Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Volume 124, Issue 1, Pages 150-184Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/697487
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Funding
- Canada Foundation for Innovation [23744]
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [410-2008-0110]
- Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia
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The rapid growth of genetic ancestry testing has brought concerns that these tests will transform consumers' racial and ethnic identities, producing geneticized identities determined by genetic knowledge. Drawing on 100 qualitative interviews with white, black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and Native Americans, the authors develop the genetic options theory to account for how genetic ancestry tests influence consumers' ethnic and racial identities. The theory maintains that consumers do not accept the tests' results as given but choose selectively from the estimates according to two mechanisms: their identity aspirations and social appraisals. Yet consumers' prior racialization also influences their identity aspirations; white respondents aspired to new identities more readily and in substantively different ways. The authors' findings suggest that genetic ancestry testing can reinforce race privilege among those who already experience it.
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