Your Ancestors Are Yours!

Your Ancestors Are YOURS! 

Back in December of 2016 my husband and I purchased 23andMe DNA ancestry testing kits. We saw they were on sale and thought now or never. After waiting 7.5 weeks, we both got our test results back. Unfortunately those results were hogwash because they were the most general and generic results possible. The most disappointing part was that we were both hoping to know which colonized African countries (before European colonialism we didn't have cute boundary markers with countries) we were descended from. We knew there would most likely be a few different countries but we weren't sure which ones so we made our best guesses based on what African friends and strangers told us we looked like.

Check out the videos:

If you are like me, then you might just scroll through the comment section just to witness the shade and any drama taking place. People were very bent out of shape about my original guesstimates about my african dna and the countries I connected to. If anyone was actually listening, they would've heard that I went to East Africa and was told by many East Africans that I looked like them. I have never been told by anyone from Nigeria or Ghana that I looked like their people. So what's a person supposed to think? I was told by a Kenyan IN Kenya that I was one of them. Still people bashed me and said I had self-hate and wanted to not be West African. Which to me, was a very weird insult. I thought to myself what's wrong with being West African? Apparently because of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade some Africans have taken it upon themselves to become arrogant that they were the ones selling West Africans as slaves during that time. Which again to anyone who knows history knows East, Central and West Africans all share DNA that is referred to as Bantu DNA because of the Bantu expansion. But whatever. 

The purpose of this blog post is to write about being a BLACK,African, Indigenous, European, woman and identifying with all the above. I am African. I have DNA that is rooted in every region in Africa. Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Chad, Angola, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. I'll be darn if i let some ethnic supremacist tell me I can only celebrate, identify with, and rep my top 3 regions of dna percentage match. These are MY ancestors and I will celebrate every ancestor I choose because their dna flows through my body. If for some reason my great great great great great grandkids are sandy brown hair, white looking with green eyes, I hope that they will see the 10% african dna and REP the hell out of it! I hope that in this hypothetical situation, they educate themselves on my culture and my struggles and find some way to identify with me. Because that it is the epitome of SELF-LOVE. 

So if you are racially locked into a label and know the ethnicity, nationality and culture of you ancestors REP IT. I don't care if it's .2%, if you have it in you represent you ancestor proudly.