How DNA Science Confirmed My African Identity

Hi All. If you follow my youtube channel you would know that I was born and raised in South Africa and very proud of it; and now live in the USA and very proud of it. But growing up wasn't always fun because I was born with a very light skin to a black family in a sea of brown and black people. Fortunately I was not the only very light skin in my family or my neighborhood but we were still a minority. You see, a lot of South Africans have beige/brown or what you would call a coffee color naturally. This is because South Africa isn't  as hot as many equatorial countries. Even so there is a great number of dark skin South Africans. So being "too" light skin puts you in an awkward position and you will see why.

Race Relations In South Africa

What complicates things even further is that South Africa, if you know her history, has a lot of white people and mixed people therefore the default view is that if you are lighter than most black South Africans you must be mixed with non-African. This belief that you are mixed if you have very light skin is shared by a lot of Americans as well. It has its advantages but also has its disadvantages depending on country, period, etc.

Growing Up I was Bullied For My Skin Color

I grew up during apartheid in South Africa, so being called "whitey" was not fun for me. I did not like my skin color at all because I felt it made me a target. Words like monkey, yellowman, etc were used constantly to call me. I was also told that I was not beautiful I was just light skinned and if I was dark skin I would be very ugly! 

I did not want to be associate with white skin because of the negative view of whites in South Africa because they oppressed our people. Add to the fact that it was during the period of "Black Is Beautiful" to pump up blacks with dark skin so they can feel beautiful too,  therefore I felt out of place. I'm not mad at this because it was necessary for blacks to feel good about themselves. I remember as girls in our family, we used to rank our beauty and my sisters who were dark always won our admiration! 

I was also called "kaffir" many times because my hair is as black as they come. I have what people today call 4-C type hair; endless coils! Kaffir is a slur used against blacks in South Africa equivalent to the N-word. I was never called this word by white people, because I did not have many interactions with them mainly because I was so young. I was called kaffir by mixed people (Colored people) because they wanted to remind me that even though I was lighter than many of them I was still black - the irony of it all! But I understand the psychological abuse we all go through under white supremacy. We all suffer at some level and it is all explainable. Thanks to growing up and having a better understanding of what it means to love yourself and to accept your nature I grew up to love the skin I was born in. 

My DNA Tests and Results

Naturally, even if you believe you are black because you are born into a black family, you still wonder what if it is true? What would this mean? Also, I'm a very curious person by nature so I thought about this from time to time. Eventually I decided to do a DNA test to see if I had a non-African ancestry in me. Fast forward to 2017, eighteen years after living in the USA, I finally made a plunge and bought my DNA kit from ancestry.com. I did the test and sent it back. When the results finally came I was shocked. I documented my results in this video. Hope you enjoy them and share!

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