Post your response in the comments section of our blog and you’ll have the chance to win a free African Ancestry Test Kit!

Each year, February is a big month for African Ancestry. We are fortunate to have opportunities to share the African Ancestry Experience, meet new people, and engage in conversations across the country. This year, we thought a contest would be a good way to reach even more people and hear your perspective on finding your roots. We will pose a question each week and reward the most thoughtful and insightful response with a free MatriClan or PatriClan Test Kit.

One of our dreams for African Ancestry is that every black child know their ancestral roots. We have begun 2010 with two steps towards that goal. We’ve partnered with the Search for Common Ground Foundation on the True Roots Project. And, we’ve partnered with George Mason University on the Science, Technology, Ancestry and Me Project (STAMP) that will hopefully receive funding from the National Science Foundation. For our second contest of the month, please share your thoughts on kids and ancestry for the chance to win a free test kit for the young people in your family.

This week we’d like to know: WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR OUR KIDS TO KNOW THEIR ROOTS?

Post your response in the comments section of our blog between February 8th through 14th and you’ll have the chance to win a free African Ancestry Test Kit!

The winner will be announced on February 19th and will be chosen by President, Gina Paige and Scientific Director, Dr. Rick Kittles! See full contest rules here.

Check back for a new question and chance to win a free test kit in Week 3 on February 15th.

Post your response in the comments section of our blog and you’ll have the chance to win a free African Ancestry Test Kit!

Each year, February is a big month for African Ancestry. We are fortunate to have opportunities to share the African Ancestry Experience, meet new people, and engage in conversations across the country. This year, we thought a contest would be a good way to reach even more people and hear your perspective on finding your roots. We will pose a question each week and reward the most thoughtful and insightful response with a free MatriClan or PatriClan Test Kit.

Our sense of identity starts to form very early in our lives. One of the first ways that we view ourselves is within the context of our family. We enter the world with many identities: our mother’s firstborn, grandmama’s baby, little sister or little brother. Throughout our lives our identity grows and evolves.

This week we’d like to know: HOW DOES KNOWING YOUR ROOTS SHAPE YOUR IDENTITY?

Post your response in the comments section of our blog between February 1st through 7th and you’ll have the chance to win a free African Ancestry Test Kit!

The winner will be announced on February 12th and will be chosen by President, Gina Paige and Scientific Director, Dr. Rick Kittles! See full contest rules here.

UPDATE: This contest is correctly closed. But enter our Week 2 contest to try and win a free test kit.

In 2010, African Ancestry is focused on connecting with our African Ancestry family, the black community and the continent of Africa in even more meaningful ways!

To get the fun started and celebrate the first Black History Month of the new decade, African Ancestry is offering ways to WIN FREE test kits and prizes—all month long!

WIN A FREE TEST KIT ON OUR BLOG (4 chances to win)!

Each week in February, we’ll post a new question here on the African Ancestry blog about ancestry and heritage. The most thoughtful answer wins a free MatriClan or PatriClan test kit! A new question will be posted every Monday starting on February 1st.

All winners will be selected by President, Gina Paige and Scientific Director, Dr. Rick Kittles, and announced the Friday following the last day of the contest.

Week 2 Question now posted! Answer it here for your chance to win!

WIN GREAT PRIZES ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!

Throughout February, we’ll be randomly posting quiz questions about African American and African history on our Facebook and Twitter pages. The first person to answer the question correctly wins prizes like PBS’ African American Lives DVD, The Black Book 35th Anniversary Edition, African Ancestry gift certificates and more.

We’ll keep you posted about our blog contest on Facebook and Twitter too, so add us today!

Sign up for our mailing list throughout February and you’ll also be entered to win a free MatriClan or PatriClan test kit!

SPECIAL BLACK HISTORY MONTH PRICING: $275 per kit

Plus, we’ve discounted all African Ancestry MatriClan and PatriClan test kits down to $275 throughout February. You save $75! Order your test starting Monday at shop.africanancestry.com.

See Black History Month Sweepstakes Terms and Conditions.

Today I met with professors from George Mason University and Howard University about our Ancestry Education Project. The topic of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest report: Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds came up.

One of the key findings shows that Black and Hispanic youth consume significantly more media than White youth. “Substantial differences in media consumption emerge between White youth and Black or Hispanic youth, with the latter two groups consuming nearly 41/2 hours more media daily (13:00 of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites). The difference between White and minority youth is largest for TV: Black youth spend an average of 2:18 more per day with TV than White youth.” (p. 37)

Now, we don’t need a study to tell us that the media our kids are consuming sends them very poor messages of who they are and what they can become. It’s alarming to now be told that our kids are spending ridiculous amounts of time engaged in media that feeds them negative images of self.

Then, I get back to my office and receive an email with a youtube video called “Scholar Ladies”. Thank goodness there are people out there who are using the power of the media to positively influence our kids. There is hope!

Among all of the coverage of the devastation in Haiti, I was pleasantly surprised to read the AP article about Senegal offering land to Haitians. The headline reads, “Senegal’s president offers voluntary repatriation and land to any Haitians that want to come”. President Abdoulaye Wade made this offer to our brothers and sisters in Haiti because they are the descendants of enslaved Africans, many of whom likely were taken from Senegal.

It is encouraging to see the intensive outreach to Haiti from all over the world. It is particularly empowering to see this type of outreach from Senegal. It is at the core of our mission at African Ancestry that we see ourselves differently and that we see Africa differently. I am glad to know that it works both ways.

Today, Dr. Kittles and I decided to make a commitment to Haiti as well. We are going to donate 2% of all African Ancestry sales this month to the CARE Haiti Earthquake Relief effort.

We encourage you to also find a way to give to the people of Haiti. There are many credible organizations that are on the ground in Haiti making a difference.

I’m excited about our newest partnership with the brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the oldest African American fraternity in the United States!

Today marks their 103rd Founders Day celebration as well as the launch of the Brother Simon Alexander Haley Initiative. Through this initiative, African Ancestry will help Alphas across the country research their family histories and trace their ancestral pasts.

Over 30 years ago, it was Alex Haley, the son of an Alpha man, who opened our collective eyes to the rich and valuable histories of our families. We sat glued to the TV set night after night with a sense of pride in our African roots. Haley had a rare gift, the gift of family stories that had been passed down, intact, through the many generations. Sharing his gift with the world sparked an unprecedented interest in genealogy among African Americans.

Most of us quickly learned that we were not going to find our Kunta Kinte. However, Haley’s legacy lives today through genetic ancestry tracing. Technology enables us to make transformative connections with our African roots. We are honored that Alpha President Skip Mason chose to partner with African Ancestry to move his organization forward while keeping them grounded in their powerful pasts.

What started out as an evening celebrating DC-area teens who have beaten the odds, turned into a blog post to raise awareness about child slavery in Africa. I recently attended the Children Defense Fund’s “Beat the Odds” Dinner in DC where I met Martha Newton, Executive Director of the Touch A Life Foundation. Her organization is doing great work to financially support the care of Ghanaian children rescued from slavery.

There’s child slavery in Ghana? There’s child slavery in DC? What?! As African Americans, we still experience the psychological, economic, and sociological effects of slavery and its legacy, as individuals and as a community. The idea of our little brothers, sisters, and cousins living as enslaved people is unimaginable. Not here. Not today.

Her organization’s work led me to other sites and articles about the prevalence of child slavery not only in many African countries but also here in the United States (not to mention other parts of the world). Can you even begin to imagine children enduring a system of slavery today?

Please take a few minutes to educate yourself and your family about the present-day issue of child slavery and more importantly, how you can make a difference. Click on the images or the links below to get started. We’ve come too far and we have too much to not stand up for others.

MSNBC Story: One child speaks for the thousands in silent servitude

Oprah.com Story: Sold into Slavery

This week I received an email with a link to an excellent article. It is written by a Kenyan writer and director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages at Bard College, Binyavanga Wainaina. His satirical look at how not to write about Africa underscores part of the mission of African Ancestry: to transform the way that people view Africa. Those of you who prefer to read the article can click here.

How do you think about Africa? Take some time today to view it through a different lens!

Two weeks ago extraordinary attention was placed on the family history of our first lady, Michelle Obama. Her mixed ancestry was found to be a surprise by many Whites in America. Similarly, the European and East African ancestry of President Obama was seen as an exotic mix. For African Americans, mixed ancestry is no surprise; it is part of our history and can be uncovered in most families through traditional genealogy research as well as DNA testing.

The story of Melvina Shields, the great-great-great-grandmother of Michelle Obama who was enslaved and impregnated by a white man is a consistent theme heard in many narratives of African American family history.  Noted sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, explained in “Black Bourgeoisie” that the nearly 600,000 mulattoes in the U.S. in 1860 were mainly the result of the sexual association of white men and enslaved African women. We also see this reflected in the DNA of African Americans. When we test the paternally inherited Y chromosome DNA we find that 3 out of every 10 (30%) African American men have European Y chromosomes while less than 5% of the maternally inherited mtDNA is of European ancestry. This is called sex-bias gene flow and is largely the result of the behavior of many slaveholders and/or their male relatives.

The increased focus by the media on uncovering white ancestry in African Americans is interesting to some but is also disturbing to others, especially when these stories portray mixed ancestry as the reason for African American achievement. It is important to understand all of your family history. However, for most African Americans, including Michelle Obama, we cannot trace our family history using traditional methods beyond the Melvina Shields and others enslaved in the mid 1800s. This is because of the lack of adequate records on the enslaved and why DNA testing offered by African Ancestry is so important and exciting to African Americans.

The recent posthumous pardon of Tom Joyner’s great uncles is a great lesson. It teaches us the value of family and the value of persistence.

In 1915, Joyner’s great-uncles, Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed in 1915 for a murder they didn’t commit. After they were electrocuted, his grandmother (their sister) was moved to Florida and was never told the story of her brothers. So, the Joyner family had always believed that their family history began in Florida. When researchers for the series African American Lives II told Tom about this part of his family’s history, he set out on a mission to have his great uncles pardoned.

While the pardon is something to be celebrated, I think the bigger lesson here is the importance of researching your family’s history. Our elders hold so much information about our family’s collective and individual experiences. Sometimes these experiences inform our personal experiences in ways that we don’t even realize.

One Thanksgiving, my father’s family sat around a large table discussing a plan to purchase the house next door to my grandparents’ house. The conversation turned to getting the mortgage and we began laughing about how no one in the family had “a job”. We were all self-employed. That lead to my grandmother sharing a story about the family work history. She and my grandfather had owned a barbershop and grocery store for most of their adult lives. Her father (my great-grandfather) built houses in Virginia, where she grew up. His father made the cinderblocks that were used to build the houses. Apparently, I come from a long line of entrepreneurs! When we traced one of my father’s lineages to the Hausa of Nigeria, I then learned that the Hausa women were the business people of the culture. Who knew that the line of entrepreneurship was that long!

What’s your family’s story?

Some of us at the Paige Family Reunion 2009