"And then there's Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr., head of Harvard University's African-American Studies department. Gates always knew he wasn't 100 percent African-American. According to family legend, Gates's only white ancestor was a slave owner named Samuel Brady, who had sex with Gates's great-great-grandmother Jane on his farm in Maryland in the 1800s. But recent DNA analyses turned Gates's world upside down. There was no trace of Brady on Gates's genome. Further testing revealed that Gates, in fact, carries as much Western European blood as he does African—and that one of his white ancestors was probably an Irish servant who met Gates's sixth or seventh great-grandfather sometime before 1700. "I'm thinking I'm a Brady and maybe I'm from Nigeria, and here I am descended from some white woman," says Gates. "It's incredible." "

DNA testing

When I visited my ancestral island in the Hebrides a year or so ago, I learned that after the rebellion of 1745, the English government had sold rebels such as my Jacobite ancestors to the sugar-growers in the West Indies. This was not indentured sevice, but full-blown slavery. It seems they sold Irish there, too, because in Ireland the rebellion was endemic.

It made me wonder if I have black relatives.

It made sense, from an English point of view. If they sent them to prison in London, they would be a charge on the state. Also, they hanged plenty of them, more than enough to send a message. If they left them alone, the rebels would foment trouble. So by selling them, they got rid and made some pocket-money, too.

I wonder how many of our (white) ancestors were slaves?

There were 'some' white slaves so there is a good chance that some of your ancestors were slaves. There is also a chance of you having black relatives. The blood is so mixed now and has been for a long time until researching is probably the only way to find out one's bloodline.

Back when the whites had black slaves on their plantations, they raped the black women, and the women got pregnant and had mixed babies. The married white man didn't own the baby so it stayed with the black race. This has continued to go on between the blacks, whites, and every other race, so the blood has many different genes. There's no telling who any of us are.