The ancestry of a 21st century multi-racial American family

My wife identifies as African American and was born and raised in Ohio. I identify as white and was born and raised in Alabama. We met while serving together in the Peace Corps in Thailand.

As our kids grow older we've become fascinated by our family's ancestry, so we recently completed autosomal DNA tests to fill in the gaps on our family trees. The results came in today.

My ancestry breaks down as 3% from Africa (divided between northern Africa and Mali), 95% from Europe (with Great Britain at 30%, Europe West at 26%, Ireland at 17%, Scandinavia at 13%, and other regions like Greece and Italy at 9%), and the Middle East at 2%.

Here's my ancestry map. The darker the shading the more ancestry I have from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

Jason's ancestry map. The darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

My wife's ancestry breaks down as 46% from Africa (with Cameroon/Congo at 14%, Nigeria at 11%, Senegal at 10%, and other regions at 11%), 13% from Asia (with India at 11% and other regions making up the remainder), Europe at 38% (with Ireland at 16%. Europe West at 13%, and other regions at 9%), and Pacific Islanders at 2% and trace readings for other regions.

Here's my wife's ancestry map. 

My wife's ancestry map. Again, the darker the shading the more ancestry from that region. Outlined regions indicate lower percentages and trace readings.

A lot of this matches up with what we already know from our family histories, but a good bit doesn't. My wife didn't know about her ancestors from the Asian region. I didn't know about the small amounts of African/Middle East ancestry, although since I'm from the American South I'm not overly shocked. We're also amused that we share almost identical ancestry percentages from Ireland.

So what do these percentages mean? Well, one way of looking at this is to compare the percentages of DNA we all share with our recent ancestors. Here's that breakdown:

• Parents: We share exactly 50% of our DNA with each parent
• Grandparents: 25% for each grandparent
• Great-grandparents: 12.5%
• Great-great-grandparents: 6.25% 
• Great-great-great-grandparents: 3.13%
• Great-great-great-great-grandparents: 1.56%

If you have 3% ancestry from a region that could mean one of your great-great-great-grandparents lived there. Or it could mean many ancestors had parts of their ancestry from there. Or it could even result from the margin of error of the DNA test (the lower the percentage the greater the chance of an error).

Of course, the fun part of human ancestry is that you don't have to go back very far to discover that all people are related. If you go back 10 generations, say around 200 years, you have 512 ancestors. If you could track your family tree back 600 years or a mere 30 generations, you'd discover that you have more than 500 million ancestors, or more people than lived in the world at that time.

Obviously we can't be descended from more people than existed at a time, which means everyone's family trees branch in and out of themselves. It also means the next time someone says they're descended from William the Conqueror or Genghis Khan or Cleopatra you can simply tell them so are you.

I understand the limitations of DNA tests, but they are still fascinating tools to explore our shared histories. Especially when you're part of a multi-racial family in the 21st century.

Story of the week: "An Ocean of Eyes" by Cassandra Khaw (with a few words about Lovecraft's influence)

My new story of the week is "An Ocean of Eyes" by Cassandra Khaw from The Dark, an excellent magazine of subtle horror and dark fantasy. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's famous short story "The Cats of Ulthar," Khaw's story explores the modern town of Ulthar as seen through the interactions between an obnoxious womanizing tourist and Sigrid, a local woman he desperately wants to claim as his own.

The story is disturbing even if you aren't familiar with Lovecraft's original tale. Khaw's story is also an excellent exploration of obsession and how far too many people are willing to go to force their desires onto others — even when that desire is neither wanted nor reciprocated. As the tourist says in explanation of his increasingly desperate actions, “All maybes become a yes."

Except they don't. Or they shouldn't. As Khaw showcases so perfectly.

On a side note, there has been a lot of silly commentary lately about the decision to remove Lovecraft's image from the World Fantasy Award statue, with a few extreme critics like S. T. Joshi even saying that the "changing of the award is an implicit rejection of Lovecraft’s literary status." Which is, of course, nonsense. Lovecraft's influence on dark fantasy and horror isn't going to disappear merely because his likeness no longer resides on an award which makes a claim to represent the entire world of fantasy literature. 

Lovecraft's influence derives directly from the many authors over the decades who have done like Cassandra Khaw and written and played in his world. Lovecraft was not a great literary wordsmith — as proof, read "The Cats of Ulthar," which is more an idea of a story, a summary of a story, than a true story with fleshed-out characters, a developed plot, and rising and falling action. But his legacy is secure because of all the authors and creators who took his ideas and ran with them.

Despite what critics like Joshi say, most people are able to appreciate Lovecraft's influence on horror and fantasy while also knowing that Lovecraft is not an appropriate figure to represent all that horror and fantasy can be in this day and age.

No matter the desire of these critics to force the world to stay the same, change has happened. And that is good.

Stop Duotrope's attempt to own authors' personal submission data

Years ago I praised Duotrope's website, finding it a useful way for authors to track submissions and research thousands of writing markets. In many ways Duotrope began as an online alternative to the long-running Writer's Market series of books, with the added benefit that Duotrope compiled users' submission data, enabling them to create statistical reports on markets. Writers found this data invaluable and many of us, including myself, worshipped at the Duotrope altar.

After starting life as a donation-supported resource for writers, Duotrope eventually changed to a subscription-based website. While I disagreed with this change I understood it. Even though I drifted away from using Duotrope for my own submissions I still recommended the site to other writers.

I've now come full-circle. I'm currently writing so many short stories that I again need an online submission-tracking system. However, when I checked out Duotrope to see if I wanted to subscribe to their system I discovered something disturbing.

According to Duotrope's terms of service, "Any data downloaded from this website, including but not limited to submission histories, is strictly for personal use and may not be shared with any third parties or used for commercial purposes."

What does this mean? It means that if you upload your submission information to Duotrope, you no longer have the right to use your own data as you see fit. You can't use the data to write an article about submissions for a magazine or upload your data to another online submission system such as the site run by Writer's Market. Basically, once you use Duotrope you can't leave and take your data elsewhere.

Duotrope also attempts to make a blatant copyright grab, with their terms stating "The website and its database are also protected as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and treaties. All individual articles, pages and other elements making up the website are also copyrighted works. Use of any of these original works without written permission of Duotrope LLC is expressly forbidden."

Duotrope is skating on thin ice here because you can't copyright data. But combine this copyright statement with their terms of use for the data and Duotrope is essentially saying they own any submission data uploaded to their system by authors.

I hope Duotrope will clarify the language in their terms of service and state clearly that authors who use their system retain all rights to their own personal submission data, including the right to take their data to other submission systems is they choose.

Duotrope's is valuable because of the authors entering data into their systems. Without a large sampling of authors using their system, their statistics become worthless.

Until Duotrope clarifies this situation, and affirms that their users own their personal submission data and can do with it as they desire, I suggest authors avoid this website.
 

Update: Someone pointed out to me that website terms of service are the legal equivalent of a signed contract. One more reason Duotrope needs to change these terms.

In our times

We knew the shrieks and wailing would come. The moment the people behind the World Fantasy Award decided not to have an "avowed racist" on their award statue the screams began. They complained that this was merely political correctness and the "shrill whining of a handful of social justice warriors."  They said this was an attempt to remove Lovecraft from genre history. They said this wasn't fair because Lovecraft was merely a man of his racist times.

I'm not going to link to the people making these arguments because you can find them easily enough. But I do want to comment on that last point from Lovecraft apologists, the so-called "man of his times" argument. That poor Lovecraft merely reflected the racism of his day and age.

Except he didn't. He was far more extreme in his racism than other authors of his time. His friends and colleagues wrote about this extreme racism because it disturbed them. This is simple history. Look it up.

But despite what the whiners and wailers are saying, this isn't an attempt to remove Lovecraft from genre history. No one will ever be able to do that. Instead, this is an attempt to make a statement about world fantasy in our times. Because having Lovecraft on the award speaks volumes about our times. The award is being given out today, not a hundred years ago. It represents who we are as a genre in this day and age. 

And those making the "of his times" argument should realize they are also being judged by their actions in this, our times.

For in our times people are sending death threats to the black woman who wrote of her unease with receiving an award shaped in the head of a hard-core racist — threats which aren't being sent to the man who actually started the petition to remove Lovecraft from the award (or to the thousands who supported that petition).

In our times people are attacking women and people of color merely for saying they are also and have always been a part of genre fandom.

In our times the genre has never been stronger, reaching a diverse world-wide audience through movies and video games and literature. Yet there are those who complain every time a person of color is given a prominent role in a franchise film series or a woman takes a lead role in a genre blockbuster.

All of these things are happening in our times. Yet instead of focusing on any of these or countless other genre issues in this, our times, these Lovecraft defenders merely complain about the removal of a racist from a world fantasy award.

They may think this doesn't represent who they are in this, our times. But it does. And it speaks volumes about both them and our times.

Story of the week: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

I've been reading lots of excellent novellas lately and my new story of the week — Binti by Nnedi Okorafor — continues this trend. This futuristic story follows Binti, a sixteen-year-old woman of the Himba people in Namibia, as she leaves Earth to study at a university on a distant planet.

Binti is conflicted about her choice to leave her homeland because leaving is almost taboo among her people. This conflict intensifies when Binti's spaceship is attacked by hostile aliens, an attack that forces her to make decisions which will affect the entire future of not only humanity but countless other alien races.

Binti is an exciting science fiction story set in a future like nothing I've ever read in the SF genre. And to tie in with the comments I made a few days ago about gateway stories for bringing new readers to science fiction, Binti is just such a story. Binti can be read and enjoyed by both people who haven't previously read science fiction and by long-time genre readers.

That's a very difficult feat to pull off, but Nnedi Okorafor succeeds perfectly with Binti.