Wow, is Ancestry DNA’s new policy to cut matches ever bad! If you’re a foster, foundling, adoptee, or of mixed ethnicity, you need EVERY MATCH to triangulate and find clues through fallen branch trees.
A centimorgan (cM) is a unit of measure in DNA. The greater the number of centimorgans you share with someone, the more closely (or endogamously) related you are.
GEDmatch, a scientific DNA comparison website run by Parabon Labs, accepts all matches 7cM and above as valid. In early August, Ancestry is cutting all matches below 8cM from all DNA accounts. And yet, on June 3rd, Ancestry’s CEO wrote this: “An important part of improving our inclusivity is how we run our company and ensure a diverse set of perspectives is incorporated into everything we do. We have learned from our own missteps along the way and the feedback we have received has helped us take action. People are at the heart of all we do – and ensuring an inclusive workforce is an important foundation. We have been assessing all of our core human resource processes and working to ensure that Inclusion & Diversity best practices are woven into every step — from the way we hire, develop, promote, and pay our employees. We’ve also created an intercultural advisory council of experts internally and externally to review every new product, marketing campaign and program to ensure that what we do is as culturally sensitive as possible. It’s unearthing sometimes complex and difficult discussions – and it’s making us better.”
That’s funny. NO BLACK RESEARCHERS WERE CONSULTED ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF THIS NEW POLICY.
So, now we act. How can you retain these low-cM matches?
- Color-code ALL of your matches. If you don’t have specifics, be trite and mark all on your mother’s side pink and all on your father’s side blue. (Ugh, I know. Cue the groans.) If you have no idea where a person fits at all, create a new category called UNKNOWN and mark matches with that. But be sure to mark ALL matches.
- Message ALL of your important matches. It needn’t be a deep missive – just say “we’re cousins, and with AncestryDNA’s new policy, I wanted to make sure not to lose you.”
- Download ALL of your matches as a spreadsheet – I will be making a how-to video and posting it here, via YouTube, in the next few days.
- Email, call, tweet & otherwise message Ancestry and AncestryDNA that this policy will damage your work. This a privileged and destructive policy. Tell them to put action where their effusive pro-BLM words were on June 3rd, and to hire Black genealogists IMMEDIATELY. Tell them to add color to their board IMMEDIATELY. Pretty words and symbols are fine, but actions speak louder. This decision was taken without ANY input from the many fine Black genealogists who could have offered perspective.
Make no mistake: THIS IS TONE-DEAF, DESTRUCTIVE NONSENSE. WE MUST FIGHT BACK.
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