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Re:Sigrid Johnson Was Black. A DNA Test Said She Wasn’t by jrochkind1 on Sunday November 25, 2018 @04:01PM (#18529006)
Sorry, I didn't mean to accuse you of anything or suggest you "should" have said something different. Just trying to engage in the conversation.

But the point I'm trying to make is that I'm _not_ sure that "it is inevitable that at some point we will have more reliable tests". The problem is not test reliabilily, it's that there is in fact no actual reliable way to map from DNA to "not entirely Caucasian", because there's a basic mismatch there. "Caucasian" is (really!) not a genetic category, there is actually no way to _reliably_ determine someone is "Caucasian" (or "Black", or anything else like that) from a DNA test. It just doesn't work like that. (Even though these DNA ancestry companies make money off people thinking it does).

It's true that at some point some neo-nazi, like anyone else, might have results that seem to tell them something that surprises them or that they didn't want to hear. But the problem is in fact with their ideology in the first place that thinks there is such a thing as "Caucasian" encoded in their genes, when there isn't.

This is interesting though, in the case where someone who thought they were Black thinks a DNA test told them they weren't -- my inclination is to say "Ignore the test, it can not tell you that you aren't Black, because the test just can't say that, don't let it make you insecure in your identity" In the case of a neo-nazi who has a similar experience, I'd _want_ it to make them insecure in their identity, because their identity is based on entirely scientifically unsound ideas about what race means.

That might be a contradiction in my OWN ideology. But it's not a contradiction in the science. Either way, the problem is not just that "the test isn't reliable enough yet", the problem is that "Caucasian" or "Black" can NOT be "reliably" determined by a DNA test, because these categories are simply not sound as biologically/genetically determined categories.

Re:Sigrid Johnson Was Black. A DNA Test Said She Wasn’t by DoreenMichele on Sunday November 25, 2018 @04:08PM (#18529047)
This is a bit too deep for me at the moment. I don't know that much about the science. What little I know about DNA is in service to understanding my genetic disorder.

Have a happy Sunday.