Before I took my DNA test, I thought I was Japanese Indonesian, Indian.

I look at myself as Black American, African American.

Mexican?

It feels about one single word.

It's very confusing when all your life you feel like you're one thing,

but then you later find out you're something out.

I'm just culture. I realize that people play a lot of importance on their ethnic background.

I'm a faculty, I actually ask him what was I and I said, well, I'm Black.

And she was like, oh, no, you're name and the way you look, you just doesn't look Black.

It's Code Switch. I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.

And I'm Jane Demby.

And you were just listening to students from Westchester University who took part in something on campus called the DNA discussion project.

And that last voice belongs to Mkai Woods.

We called him up to talk about his experience with the project.

A little bit about Mkai. He's 21 years old. He's from South Philadelphia, like everybody who's worth knowing.

And all his life, people have been telling him he looks East Asian, Polynesian, Indian, Samoan,

you know, like everything, but Black.

It just began to be like a part of like my life that I didn't know what I was and I didn't know what I was made of

because everyone used to always question what I was made of.

So when Mkai found out that his university was giving out free DNA tests to a select group of students, he was like, sign me up.

I was just hoping to see anything to be perfectly honest because I never had a legitimate answer to anything,

but it was my hope that I was the mainly African American or African.

...