Black Americans’ Genes Reflect Hardships Of Slavery

A recent study of the genes of 50,000 descendants of slaves found that "enslaved people who were brought from one African region to a particular region in the Americas generally ended up sharing a genetic connection to that African region generations later," said Steven Micheletti, a population geneticist with 23andMe and the first author of the study, NBC News Reports. In addition to finding the genetic connections, researchers also found an "overarching sex-bias that appeared throughout the continents." “Sex-biases is basically the ratio of African women that were reproducing to African men,” said Micheletti. “African women were reproducing way more than African men were. That's indicative of rape and exploitation that has been documented in diaries and other historical literature.”