Time to Turn to Science
Then, last spring, I learned that Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ph.D., would be speaking in New York, and I knew I had to hear him. With his PBS show, Finding Your Roots, this pioneer in ancestry research has helped many celebrities trace their backgrounds. He's also a proponent of genetic testing kits like 23andMe, now easily available online.
At the end of the lecture, I introduced myself to Gates and mentioned that I was from Oklahoma. His response: "I was going to say you look Native American." My heart sank. Here I was in this room, with a lot of other black people, and didn't look black to Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of our nation's foremost experts on race. I ordered a 23andMe kit the next day. I had to know.
The kit costs $99 and is simple to use. You spit (a good amount) into a plastic vial, close it up, and send it off. It takes about three weeks to get your ancestry reports. The wait felt like an eternity.
When the email arrived, I was with two of my best friends, Rightor and Elizabeth. I held up my phone, pointing to the message that would reveal my race, my identity, my everything. They went silent.
When I'd dispatched my kit, it had never occurred to me that I might not be ready to receive this information. Now I realized: I didn't want to open the email—not yet. Suddenly, certainty didn't seem so exciting.
Rightor whispered, "I do still hope you're part black. You're our half-black friend." We all laughed. I'd gotten used to being the brown friend among white friends. Now this message had the power to change my idea of myself.
I had taken the test last June, in a time we could call pre-Ferguson, pre-Eric Garner, two tragedies that drastically shifted the conversation around race in our country. Now, as the email waited in my inbox, I watched what felt like injustice on repeat. I kept asking myself, Where do I fit in?
When I went to the Millions March NYC protest in December, I stood shoulder to shoulder with blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics. Still, I wondered: What am I, here in this crowd? One of the oppressed? An empathizer? An outsider? I realized that while I'd been searching for the answer to what I was, I'd also been looking for affirmation of the black part of me. I wanted to belong to that group because I did identify myself in that way. But what if technically, genetically, I didn't belong? I was scared to find out.
The test results sat in my inbox for months. Then, one day, it hit me: I could know or not know. Live my life being safe, like I've always done, or take this leap. I was searching for answers, but did I actually want to hear them? I hadn't been ready before; now all of a sudden, for some reason, I was.
