How Ancestry Sites can Help and Harm

In a couple clicks, your family tree can be full of forgotten memories, both happy and hurtful.

BY: CLAUDIA MINARDI

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I caught an episode of Who Do You Think You Are on TV a couple weeks ago. It was a rerun from 2018 and profiled actress Megan Mullaley. With the help of a researcher, she was presented with birth certificates, newspaper clippings, and official documents of her long-lost family members. 

It was a painful walk down memory lane. Her family history was riddled with alcohol abuse, violence, and suicide. Mullaley was discovering a darker side of her identity. 

Watching the events unfold as an audience member was difficult. It puts into perspective how relatives who lived before you, who will never know of your existence, still have an undeniable effect on who you are as a person. 

Since Who Do You Think You Are is a popular show, they are able to put more money into the research and therefore have more accurate results. Unfortunately, we aren’t all celebrities and don’t have access to the same historians and resources.

For us ordinary people, we have a few options.

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Websites like Ancestry work by making an account and creating a family tree. This is done by inputting any known information about yourself and your family members into the website. Ancestry will then search their database, which is home to over 27 billion records. If there are any links to your imputed information, it becomes a “leaf” that is added to your tree. In some cases, records and other documents could be attached to an ancestor, which is useful in learning more about your lineage. These records are constantly updated and new ones are added to the database on a daily basis.

You can start off with limited information about a relative born at the start of the first world war. Yet, in a few minutes, you have access to their name, date, and place of birth, historical events they witnessed (and context of these moments to understand how it shaped them as a person), a timeline of their life, and many other details that were previously forgotten.

There is also a DNA division of Ancestry, in which users can send in a saliva sample, which is processed by a lab. The results reveal the ethnicities of the participant, in addition to any genetic matches of others who have also taken part in the AncestryDNA test. The company will provide a write-up of any linked relatives and detail their journeys, such as when they immigrated to another country. 

The company 23andMe is another DNA test option. It differs from AncestryDNA, in which users can choose to receive one of two options: results that pertain to their health and ancestry, or ancestry and traits. 

In the last few years, there have been a few conspiracy theories and concerns surrounding the company. It’s been reported that 23andMe actually stores and sells your DNA, despite them having a whole page on their website dedicated to how they value privacy. 

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The repercussions of this decision are already being felt in crime investigations. In order to accurately identify the perpetrator of a crime, a DNA sample from the scene is uploaded to a database and can be linked to any distant relatives that match. From there, authorities go through each member of the family tree until they find the person they are looking for. 

Although this may accurately help close a case, there are ethical dilemmas at play. The most obvious one being that it is a breach of privacy. Those distant relatives may not even know of their relationship with the criminal. Suddenly they are associated with someone they didn’t know existed. Their DNA, which they sent into a 23andMe lab so they could see the breakdown of their ethnicity, is now being used without their knowledge or consent. It has become a part of something much bigger.

Despite these conspiracies, DNA testing kits are still as popular as ever. All you need to do is type “23nadMe” into YouTube and you’re met with countless videos of people reacting to their results. In fact, 23andMe often sponsors YouTubers, so that their product can be promoted in their videos. It doesn’t seem like this is a fad that will merely die down in a year or so. 

The number of programs available to us that trace out family roots reinforces the importance of our own personal history. For so many people, learning about their ancestors is an act of self-fulfillment. It’s a way to learn more about the people, the events, and the places that made you the way you are today.

Unfortunately, not everyone can have the same joyous experiences when tracing their family lineage. 

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Derecka Purnell’s article for The Guardian explains this in detail. Purnell is a black woman who brings an alternate perspective to the hype of these ancestry sites. The very concept of these programs is very eurocentric, benefiting mainly white people whose history can be accurately traced back through generations. However, for people of colour, finding the stories of their ancestors can bring on a lot of pain. 

“I am deeply suspicious of genetic companies that profit from the consequences of slavery, colonialism, and forced migration,” she writes. “And often think: Wait, they stole us, created industries on the backs of our free and forced slave labor, and now they are charging us to find out where they stole us from?” 

Purnell also makes a connection to the security risks mentioned earlier. She says how having access to information as sensitive and personal as one’s DNA brings the risk of power abuse. She states that “black people are particularly vulnerable: our DNA is disproportionately collected, stored, planted, and used against us in criminal proceedings.”

A piece from Psychology Today written by Nathan H. Lents, brings up the negative feelings these ancestry tests can create in regards to adopted individuals. 

“Children and adults who are raised by adoptive families already have a higher likelihood of feeling that they don’t quite fit in,” he states. This isn’t to say we cannot enjoy learning about our genealogy, however it’s important to consider that  “the emphasis on genealogy as a source of identity seems acutely harmful to at least some adopted people.”

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There are inequalities and controversies that come from these private companies who are mostly concerned with making a profit. However, there are additional resources coming to light. For instance, AfricanAncestry is a company from Maryland that specializes in expanding the inclusivity of these DNA testing kits to people of colour. 

“We’re able to be more specific because we have a larger database of African lineage,” co-founder Gina Paige says when asked how they differ from the other ancestry sites. “We are specifically in business to help black people understand where they’re from and who they are. That’s our sole focus.”

Creating a family tree is something of high importance to so many people. I remember being in elementary school and having to trace back my ancestry for a couple school projects. I would chat to my grandparents, asking them about their journeys to Canada and why they decided to immigrate. Then, I would be able to share my story with the rest of the class and listen to my peers recount their own histories. 

Humans are curious beings. We’ve explored the ocean, outer space, and with the tools provided to us, we are exploring more about ourselves.