Criticism
Due in part to a centuries-old history within the United States, historical experiences pre- and post-slavery, and migrations throughout North America, the vast majority of contemporary African Americans possess varying degrees of admixture with European ancestry. There is popular belief that a majority of African Americans also have Native American ancestry, but it may be much less frequent.
With the help of geneticists, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. put African American ancestry in these terms:
- 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one great-grandparent);
- 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one grandparent);
- 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50 percent European ancestry (equivalent of one parent); and
- 5 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5 percent Native American ancestry (equivalent to one great-grandparent).
Critics suggested the program did not fully acknowledge or inform guests (and the audience) that not all ancestry may show up in the tests. The genetic tests done on direct paternal or maternal line evaluate only a few ancestors among many. Ancestral information markers (AIM) must also be done to form a more complete picture of a person's ancestry. For instance, MtDNA testing is only of direct maternal ancestors. Unless other ancestry is evaluated, a person may miss a paternal line's connection to Europe. This gives a false impression that the person has little heritage of another ethnic group. AIM markers are not as clearly defined for all populations as suggested, and depend on data still being accumulated. Historic populations migrated, which also influences results. Particularly, critics note that genetic analysis is incomplete related to Native Americans, and new genetic markers for these populations may be identified.
Read more about this topic: African American Lives
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)