Found out I’m mixed race not white

[NewHeritage]

Long story short but an online dna test has discovered one of my parents isn’t biologically my parent. I have found the name of my biological parent and also talked to other “new” relatives online after making contact with them.

I now have a slightly daft question……I don’t know what “race” my parent was. I mean I do, but I don’t know the name/label/category. They were South American, from (British) Guyana and an indigenous American. So what race are indigenous Americans from South America?

Not Latino as British Guyana I don’t think is a Latino country. Not Afro-Caribbean as they weren’t from Africa or the Caribbean (though there is some African ancestry in the mix according to my dna results which makes sense as there were a lot of African slaves in Guyana in the past. So my dna results are like 50% European, 5% African and 45% Indo-american. But is indo-american a race?

Omg, it says his descendants live in Lichfield. So I have dna relatives in Lichfield in the U.K. and also Lichfield in Guyana.

It's entirely up to you how you describe yourself. Mixed race, white, or whatever you feel most comfortable with, and reflects how you feel about your heritage. You don't need to make a decision immediately, take some time to absorb it all and think about it.

Ethnicity estimates on websites like Ancestry, 23andMe, My Heritage are a bit of fun. The main aim of a genealogy DNA test is to match you with other people who have taken the test and this is very accurate. The ethnicity estimates are not so accurate. They can give a general indication of the areas in the ancestry of people who you share DNA with. But it has its limitations - say you have a group of Germans from the same region who all emigrated to the US on the same boat, all moved to the same town, married each other, had kids with each other, for generations. If you do your DNA test as a descendant of one of those people your results are going to point strongly to Germany, even though they were in the US for centuries. It's not an exact science and should be taken as a very general indication only.

@FlightOfTheProcrastinator I feel your pain about having very few matches. I have very few as well. I think it's because my family on both maternal and paternal lines have roots in Scotland going back many hundreds of years. We do not have "where did I come from" questions like people do when they are in the US, Canada or Australia, where if you're not a first nations descendant, everyone came from somewhere else. DNA testing for genealogy is still not a big thing in the UK and often treated with suspicion.

The advice that @NewHeritage has had about contacting specialist facebook groups or family history societies for that specific part of the world is spot on.

🙄

God there's more than one?

I think that many of the town and cities of Central and South America had a substantial 'free' and middle class of local and immigrant people of colour. Shop keepers and dealers in timber or coastal shipping.

Sorry I haven’t got the answer for you and only scanned the replies but I just wanted to reply to say that some of the replies really do seem to dismiss the significance of your new found ethnicity on top of your paternity discovery. It is a huge thing to discover.

I also discovered the same in 2019. The ethnicity change was just as much of a blow as finding out the person that I thought was my father wasn’t, maybe more.

I discovered a great group on fb called DNA NPE Friends I think. Which is a group for people with similar discoveries. They also have a sub group for exploring new ethnicities. As they are mostly Americans on there, there are many with similar ethnicity discoveries to you.

Feel free to pm me if you want to talk to someone with a similar experience. Xx

I hope not to say ‘shit ‘ at all, I try to be rational, sensible (and polite). Of course I see colour! I would have to be blind not to perceive differences in skin tone of a human being, or the difference between a ginger cat and a tabby

But that doesn’t mean I think that one is ‘better’ than the other. You are projecting your own feelings of superiority onto me, ( and I don’t think you are confounding my argument about the problems of forced division, either).

By the way, you have no right to attribute false emotions or bad faith to me. I have given my opinion honestly and I hope politely. I can perceive a difference there, too.

But OP hasn’t faced any differences if she, and presumably everyone she has ever interacted with, assumed she’s white and not mixed race.

The point for OP was around there being a, potentially very interesting, heritage attached to her racial identity. The point around not recognising the experience of others based on race was for the PP who said race is meaningless.

If the survey says 45% Indo-american, I don't think that means indigenous American, but rather American with a Indian ethnic background. They are the largest ethnic group in Guyana. Because after the British government banned the transatlantic slave trade, the British plantation owners imported indentured workers (slaves in all but name) from the British colonies on the Indian sub-continent.

How do you know?

I discovered my ethnicity was different and can recall that every time we visited my mums family in Ireland they always commented on my skin colour... perhaps not majorly significant but just my experience. Plus there are other examples than I won’t share. However my experience does make me think that the op may well have their own experiences that they have not shared.

This will be a traumatic experience have some compassion!

Long story short but an online dna test has discovered one of my parents isn’t biologically my parent. I have found the name of my biological parent and also talked to other “new” relatives online after making contact with them.

If your parents are dead, how can you be sure that a DNA test has shown one of your parents isn't biologically your parent? Don't you need DNA from the parent to compare with the child?

I don't know anything about the companies you used but I do know there has been a lot of publicity that a large number of the DIY DNA ancestry testing is a scam. For example:

https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-test-start-ups-are-pretty-much-scams-here-s-why

Are you sure that you aren't being sucked down a scam rabbit hole here?

Sorry, I’m trying to be vague and muddying the waters. It actually names a specific tribe which I was trying not to mention. Which is definitely indigenous American tribe of South America, I was trying to broaden the wording for reasons of anonymity (failing miserably I think as this is quite niche). I’d come across the term indo-american and thought it meant indigenous american.

If your parents are dead, how can you be sure that a DNA test has shown one of your parents isn't biologically your parent? Don't you need DNA from the parent to compare with the child?

She probably would have noticed if one of her parents was ~90% indo-american.

@NewHeritage I can't help with your question, but I'm really fascinated with family history and ancestry stuff. Have you any idea where or how your bio parents would have met??

Race is determined at conception just like sex. You can't identify as one you're not.

Becuase I have fairly close dna matches with people who I’ve never heard of who aren’t on what I thought was my family tree (so the guy I thought was my dad was interested in genealogy and had done an extensive family tree) and then the ethnicity stuff. so I’ve talked to these matches and two sisters in particular also have a family tree and we’re able to pinpoint which relative they think is prime suspect. Because he was in the U.K. for some time at the right period, my mum was not in Guyana.

Plus there are no matches on the side of who I thought was my dad…..not even distant relatives who I don’t know about. Whereas on my mums side I have hundreds and hundreds of matches.

The best bet would be to ask this cousin how she describes this heritage. Not understanding and asking nicely is appropriate since you were raised in ignorance of all of this.

Remember, this is your heritage, so asking is to be expected. Sounds like your newly found cousin is very nice if they're sharing all this with you.

Fair enough. Have you read White Debt, about the Guyana slave revolt? It's really interesting - if makes me ashamed for my own ancestors (subject any similar DNA test revelation!).

Native Americans were in pre political correctness times classified in the taxonomy of the human species (of which there were just three, which was woefully inadequate) as mongoloid a group including the oriental peoples, polynesians, eskimos and native americans. These original racial grouping were established by looking at physical features rather than DNA, once DNA came on the scene the idea of a clear racial taxonomy fell apart, because no human lineage is pure bred to any one stream, tens of thousands of years of interbreeding have seen to that.
It is suggested that even to have a bash at creating a taxonomy of race based on DNS would need 300 different races just to make a start.
In point of fact we are all entirely unique, like mongrel dogs, and I like that!

There is only one, human, race.

You have discovered an interesting mixture of heritage in your genes. Congratulations and enjoy finding out about the history and geography of human populations.

@HadleyVaughn did you actually read the article you linked to before deciding the genealogy DNA tests are a "scam"?

The linked article is about the sort of DNA testing which tells you that you have an increased propensity to be tall, or have blue eyes, or have depression, or obesity. That sort of testing is NOT OFFERED by Ancestry or MyHeritage. 23andMe does offer some level of health information by looking at whether you have specific genes associated with - for example - an increased risk of breast cancer.

A genealogy DNA test is not a scam - all the sites are doing is looking at your long string of DNA information and picking out matches in other test takers' string of DNA matches. The greater the matches, the closer the relationship.

If you understand the basics of centimorgans and relationships it's VERY easy to pick up when something is not as it should be. We uncovered something simialr on DH's paternal line. He does not match with anyone bearing his surname, but is instead matching with a whole heap of other people with a completely different surname, from the other end of the UK entirely. Why? Because his great grandfather as stated on the birth certificate was not his biological grandfather.

Sorry what I meant was that OP should refer to herself using the terminology she feels most comfortable with and that she feels reflects her racial identity. I’m not explaining it well but I don’t mean akin to the trans ideology debate, rather that race and ethnicity are complex and the labels on offer don’t reflect every individual mix.

How is this helpful?! It's not meaningless to OP.

23andme is not a scam. @NewHeritage Consider asking for help on Reddit.