Page 12 - IAV Digital Magazine #433

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
White Supremacists Taking DNA Tests Sad To Discover They’re Not 100% White
By Maham Abedi
A new study by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has found that white supremacists have been using genetic testing kits in an effort to prove that they have so-called “racial purity.”
But they’re often disappointed to learn that they aren’t, in fact, fully white.
According to UCLA sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan, white supremacists on the online forum Stormfront have been testing them- selves using tools such
as Ancestry.com and 23andMe. The Stormfront group was created in 1995 by Don Black, a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
The sociologists studied more than
3,000 posts on the forum over a decade that dis- cussed genetic testing, and found that many supremacists were shocked to learn they had African or Middle Eastern heritage. The results were revealed at an American Sociological Association meet- ing in Montreal this week.
The study noted that the forum’s senior moderator, John Law, defines being white as “non-Jewish peo- ple of wholly European descent. No exceptions.” Members of the group often spend time debating what being white means.
That’s why many were on the defen- sive when they found that they weren’t 100 per cent European, or “white,” and disput- ed the
findings. Panofsky added that some disregarded the results, saying they knew them- selves better than a DNA test.
“My advice is to trust your own family tree geneaology research and what your grandparents have told you, before trusting a DNA test,” one
user wrote on the forum after receiv- ing what the study describes as “bad news.”
The researchers observed “shaming and discrediting of individuals” who were deemed “non-white” follow- ing the tests.
While the study has been under- way for years, it
holds more reso- nance in the after- math of
the Charlottesville, Va. protests.
Ancestry.com responded to the study, saying that they were “horri- fied by the tragic events” in Virginia.
“To be clear, we are against any use of our product in an attempt to
promote divisive- ness or justify twisted ideologies,” the company said in a statement to
the New York Post.
“People looking to use our services to prove they are eth- nically ‘pure’ are going to be deeply disappointed. We encourage them to take their business elsewhere.”
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine