When is a Zulu Not a Zulu?

There is a storm brewing.

video: What Can DNA Tell Us About Race,
One of the leading authorities on race and science, Troy Duster discusses how the understanding of race is being reshaped by the genomics revolution. Sometimes unintentionally and sometimes not so innocently, genomics may be generating a new and more sophisticated racism, not so different from the eugenics-based and criminological racism that flourished in decades gone by.

Troy Duster bursts the balloon underpinning the Ancestry By DNA business.
DNA Print Genomics, a very well funded private research institute "helps police" to use DNA to catch a suspect implicated in a murder case. The case had been unsolved for years. The research institute happened to have a side business that claims it trace DNA back ten generations (about 300 years). The purpose? to help those who want to know where they are from, originally. This kind of search is particularly poignant for the African diaspora who endured separation and disconnect during the Middle Passage. The European slave trade was good business from the 1400s to about 1850 and it appears to be a perennial money spinner. There are plenty of customers. Ancestry.com report USD140 million revenues for FY2005 mostly by annual subscriptions.

Turns out that HUGO lets your ancestry be traced on both sides of parentage. You could always trace your REAL father via the Y chromosomes. Now, with genetic engineering, you can trace your real mother through mitochondrial DNA [mDNA]. Ability to trace ancestry via mother is especially important in societies where women have been raped, yet denied, for generations. Many African-Americans have some yurugu blood originating from this crime. They are not trying to disprove yurugu genes. The desire is to connect with the African heritage. Or to establish how many drops of blood... not.

Step up, Oprah Winfrey, who just knows and feels that she is Zulu. Now she has enough money to set up a research facility in Africa to enable the heritage to gain technological capabilities in genomics and biotechnology. And "Skip" Gates who may not have as much wealth, but keeps the wolf off the door by sending other (black) sheep out. And TD Jakes who fleeces them and plucks out their eyes on the way out, amen. Skip wants to know if DNAprints can help. Surprise, surprise, they "confirm" that Oprah is not Zulu after all. Seems that Oprah or Skip could not gather the strength to ask if Oprah is of the Yoruba or Ibo or any other Bantu nation. Seems they could tell all Africans had disowned Gates and Jakes.

How can you say someone is not a Zulu when you cannot sample the DNA of Zulus in the 1500s? Indeed, the only job of the Human Genome Project (HUGO) is to enable eugenicists to make racist supremacy statements while withholding the technology that allows their claims to be independently proven. It is a genocidal weapon, not a solution.