- My family landed in Toronto on a November night in 1972, six of us in matching sheepskin coats, bought in fear of arctic winters and the threat of hypothermia. Canada was a year into its grand multicultural experiment at the time, and federal policies not only welcomed immigrants of color, they set targets to encourage it. Federal politicians--Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in particular, whom my mother referred to as "that lovely man"--pushed programmes to support cultural diversity, and the philosophy trickled down to the towns and schools.
- The great message that scientists delivered with the first draft maps of the human genome was one of harmony: we are all 99.9 percent genetically identical. At the level of DNA, Dolly Parton and the Dalai Lama look like twins. Race, they concluded, is nothing more than a social invention, with no basis in biology. There might be more genetic variation between two Greeks than between a Greek and a Swede, or between two men who look white when one is carries the genes of an African forefather. Under the skin, we're kin.
- I had set out to solve the mystery of our great-grandfather and inadvertently unearthed a secret about someone else's. It was vivid proof that no one takes a DNA test in a vacuum. The results have an impact on everyone who shares your DNA: your parents, your siblings, your children, uncles, aunts, cousins--and strangers you had no idea were relatives until genetic testing shook them out of the family tree. Your results are their results, your secrets become their secrets, and they learn them, as you do, whether they want to or not.
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