Birth narrative confirmed false?

[truthseeker13]

I've always been told that my biological dad is white. Let's just say empirical evidence suggests otherwise and I've always identified as strictly African American as my mom is. I took a dna test through MyHeritage and the ethnicity estimate came back as 81.1% African.
I more recently took the y-dna 37 test and the predicted haplogroup is E-M2 which looks to be African American. Does that pretty much disprove the narrative I've been told my whole life?

[KATM]

I've always been told that my biological dad is white. Let's just say empirical evidence suggests otherwise and I've always identified as strictly African American as my mom is. I took a dna test through MyHeritage and the ethnicity estimate came back as 81.1% African.
I more recently took the y-dna 37 test and the predicted haplogroup is E-M2 which looks to be African American. Does that pretty much disprove the narrative I've been told my whole life?

Could it be possible that your biological father had a white mother, and he looked white? His father may have been African American, thus your E-M2 haplogroup. In that scenario, roughly, with the 50% African American you received from your mother, and the 25% from your bio father, that would be about 75%. Not quite the 81% from MyHeritage, but I think we all are catching on that these ethnicity breakdowns have flaws.

[Germanica]

The vast majority of African Americans have some amount of European DNA, on average it's 24%, so you sound about average.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/...many-americans

"The average African-American genome, for example, is 73.2% African, 24% European, and 0.8% Native American"

I think if your biological father was 100% European, you would be much closer to 50/50 African/European, not 81% African. Maybe he was of (recent) mixed ancestry himself, maybe not. The European on both side of your family could come from the days of slavery. You can't be sure unless you follow the paper trail. Lot's of African Americans are surprised at how much European DNA they have, since their parents and grandparents were all African American too.

[truthseeker13]

Could it be possible that your biological father had a white mother, and he looked white? His father may have been African American, thus your E-M2 haplogroup. In that scenario, roughly, with the 50% African American you received from your mother, and the 25% from your bio father, that would be about 75%. Not quite the 81% from MyHeritage, but I think we all are catching on that these ethnicity breakdowns have flaws.

He was in and out of my life until around 9 years old and I spent time with both of his parents on multiple occasions as a child. They are white.

If I upgrade my testing to 67 or 111 would that give me even more definitive evidence or is that unnecessary at this point?

Strangely, I am more interested in proving that he is NOT my father than finding out who my true biological father is. I just want to be untethered from an origin story that just hasn't felt true for some time.

[Jim Barrett]

Adding additional markers will only help confirm or remove matches from your 37 marker match list. That may or may not help you in your goal.

Does this man have other male children? If so, you might have one of them order a Y-DNA test. If the man is still alive you could ask him to do so.

Even an exact match with Y-DNA will not prove he is your father. It will only indicate a common paternal ancestor.

An autosomal test by the man or any of his children will provide a better answer.

[Germanica]

He was in and out of my life until around 9 years old and I spent time with both of his parents on multiple occasions as a child. They are white.

I was under the impression you didn't know who your biological father was and all you were told about him was that he was white, and you were trying to determine whether he was white or not. With the understanding that you did know him and his parents and they're all white, and you're trying to determine whether he was your biological father or not, I'd say you have strong evidence that he is not.

Do you have any Y matches?

[truthseeker13]

I was under the impression you didn't know who your biological father was and all you were told about him was that he was white, and you were trying to determine whether he was white or not. With the understanding that you did know him and his parents and they're all white, and you're trying to determine whether he was your biological father or not, I'd say you have strong evidence that he is not.

Do you have any Y matches?

Yes. For 37 markers there are 10 matches ranging from genetic distance 1-4. For the names I have been able to link images to, about 5 so far, they are all African American and in the southeastern region of the United States (North/South Carolina). One outlier is a single name in Saudi Arabia with a genetic distance of 3.

[Germanica]

So 5 of them share the same surname? If so, that's a good lead to follow.

[ltd-jean-pull]

Isn't the database at My Heritage rather small?

Gedmatch has a few admixture calculators, plus you might find some autosomal matches there.

[thsaundersusa]

Thanks for this post

Thanks for this post, truthseeker13, I find this fascinating.

Seems to me that your assumption is correct.