In 2002, descendants of African slaves filed a historic class-action lawsuit…demanding reparations from…companies that had benefited from their predecessors.
Reparations lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann was tasked with proving direct links between the plaintiffs and the slave trade, so she submitted to the court DNA tests that traced their ancestry to Africa.
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[W]e know for communities of color, that genetics has not always been a rosy piece of research. I mean, that there have been historical tragedies in the past that would lead particularly African-Americans to be suspicious of genetic testing.…
[O]ne of the things I found, I thought that genetic ancestry testing…was only about the identity piece. But I found that it was also about bigger politics. So, it’s about — it was about the sort of bigger reckoning with American history.…
[W]hat genetic testing…allows is a telescoping back in history in a way to get around [a] kind of historical amnesia…[I]t really telescopes to the past and brings history to the present in a very personal way…The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Can DNA tests help repair social ruptures from transatlantic slavery?
