It’s sort of a blameless crime. The folks who write these pieces don’t have sufficient time to research and write them, so they almost inevitably wind up with some inaccuracies, but the biggest problem is that they generally leave the overall impression that there’s a one-size-fits-all test out there because they don’t have the word-allowance to tackle the nuances.

One minor correction, though. Oprah actually did make her Zulu claim based on DNA testing, although she never publicly revealed which lab tested her. Then she was re-tested for African American Lives and received a more accurate assessment of her mtDNA line.