In December, I wrote about The Genographic Project that is underway, and how we can each support and participate in the study to find our deep genetic lineage.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (standing), Harvard scholar and series host, and Quincy Jones, music entrepreneur, examine a document, created by Jones, outlining his family lineage. Photo by Graham Judd.

Last night, I came upon the most amazing four-part PBS series called African American Lives, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois professor of the Humanities and chair of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Presumably timed to air during Black History Month, the people involved did a round of fascinating interviews at Washington Post and National Public Radio to publicize the show in addition to creating a comprehensive website at PBS.

The idea was for Gates to trace the lineage of himself and a number of famous African Americans as far back as possible by using historical archives and science. Obviously, they could only go back to the 1700s before Dr. Mark Shriver of Penn State took over.

To his surprise, Gates discovered that not only was his genetic admixture 50% European, his Y chromosome (passed down from the male line) and his mitrochondrial DNA (passed down from the female line) were both European. There is a very touching moment where he joking talks to his students about the irony of the “whiteness” of his genes given his stature in academia.

Once again, this proves to me that the notion of race was created and continues to be a construct of our minds because we superficially categorize of people by their phenotype, that is, their appearance - the color of their skin and the shape of their features. At the genetic level, you can see how ridiculous this is since it is probably common to find “white” black people and “black” white people.

The race issue goes beyond the African American experience. While Gates could trace his roots and those of his guests due to exact record keeping, people like me whose parents fled China have no government records to locate. Chinese didn’t really keep records of births and such in the old days. It was a tremendous insult to my father, having fought for China during the Japanese invasion and WWII on behalf of the Allies that he was considered STATELESS after 1949, with no passport eligibility from any country and no papers to prove a thing. It wasn’t until 1977 that he finally had a country - Canada.

VICTOR MAIR: I see the red beard and the red hair parted in the middle. It’s a distinctive style of Tocharians. He’s wearing a coat with wide lapels on both sides, and then folded over. It’s a shame that these figures have all been defaced by people of other faiths at some time in the past. But still, it’s very easy to see what they looked like, and we can tell who they were.

I have always been considered by Chinese to look “really white”. I always brushed it off, telling them that my ancestors were “northerners”, but when my son was born with strawberry blond hair, I decided to get to the bottom of this one. Because of the uniqueness and the recessive nature of red hair, the discoveries of Victor Mair, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania (more), was the starting point for me. Watch Time Travelers online. The video takes a couple of minutes to load, but it’s worth it.

I will report back as to my lineage in a few months. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.