Angela Davis shows us why "Finding Your Roots" complicates and strengthens the American story

[marmar]

Angela Davis shows us why "Finding Your Roots" complicates and strengthens the American story
If you only watch the viral clip revealing Davis' link to the Mayflower, you're missing the full story

By MELANIE MCFARLAND
TV Critic
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 26, 2023 8:00AM (EST)


(Salon) The blonde girl's face squinted up at me from the bottom of a bedside table's drawer, looking as if she were as surprised to be found as I was to unearth her. My mother and I were decluttering her bedroom down to its cracks and corners. That meant emptying the places where she'd stuffed items that she didn't want to lose but may have been comfortable forgetting for a while. Objects like this faded photo, its scalloped edges framing the figure of a child I'd never seen before, standing in some yard I had never visited and grinning into the sunshine.

I asked my mother who it was, and she stopped whatever she was doing to peer at the picture. "That's your cousin," she said, blithely as she would have identified an obsolete utensil – that goes there, you can throw that out – as opposed to a whole flesh-and-blood relative I'd never met.

She tried to resume her busy work, but I pressed her for an explanation. To the best of what I can recall, here's what she said. Sometime in the 1950s or '60s, a family member moved to another state and passed for white. This was his kid. "Finding Your Roots" host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. might call her a page on my book of life.

That was all she saw fit to disclose, and if I were better at reading my mother's hesitation, I would have recognized this to be a sensitive topic. But I was either a clueless teenager or in my thoughtless early 20s, and reduced it to its potential as material, as if life were an "In Living Color" sketch. When I floated the fantasy of what would happen if I tracked her whereabouts, my mother sternly shut that down. "Don't be cruel," she said. "Can you imagine what that would do to her life?"

....(snip)....

The viral video clip from Tuesday's episode of "Finding Your Roots," showing Angela Davis' incredulity at hearing she is a Mayflower descendant, should be a reminder that the weight of hereditary discovery lands heavier on some than others.

....(snip)....

Other replies predictably reflected the careless truculence that fuels most Internet discourse: Cheap jokes from white supremacist half-wits trolling for attention or elated to have a small piece of information they can twist out of context to discredit Davis' legacy of anti-racism. Fury toward Gates for appearing to present this information incautiously or for referring to the Mayflower's passengers – colonizers – as "people who laid the foundation for this country." Also, anger and honest confusion at Davis for being upset.

Link to tweet

....(snip)....

Together their histories tell us much about the complex, messy manuscript that is the American story. The level of passion incited by less than a minute of it demonstrates why that story is constantly being edited and contested. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/26/angela-davis-finding-your-roots-ancestor/

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. That PBS show was particularly helpful to me...

... as I struggled to understand my Y-DNA match (a type of DNA test that only seeks a man's all-paternal cousins and ancestors) to a man of color.

I assumed the worst initially -- that my paternal ancestors must've been slave owners at some point in the past, despite no records of any slaves in the late-1700's and early-1800's. They were Methodists too, who were more likely to oppose slavery during that time (until that religion spread more into the South).

I finally contacted my Y-DNA match, who had separately traced his paternal ancestors to the same location as my paternal ancestors-- Loudoun County VA in the mid-1700's. That's where he'd hit a brick wall, just like me.

His assumption was that the parents (or parent) of his brick wall ancestor was black, given how that ancestor was listed as colored or "mulatto" in later census records. And that's where the last episode of season 2 (S02E10) of Finding Your Roots was helpful to us. That episode was about Henry Louis Gates' ancestry, and his white ancestor who had married a black woman despite how it was illegal in Virginia at the time. Thereafter, that white ancestor of Gates was listed as black or mulatto in census records! Gates said something like, "So they made the brother black!" (For marrying a black woman.)

My 5th cousin (once removed), which is a CLOSE MATCH in terms of shared genes on the Y chromosome (since they don't get mixed with genes from female ancestors), was instead always listed as white whenever he paid his yearly taxes! It was only on census records that he'd suddenly be listed as a black man.

To shorten this post, I'll just cut to the chase. What me and my cousin deduced was that his brick wall ancestor was indeed a white man, and his two brothers (one of whom was my brick wall ancestor) had moved away together as his ancestor (the oldest brother) remained in Loudoun County VA a few more years. He was a deputy sheriff there UNTIL he married the black woman, when that position was stripped from him (without an explanation provided in the records). He thereafter moved away (after my ancestor had already moved) to live with his wife and children in the SAME community of "free mulattos" where Henry Louis Gates' white ancestor had also moved with his family!

And we both broke through our genealogical brick walls, learning that the father of our paternal ancestors was a Quaker from New Jersey who had moved to a Quaker community of Loudoun County VA in the mid-1700's, at a place called Goose Creek.

[intheflow]

3. Amazing story!

Thank you for sharing it.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. You're welcome.

It took me a while to reach out to my Y-DNA match, to be honest, because I had initially assumed the worst. Then I decided to just do it, since it's not like we're immune to finding embarrassing ancestors while doing genealogical research. I also prefer honesty over sugar-coating the truth.

The place where our shared paternal ancestor lived is now called Lincoln VA, by the way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln,_Virginia

[intheflow]

2. Perhaps this is why Davis' work has always spoken to me,

a white woman from New England: we’re cousins! It’s got to be a lot for her to work through, though, and I wish her luck and clarity in her journey.

[Srkdqltr]

5. I really think everyone should have a DNA test.

Or maybe not? Knowing could cause other problems.

[3Hotdogs]

7. I've never understood the fascination with ancestors. My daughter bought two of the tests for me,

since she was interested. Out popped about 300 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins from an uncle who was good looking ("Looked like Jimmy Cagney) and led kind of a wild life. I never contacted any of them. What for?

My ancestor's lives enabled me to be here but beyond that.... unless they left me money.... (they didn't).

I am more interested in MY accomplishments and fuck-ups. I have a few of the former and many of the latter.

[Six117]

8. I couldn't agree more

Nt

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. I started doing genealogy for health-related reasons.

Harvard took samples of my blood, and my nearest relatives (including my parents who were still alive back then) in the 90's to perform full genomic sequencing. At that time, it wasn't known what gene was defective to cause the extremely rare genetic condition that me and some of my siblings inherited. Harvard researchers indeed identified the gene eventually.

One of the scientists speculated that my parents were likely close relatives, since they both carried one copy of the defective gene. (The condition is recessive, so someone needs two bad copies to experience the health problems.)

So I started doing genealogy to determine how my parents were related! And it was never successful, since I eventually traced every branch of my family tree a minimum of 6 generations... but with no common ancestors found among my parents!

The earlier full sequencing of my DNA by Harvard later made it easier for me to order commercial DNA tests. And after GEDMatch later offered a way to upload those test results, and check for the relatedness of a person's parents (using statistics on the amount of common alleles in the individual's genes), those results came back the same as my earlier paper trails. My parents were not closely related at all.

Of course, we're ALL related at some point.

Even the plants and animals that I eat are extremely distant cousins. 😛

[Deuxcents]

6. I watched this the other night. I love this show..

How they go thru documents from all over the world n track relatives for dna matching is fascinating. Thanks to some old fashioned detective work, an aunt n uncle worked years of to trace my father’s lineage to the 1600’s. What they can do now is amazing. Some come away thinking they were Italian but are really Jewish.. or vise versa. Great show

[MLAA]

9. I always enjoy the show whether I'm familiar with the guests or not.

[Deuxcents]

11. Me, too. It's mostly the process but the surprises it turns up

Mostly has the guest not having a clue. That’s why they’re on the show, probably, but it’s fun

[MLAA]

12. I also enjoy the closing where they call out if the guest is related to any previous guest.

[Deuxcents]

13. 🤗