By Paul O’Brien
To look at me you’d never know it, but my great-great-great-great [“4G”] grandmother was from Nigeria, according to my saliva, all that was needed for the laboratory to make that determination. It is difficult to know which of these two data points would have surprised my parents more — how little we know of our family’s past or how much modern science can tell us. Our family history is pretty murky on both sides, due to early deaths, divorce, transiency, alcoholism, and other assorted human conditions.
There’s no shame in that, I suppose. No doubt, many American families have a cloudy lineage. Fortunately, one of the great things we achieved in the Revolution was to rid ourselves of the trappings of aristocracy. An American needn’t prove his bloodline to seize opportunity or to pursue happiness. Nor do we impute the sins of the offspring to the parent. A joke currently making the rounds illustrates the latter point: only in America can a daughter of a stripper and a drug addict call her grandpa “Mr. President.”
My brother’s reaction to the revelation that we are 1/64th sub-Saharan African was terse and profound: “I just hope it was consensual,” he texted me. Suddenly, the tender fantasy of star-crossed lovers I’d begun to imagine for my “4G” grandparents was gone with the wind. Although the laboratory cannot tell us, and our family history doesn’t record it, my “4G grandmother” was likely a slave. And logic informs us, alas, that my “4G” grandfather was probably her owner. When I saw his text, I shuddered, cringed, sighed, and only then pondered the divulgement…
