I Don’t Need a Genetic Test to Know I am an American

23 and huh?

23 and Me is bankrupt, leaving millions of customers’ genetic information available to the highest bidder. Twenty-three refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes in your DNA. The me refers to the narrative of the past which you apply to your present. Perhaps you remember the fellow in the commercial who learned he was part Scottish in his 23 and immediately changed his me to include kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing, and ceilidh dancing? Like that.

It's peculiarly American that a sizable chunk of us want to search for ancestors genetically and then retroactively adopt the historic traditions of places we have never been. Is the man in the commercial now, somehow, Scottish? Does it matter that the traditional kilt was worn for a brief time in the early 1700s, outlawed, then worn in portraits of aristocrats, then, finally in the 19^th century established as “historical” by a family that wanted to claim a royal lineage to the Stuarts? Does it matter, in other words, that the average historical highland Scottish person didn’t wear a kilt or have a clan tartan?

The Invention of Tradition

For more on the invention of “Scottish” and other traditions, see The Invention of Traditions. The tldr on the book is that it was not until the lead-up to WWI that people allied themselves to a nation with national symbols, rituals, and traditions. These new flags, drinks, dances, books, myths, clothes, art, etc. established the tradition of a nation. This provided legitimacy to governments and social cohesion to a society fractured by industrialism.

So if the man in the commercial who “grew up German” but is now “Scottish” could time travel to historical highland Scotland he would find people doing very few things we associate with “Scottish”. (Except, perhaps, fighting and eating sheep.)  

Ye Olde Pumpkin Spice Latte

The invention of nations and traditions in the industrial age created a link to the pre-modern past. Nowadays, our harvest ritual can be completed by going to Whole Foods and ordering the whole shebang. ‘Pumpkin spice’ is marketed as an agrarian throwback to a simpler time. It is no wonder that millions of Americans want to discover their roots in their genes and connect with the before times. It is a way of wondering: what would I have been like without all this modern stuff. It’s a kind of lucid dreaming of the past.

At the root (ha!) of this question is: does your genetic material determine who you are (broadly)? And should it dictate what traditions you perform (specifically)? Few would argue the specific case: a genetically “Irish” person born in Japan will speak fluent Japanese and use chopsticks just fine. Genes don’t dance or wear lederhosen. Yet that seems to be the pitch to consumers of 23 and Me, Ancestry, and other DNA data-gathering companies. Find out what food your ‘genes’ ate – ramen, sauerkraut, or haggis?

Originally, I’m from Europe, the Middle East, and/or North Africa

My friends in China once asked me where I was from. They didn’t mean America. They meant where I was from. After much debate they found the word they needed in the Chinese-English dictionary: mongrel. They were profusely apologetic about calling me this slur and maybe even a little sorry for me. I was not offended. It had never occurred to me that I could be anything else.

Some mongrels are like me. I don’t care what my DNA says about my supposed origins. I check the “white” box on census forms, sure. But what does that mean? Nothing, really (to me). According to census.gov you are white if you are: “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” OK. I am a person having origins in “the suburbs of Chicago” but whatever.

Teaching race as a construct may be officially banned, but anyone who takes a few seconds to consider the racial categories on a census form has all the school they need. Even the US government census page can’t define it. (Which isn’t to say it doesn’t exist in a meaningful way in our daily lives, just that it is a social rather than biological fact.) Look, if race, culture, and tradition were an immutable fact of DNA, we wouldn’t need so many legal cases to define who is and is not “white”.

I know I’m conflating culture, tradition, and race here – but that was exactly the promise of 23 and Me. Find out who your distant ancestors are via genes and the enact the, likely recently, invented culture and tradition of that place. But only the surface, fun traditions. Just because your DNA is part “Spanish” doesn’t mean you have to start an inquisition to prove it. Just, I don’t know, eat some tapas and read Don Quixote. ¹

There’s no “tradition” gene. It’s all invented. Fine. There’s freedom in invented traditions. Invented things can be changed.

I don’t need a genetic test to know I am an American

I am an American with a tradition of tolerance for others.

I am an American with a tradition of freedom of religion.

I am an American with a tradition of welcoming immigrants.

I am an American with a traditional ideal that anyone can become American.

I am an American with a rich tradition of public schools and universities that are the envy of the world.

On the fourth of July the fireworks burst like lines from Walt Whitman, enveloping all of us, the whole multitude of us, in the grand American sky, in the hard-working hands of the immigrant, in the explosion of the artists’ work, in the songs of our many religions, races, and cultures, in the iron potted stir fry of the people, in the care, grace, and love we show neighbors who are not like us — this is the tradition we hold dear and when our fireworks splash across the sky, this is what they say: America, you won’t fall when we all put our shoulders to the wheel, queer and unqueer alike. America, you won’t swerve when we point your fierce hood ornament toward justice, we will lift you up with our better angels, you will not crash in the ditch of intolerance, greed, and fear.

America, we will steer you home.

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1. I am checking my mongrel privilege — DNA tests hit differently for African Americans, Native Americans, adoptees, etc.; I can only speak from my position as a Midwesterner without a cultural tradition beyond “America, United States of”.