Race In Gates Jr.’S Film: Genealogical Testing

A fundamental tension exists in Nelson’s name and supply Jr.’s film: genealogical examination can be important for melanise Americans who have no other means of discovering where their ancestors were kidnapped from before they were shipped to America—but, reliance on such technology performs a kind of essentializing racial violence. Gates’ film glorifies the capabilities of such technology, while Nelson explores some of the nuances, and questions how accurate the judges are. However, twain of them avoid even the question of racial essentialism. Nelson focuses on the “factness of diaspora” (255)—how the desoxyribonucleic acid tests take on a level of scientific verity that they may not necessarily posses. Nelson does not question the intentions of those who chase these tests or those who conduct them (though her portrait of Dr. Rick Kittles seems similar to that of a used car salesman peddling a questionable “order-on-TV” product)—she understands late the desire to recover a sense of past and history. However, she sees the test as being “necessarily provisional” (260). The test allows black Americans to research their heritage in ways that were not previously possible but their results should not be taken for scientific gospel.



She is skeptical of how accurate the results could possibly be. Gates pays no solicitude to the questions that Nelson examines (though his purposes are documentary rather than analytical). However, it seems almost unsettling how he neglects to send the technology that plays such a large role in his film. Genealogical tests imply (with no degree of subtlety) that there is something biologically essential to race: though skin color may be deceptive or unsatisfactorily informative, if we look at our blood we can discover who we truly are. There is no way to escape the fact that such testing implies the existence of basic biological differences between various ethnicities—an argument...If you want to nourish a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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