Read Ruth Padawer article “Sigrid Johnson Was Black…”, annotate, and write a blog post about how belonging and autonomy factor into this story.
Sigrid Johnson lived a lot of her life thinking she was from this family with her African American and part Native American race from her mother. Her world was turned upside down when she first found out she was adopted when she was a baby. Then a second time when her DNA results came back saying that she was only 2% African American and she really lost her sense of belonging. Her whole life she thought she was African American and that is who she was as an identity. After the DNA test she really didn’t know who she was. She let the DNA results and her genes define who she was. Instead of looking at her life and accepting that even though it wasn’t a 100% match that she was still in fact African American and that was her identity. Once she got past the shock and the internal decision who she was she embraced the face that she knew who she was and that is a strong African American women and that is was really her identity in the world.
