(History Not Genetics Determines Language — It Is Our Personal Community Societal and Regional Histories — Where We Have Lived Where We or Our Ancestors Move…

(History Not Genetics Determines Language — It Is Our Personal Community Societal and Regional Histories — Where We Have Lived Where We or Our Ancestors Moved To What Groups Might Have Ruled Over the Territories We Live In — and Not Our Genetics That Determine Our Home Language, Indo-European and English Providing Outstanding Examples as Indo-European Includes the Home Languages of Hundreds of Millions of People of Immense Genetic Variety from India to the British Isles to North America to Hawaii New Zealand and Australia, Tens of Millions of Americans from All Manner of Backgrounds Using English as Their First Language — Genetic Ancestry Has Nothing to Do with It): It is our personal, community, societal, and regional histories — where we have lived, where we or our ancestors moved to, what groups might historically have ruled over the territories we live in, and so forth — and not our genetics that determine our home language. The world’s most widespread language family, Indo-European, and one member of that family, English, provide outstanding examples of these truths. Indo-European includes the home languages of many hundreds of millions of people of immense genetic variety, from India to the British Isles to much of North America, as well as across the Pacific to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia. Moreover, tens of millions of people in the United States, coming from all manner of backgrounds from all around the world, today use English as their first language. Genetic ancestry has nothing to do with it. The example is devastating in its simplicity. If genetic ancestry determined language, then African Americans, Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, and Irish Americans could not all speak English as their first language — yet they do. If genetic ancestry determined language family membership, then Indo-European could not include speakers ranging from dark-skinned South Indians to light-skinned Scandinavians to every shade between — yet it does. The relationship between genes and languages is not one of determination but of contingency: languages spread through historical processes — migration, conquest, trade, prestige — that are social, not biological. To use genetic data to adjudicate language family membership is to confuse biology with history, and the confusion, when applied to African populations, is not innocent. It reproduces the racialist assumption that African peoples can be sorted into biological types, and that these biological types map onto linguistic and cultural categories. They do not. They never have. And historians need to be critically aware of this when consulting genetic studies.