I’s (getting) married now!

Squeeeee worthy? I think so.

To save you all from the deluge of wedding ideas that I want to share, I’ve created a new tumblr specifically for these thoughts. Follow if you like to read about wedding-y stuff.

I recently posted this on FriendFeed and thought it would be a good idea to post on my blog as well:

For the days leading up to Black History Month, I will do a cursory Family Tree for any African-American folks that ask me. The only caveat? You have to be willing to post your tree somewhere (blog, FriendFeed, Facebook, twitter, etc) during Black History Month.* Why? I think AfAms need a better understanding of who we are and where we come from. Interested? Email familytreeme@ericabaker.com.

To expand, I define cursory as “as many generations I can go back without having to jump over many hurdles”. This normally gets me back to the 1870s for most African-Americans and if the data is good, I can go further.

To get started, I’ll need the names and if possible, birthdates and birthplaces of your grandparents. The tree I generate will work backwards from them.

Once done, I’ll give you a list of all the people in the tree, the actual tree itself, and the GEDCOM format file in the case you want to upload and continue working on the tree in Geni or another family tree tool. If applicable, I’ll also provide interesting supporting documents (Freedmen’s Bank Records, Draft Registration cards, wills, etc).

Please feel free to pass this on to others.

*Why the necessity to post during Black History Month? Reminding people that Black History is more than just remembering the efforts of civil rights activists and celebrating African-American inventions; it’s our history.

A while back, I told you all I finally spent the money and did the 23andMe thing and I promised I’d report back with results. Well, better late than never right?

Applicable Ethnicity? Mostly European.

While the 23andMe health data is pretty good and comprehensive, unfortunately, the research in that area has been focused mostly on people of predominantly European heritage (more on this later in the post). African Americans like me will still show results in this area but I’m taking the reports with a grain of salt.

Aside from the health data, 23andMe has added quite a bit of really interesting Ancestry data. For example, apparently my maternal haplogroup is L2c1, a haplogroup common among the Mandenka of Senegal, according to 23andMe.

They also do this really interesting thing called Ancestry Painting. It basically matches each little bit of your DNA to where it most likely originated. Based on my Ancestry Painting (in the image below) I’m 20% European. The history of slavery makes this entirely unsurprising.

100% Mutt

23andme recently released a new Ancestry feature in Beta called Relative Finder.  The feature will be released to all users in early January and from what I’ve seen of Relative Finder so far, this could be a complete game changer for those of us interested in Genealogy. Check out the portion of my Relative Finder results pictured below.

Hello European relatives of mine.

As an African American, this is Huge. Think about slavery for a moment. Those European roots included in my Ancestry Painting will never be documented anywhere and up until now, there was almost no way to find out who was tipping to the slaves quarters at night. Once released to all 23andMe users, putting together the puzzle pieces of Relative Finder matches and family history will make it possible, maybe even easy to figure out the unknown branches in family history. Knowing who was a slave owner could lead to knowing where a slave originated, which could lead to finding out EXACTLY where I or any other AfAm came from.

Clearly Relative Finder would be highly beneficial to most African-Americans. There is one small problem. The cheapest 23andMe service, the Ancestry edition, costs $399.00. The median annual income for most African-American families is $30,134 before taxes. Factor in taxes and one 23andMe Ancestry kit will cost a family 20% of the average AfAm families gross monthly income, nothing at all to scoff at.

What does this mean? Sadly, this groundbreaking tech will remain out of reach for many of the people who could use it most. When I asked 23andMe about this on Twitter, their response was mostly vague but leads me to believe their pricing model isn’t about to change anytime soon.

Long story short? Price changes unlikely in the short term.

Sucks right? The genealogy isn’t even the half of it. Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that a lot of the health data is based on studies of people with European ancestry? Yeah. That’s not going to change anytime soon unless a) some researchers decide to focus on African-American DNA or b) the cost barrier is reduced, allowing for more AfAms to participate on their own.

If you can’t tell, this is a pretty big deal to me. A big enough deal that I wrote to the Oprah show to try to get her to cover the subject. I don’t think any of the AfAm “moguls” have devoted any cycles to the subject, save the brief run of the African-American Lives series. In a perfect world, the Oprahs, the Diddys, the Shaqs, and the Jay-Zs of the world would take some interest in all this but thats not likely to happen. Other than that, frankly, I don’t have a real solution to any of the issues I’ve written about here. Maybe one day the price of DNA testing will be low enough that cost won’t be a barrier for those people that don’t have an extra $400 laying around. If you are an African-American with that kind of disposable income available, I encourage you try out the 23andMe service. If you do and you get some Relative Finder matches, I’ll be more than happy to do a cursory building of your Family Tree on Ancestry.com for you. The more you know, etc.

Disclosure: My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. I paid full price for the 23andMe service and have not been offered any future discounts  for the service.