Teaching Race After the Genome: An Approach to Challenging Biological Understandings of Race in the Classroom

Abstract

As a billion-dollar industry with millions of consumers, DNA-based ancestry testing has become a highly sought out tool for people seeking knowledge of their ancestry and, recently, their family health history. As sociologists have emphasized, however, these DNA-based technologies have also risked reinvigorating dubious connections between biology and race. In this article, we outline a class assignment utilizing YouTube videos that feature consumers narrating the results of their DNA-based ancestry testing. The assignment invites students to interrogate the claims of consumers, who often seamlessly connect their ancestry results to particular racial and ethnic identities. As a result, students are poised to better understand how race and ethnicity are social constructions rather than individual biological traits.