” they are devoted to. “Lactose tolerance” can be observed in populations descended from pastoral communities, like “the first cattle herders in Europe from 5,000 years ago” as well as “cattle breeders in East Africa”, meaning it is not linked to the white race alone. This prevents discourse about genetic similarities and the potential for genetic tests to reveal one’s connections to surrounding individuals.
By allowing genetic ancestry tests to influence how we regard ourselves and interact with others, we strip qualities like shared ideals and hardships, and immersion in customs of their roles in identity formation. Although using ancestry tests to determine one’s perception of oneself can undermine true influences on identity, they can help consumers appreciate the diversity and resemblance between humans. However, this potential for the consumer genetics industry cannot be reached unless the industry's customers acknowledge that one’s genetic code does not automatically alter kinship. Our understanding and interpretation of race is nuanced and cannot be easily dictated by scientific assertions.
References
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