“Add up all my Black”: understanding race and genetic ancestry through critical interpersonal and family communication

ABSTRACT

Critical interpersonal and family communication (CIFC) contributes a context and lens for analyzing the intersections of race, communication, and genetic ancestry tests (GATs). This essay presents a discourse analysis of GAT reveal videos by Black content creators. Interpersonal communication—between the people in the videos and between them and online audiences—is a vehicle through which people narrate into meaning complex ideas of genetics and race. Results of this analysis show that Black content creators situate genetic ancestry within ongoing communication about identity. The videos work to “prove” Blackness and mark the significance of naming the self, often by conflating ideas of Blackness and genetic ancestry. CIFC as an analytic uncovers the paradox in which GAT discourse is both liberating and oppressive within relational spheres.

KEYWORDS:

• critical interpersonal and family communication (CIFC)
• genetic ancestry test (GAT)
• race
• discourse analysis
• social constructivism

Notes

1 Antonio Regalado, “More than 26 Million People Have Taken an At-Home Ancestry Test,” MIT Technology Review, February 11, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/11/103446/more-than-26-million-people-have-taken-an-at-home-ancestry-test/.

2 Ancestry, “Ancestry Surpasses 15 Million DNA Customers,” Ancestry Blog, May 31, 2019, https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2019/05/31/ancestry-surpasses-15-million-dna-customers/.

3 Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century (New York: The New Press, 2012), 4.

4 Brenda J. Allen, “Theorizing Communication and Race,” Communication Monographs 74, no. 2 (2007): 259–64.

5 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2015).

6 Lisa A. Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization: The Imperative of Racial Rhetorical Criticism,” Review of Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 4–24.

7 Allen, “Theorizing Communication and Race.”

8 Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama, “Communication as Raced,” in Communication As … Perspectives on Theory, ed. Gregory J. Shepherd, Jeffrey St. John, and Ted Striphas (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 76.

9 Kent A. Ono, “Critical: A Finer Edge,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 93–96.

10 Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (Chicago: African American Images, 2003); Flores, “Between Abundance and Marginalization”; Rachel Alicia Griffin, “Critical Race Theory as a Means to Deconstruct, Recover and Evolve in Communication Studies,” Communication Law Review 10, no. 1 (2010): 1–9; Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek, “Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, no. 3 (1995): 291–309.

11 Julia Moore and Jimmie Manning, “What Counts as Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication Research? A Review of an Emerging Field of Inquiry,” Annals of the International Communication Association 43, no. 1 (2019): 40–57.

12 Shardé M. Davis, “When Sistahs Support Sistahs: A Process of Supportive Communication about Racial Microaggressions among Black Women,” Communication Monographs 86, no. 2 (2019): 133–57; Christin DePouw, “Intersectionality and Critical Race Parenting,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 31, no. 1 (2018): 55–69; Mackensie Minniear and Jordan Soliz, “Family Communication and Messages about Race and Identity in Black Families in the United States,” Journal of Family Communication 19, no. 4 (2019): 329–47; Jordan Soliz and Kaitlin E. Phillips, “Toward a More Expansive Understanding of Family Communication: Considerations for Inclusion of Ethnic-Racial and Global Diversity,” Journal of Family Communication 18, no. 1 (2018): 5–12.

13 Charmaine D. Royal et al., “Inferring Genetic Ancestry: Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 86, no. 5 (2010): 661–73.

14 Angela L. Putman and Kristen L. Cole, “All Hail DNA: The Constitutive Rhetoric of AncestryDNA^TM Advertising,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 37, no. 3 (2020): 207–20.

15 Jimmie Manning, “Communication Is … The Relationship,” in Communication Is … Perspectives on Theory, ed. Adam Tyma and Autumn Edwards (San Diego, CA: Cognella, 2020), 33–48.

16 Anita Foeman, “Science and Magic: DNA and the Racial Narratives That Shape the Social Construction of Race in the USA,” Intercultural Communication Studies 18, no. 2 (2009): 14–25; Anita Foeman, Bessie Lee Lawton, and Randall Rieger, “Questioning Race: Ancestry DNA and Dialog on Race,” Communication Monographs 82, no. 2 (2015): 271–90.

17 Michael Omi, “‘Slippin’ into Darkness’: The (Re)Biologization of Race,” Journal of Asian American Studies 13, no. 3 (2010): 343–58; Roberts, Fatal Invention.

18 Moore and Manning, “What Counts as Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication Research?”

19 Alondra Nelson and Jeong Wong Hwang, “Roots and Revelation: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the YouTube Generation,” in Race after the Internet, ed. Lisa Nakamura and Peter A. Chow-White (London: Routledge, 2011), 291–309.

20 Ibid.

21 James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2011).

22 TheHodgetwins, “Hodgetwins You Are Not Black DNA Results @Hodgetwins,” YouTube, November 10, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EDNX47S20; see also TheHodgetwins, “Hodgetwins You Are Not Black @hodgetwins,” YouTube, March 26, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM1dpBXvRRc.

23 Ceraadi, “We Took a DNA Test … Are We BLACK!? Are We Sisters? PART 1,” YouTube, April 19, 2020, https://youtu.be/IRT-QTk8syA; “We Got Our DNA Test Results!!! Are We BLACK?! Are We SISTERS? PART 2,” YouTube, May 19, 2020, https://youtu.be/cIZZjnnIr5k.

24 Fearless Angi, “ANCESTRY DNA RESULTS! | Guyanese Jamaican American,” YouTube, December 20, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJIXHlrPnAw.

25 Wendy D. Roth, “The Multiple Dimensions of Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39, no. 8 (2016): 1310–38.

26 Eboni Elexis, “Who’s More African??? | Ancestry DNA Results!” YouTube, January 8, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLungVK5HdU.

27 Alondra Nelson, “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry,” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 5 (2008): 759–83.

28 Nelson and Hwang, “Roots and Revelation.”

29 Stuart Hall, “Race, the Floating Signifier: What More Is There to Say about ‘Race’? [1997],” in Selected Writings on Race and Difference, ed. Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), 359–73.

30 Manning, “Communication Is … The Relationship.”