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DNA kits have become hilarious, painfully unaware self parodies of
the will toward cultural appropriation. (Just for one example:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84LnTrQ2us8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84LnTrQ2us8</a> ) Of course I say this
as a citizen of the U.S. Our context is particular and perverse, one
in which some substantial proportion of the white population
believes they are in the "blood line" (we still have a lot of strong
premodern beliefs like "the blood"...) of indigenous North American
peoples. Most of whom we killed, so the common case of whites who
make very strong claims to native ancestry is particularly perverse.
It is only ~100 years since the open, armed hunting of native people
was still taking place here, basically unopposed by civil society,
even in now liberal California. Actually I live in one of the last
places in the US where this genocidal practice was commonly
practiced, and is well documented. But people in my state hardly own
up to it, and my own University system is deeply implicated. (Look
up the history of Kroeber Hall at Berkeley, for example.) To put a
personal spin on the matter, I have a couple of true believers in my
own very white family. Honestly, people who have "dream catchers",
believe they are part of a tribe - they are not registered and can
not register with any actual tribe - and who believe that their
blood puts them in deeper touch with the spirits of the land. I am
not popular at family events, as you might imagine;-) Calling these
false beliefs out, even among whites only, is still quite incendiary
here.<br>
<br>
An other example of the obscene nature of this common identity theft
comes in the figure of US senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
She was raised with these false beliefs, that she had natives in her
family tree, and yes I do believe she has suffered a lot of well
deserved embarrassment in the process of slowly coming around to
personally owning her false family narrative. She is an otherwise
sympathetic figure in most ways, and I should note, our president
has belittled her in an explicitly racist manner, demonstrating the
continuum between the soft and hard forms of racism in my country.<br>
<br>
DNA is fraught, we should be very careful call it out when we see it
used as an identity prop for cultural appropriation. Our networks
are full of this kind of theft and positioning, as if such reductive
DNA results can possibly mean more than our experience within the
more tangible web of social relations; how we individually
experience privilege and discrimination. (Including generational
effects.)<br>
<br>
Or that your DNA is what makes you a German or a Scot, as in the
ridiculous commercial for Ancestry [.com] But in the US, the
commercial shows how common these weird and often racist beliefs
are. It is so sick, I feel like there must be lot of cultural
specificity to it. I'd love to hear about how these DNA kits are
playing out in other places.<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/18/2018 07:37 AM, lizvlx wrote:<br>
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<div class="PlainText">----------empyre- soft-skinned
space----------------------</div>
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<div class="PlainText">_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></div>
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