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I think 23andMe has separate opt-ins for geneaology and scientific research. And I think this is probably a lot closer to what users think of as "geneaology" th

I think 23andMe has separate opt-ins for geneaology and scientific research. And I think this is probably a lot closer to what users think of as "geneaology" than what users think of as "scientific research" at the time they opt in. > The purpose of slavery was to rob us of that information I'm pretty sure the purpose of slavery was to extract the maximum possible amount of usually miserable and often dangerous labor from people, regardless of their lack of consent, and without having to pay them or have any consideration whatsoever for them, in the labor or in any other part of their lives. And maybe secondarily to feed somebody's sense of racial superiority, although I suspect that was more an excuse than a goal. There's something disrespectful about retconning that to be about your curiosity 150 years later.

soligern 3y ago
In order to achieve the two goals you mentioned it was tremendously useful for the enslavers to wipe any sort of ancestral information from the diaspora. So the statement is not untrue. It’s part of the same mentality that prevented slaves from getting an education or information about the outside world in general.
- Hizonner 3y ago
  That would mean that slavery was the purpose of denying them the information, not the other way around. Nobody said or thought "let's enslave these people in order to deny them information about their ancestry" or "let's enslave persons of African descent in order to keep them ignorant". The chain of purposes is "I don't want to do this shit work, nor do I want to pay anybody else to do it" therefore "I'll force somebody else to do it for free" therefore "I'll keep them as ignorant as possible to make it harder for them to resist".