In her 2012 Senate race, Elizabeth Warren stated, “Growing up, my mother and grandparents often talked about our family's Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation - what kid would?” (2). Elizabeth Warren's lack of genetic documentation for her Native American heritage is a perfect example of how cultural heritage and genetic ancestry can come at odds with one another. Cultural heritage is a societal concept, dependent on an individual's values, traditions, and stories. For many people, heritage makes up part of their identity as an individual. Genetic ancestry is more objective and quantitative, depending on the DNA an individual inherits from their parents. How a person feels about their heritage is usually not overtly about the nucleotides in their DNA, but ancestry and heritage are indisputably connected, and ancestry is inherently genetic. But though one's ancestry and one's heritage can be correlated, they are distinct.

DNA testing opens a Pandora's box of possibilities. Genetic ancestry will refer to the information acquired by the three main types of genetic testing: mDNA, autosomal, and Y-chromosomal. Mitochondrial DNA testing allows a person to learn the genetic ancestry of all the ancestors in their material line. Occasionally, mDNA is inherited from the father, but it is very rare (3). Similarly, Y-chromosomal DNA testing allows a person to learn the genetic ancestry of all the ancestors in their paternal line. Autosomal genes are given from both the mother and father, and used to find recent ancestors. Genetic testing companies compare a sample DNA sequence with their databases, which map the frequencies of certain sequences in locations such as Europe or even a country within Europe (8). Autosomal DNA tests can show African-Americans in which part of Africa their ancestors lived. More controversially, Y-DNA tests might show an African-American has a European person in their male line — perhaps a white slave owner who took advantage of his female slaves (4). Genetic analysis isn't just cold data, it has direct relevance to a person's self-identity.

Brazil, a country with an extremely mixed population racially, is a perfect example of how racial self-identity and cultural heritage don't line up with genetics. Using mitochondrial DNA testing to identify mitochondrial DNA haplogroup, of those who identified as ‘white’, European ancestry was responsible for contributing approximately 63.3% of ancestry, but African ancestry was responsible for contributing 22.2% (1). Although it's important to note that there was a large margin of error in this study, it does support a disconnect between a singular cultural identity and genetic background, even if there is some correlation between the two. This can occur through intermarriage and interbreeding, which mixes genes betwen groups but not cultures in the same way. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics uses five terms to split up Brazil's racial populations (7). These terms are — in English — white/European, brown/mixed, black/African, yellow/Asian, and indigenous. Telles notes that a 1976 analysis found 135 terms used in reference to the color of Brazilians, but about two-thirds of the terms were used by only 0.3% of Brazilian respondents. Even within the major ethnic groups, there are disputes about which words to use. For example, ‘pardo’ or ‘moreno’ for brown or mixed people, and ‘preto’ or ‘negro’ for black or African people. These conflicts reveal a larger issue with individuals attempting to identify themselves within one racial group, which are often too broad to capture the nuances of one's heritage.

On the other hand, in a country such as the United States, with a diverse but less mixed population, genetic results are more consistent with what ethnic group individuals identify as. By using all three main methods of genetic testing — autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and mtDNA — it was found that self-identified European-Americans and Asian-Americans were particularly homogenous in their average continental genetic ancestry (5). Self-identified African-Americans were still relatively homogenous, with ancestry secondarily coming from Europe, but self-identified Hispanics had a much more heterogeneous mix of primarily European and Native American ancestry. This heterogeneity indicates the disconnect between a single racial label and one's true ancestry.

Sometimes the information gained from genetic testing is a great benefit to a person's self-perception, but it can also cause pain, controversy, and division in families. Whether it causes benefit or harm, genetic testing can reveal the disconnect between their conceptions of their history, and the genetic truth. Overall, the connection between genetic ancestry and cultural heritage varies depending on nationality, racial identity, family history, and the degree to which there has been mixing between ethnic groups in the past. (749 words)