On the White Privilege of Genealogy

Last night while browsing on my phone I came across a notification: Ancestry.com had found a clue about my great-great-great-grandfather Frances. Since the last time I had checked the app, Ancestry had attached Civil War records to members of my family tree.

Clicking on the hint, I was shown a scanned image of a Union draft registry from September-October 1863. Frances was called upon to fight for the United States from Lewis, Kentucky, following in the footsteps of his great-great-grandfather William, a Revolutionary War Colonel, who crossed the Delaware with George Washington. Frances’ son Ezra married a woman named Nancy DeHart, whose uncle Stephen was captured as a prisoner-of-war while fighting for the Confederacy from Patrick, Virginia.

This is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg that is my knowledge of my own genealogy. I know that my Swiss German ancestors Hans and Maria Burgi came to Philadelphia in 1709 from Biglen, a small village east of Bern. I know that my paternal Scottish ancestor William Crawford came to Norfolk in 1648, at the ripe age of 18, from Ayrshire. I know that my English ancestor John Adkins came to Henrico from Bedfordshire in the mid-17^th century. Those DeHarts I mentioned earlier? Dutch. Simon DeHart came to New York City in 1664 from Nieuwkoop, a town about halfway between The Hague and Amsterdam in the western Netherlands. The house Simon built in Brooklyn was supposedly the oldest structure in New York at the time of its demolition. Through some frankly dubious connections, Ancestry.com tells me I’m descended from Robert the Bruce and the Stuart kings of Scotland. I can trace my DNA back over 1,200 years through over 1,100 family members.

This seems to be an exclusively white privilege.

My partner, whose parents were born in Kerala, the southwesternmost state in India, knows her family history no further back than the 20^th century. Part of the difficulty involves British imperialism (a Jamaican friend fares only slightly better), but local customs pose problems for genealogy tracking as well.

One of the not-so-surprising boons to tracking family histories is the presence of informative gravestones, common in Western Christendom where full-body burials are the norm. Family members tend to be buried nearby to each other in cemeteries, with grave markers containing vital information such as full names, dates of birth and death, and occasional lists of relatives. In contrast, Hindu custom calls for cremation, and for the resulting ashes to be placed into the holy river Ganges, or a suitable fluvial alternative. As such, Indians often don’t have the ability to wander around kirkyards searching for ancestors.

As mentioned above, elements of my family have been in the United States since a few decades after European settlement. Many of my fellow Americans likely share such length of familial residency, but would have no way of knowing it. The very vast majority of Americans of African descent likely cannot trace their records before the Civil War, if even that far. An essential component of chattel slavery is the complete dehumanization of peoples. As Prof. Skip Gates’ documentary series African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross made brutally clear, the changing of the names of slaves served to disconnect them from their ancestors to further alienate their humanity. Property doesn’t have a family tree.

Ironically, as shown in Many Rivers, major plantations often kept detailed genealogical records for slaves that could be used by modern African-Americans to trace their American history. Of the records that still exist, many are likely private property not open to the public. Even those records held in libraries will probably never help black Americans to trace their families prior to enslavement. As with many conditions of slavery, this erasing of personal histories is a national tragedy.

My whiteness affords me privileges not only in my present and my future, but in my ability to know my past.

On Flags

This week, a white terrorist murdered 9 black Americans in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Emanuel, one of the oldest black churches in America, has for two centuries withstood natural disasters, bans and burnings, serving as a pillar of the community and a stalwart symbol of black resilience. The mass murderer, fueled by the racist vitriol that has plagued our nation for our entire history, intentionally targeted the congregation, traveling two hours from his hometown of Columbia, where the Confederate battle flag flies around the site of the state capitol building.

South Carolina’s relationship to the Confederacy and its symbols are inextricable. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union and Fort Sumter in Charleston was the site of the first engagement of the Civil War. The Confederacy’s main public policy and reason for existence, chattel slavery, was perhaps more integral to South Carolina than to any other Dixie state; by 1860, South Carolina had the highest percentage of slaves to total population (57%) and the highest percentage of slaveholders to free population (8.9%). The impact of such prolonged disparities continue to affect the state (and the country as a whole), as evidenced in part by the massacre in Charleston.

The actions of the terrorist (who shall remain nameless in this post so as to not publicize his notoriety further) have reignited a debate about the meaning of the Confederate battle flag and the place of symbols in our society. I use the term “Confederate battle flag” because those who defend the design are quick to point out that the flag did not represent the Confederate government, but rather Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and is thus not a symbol of institutional racism, but of military valor. I find the argument for this interpretation lacking.

The battle flag is, by my way of thinking, an undeniable representation of the Confederate government. The idea for the battle flag, itself a modification of the original South Carolina flag of secession, came from General P.G.T. Beauregard. Beauregard’s aide designed the new flag, President Jefferson Davis gave official approval, and General Robert E. Lee was given the flag to fly during battle while representing the Confederacy. The “Southern cross” design was then incorporated into the official state flag of the Confederacy in 1863. In sum, the flag’s existence is owed to the efforts of three of perhaps the five most recognizable agents of the Confederate government. The flag, contrary to the romantic picture painted by defenders, did not arise from the dirt as a populist symbol of Southern unity; it was created by government officials for the express purpose of war.

But let us, for the sake of argument, accept that the battle flag is merely a symbol of the Confederate army, and not the greater government. Why would this improve the acceptability of the symbol? Creating a government structure based inflexibly upon the proprietary bondage of humans is a heavy enough offense, but does picking up arms for said cause not make the crime worse? The flag, in its military sense, represents the losing efforts of an army, consisting of 90% volunteers and mainly of poor white non-slaveholders tricked into believing they were fighting for their “homeland” or the nebulous concept of “states’ rights” by a gentry class that wished to combat any potential attempts at abolition. The battle flag is a symbol of sorrow, of classism, of racial disharmony, of bloodshed.

Following the loss of the Civil War, the plagued process of Reconstruction began in the South. The resentment of Northern control and the freeing of slaves prompted the birth of the Ku Klux Klan by Confederate veterans, who sought to overthrow Republican governance and reaffirm white supremacy by murdering black leaders. The Klan has existed in different phases for 150 years, killing thousands of African-Americans and other minorities. KKK members, seeing themselves as the continuation of the Confederacy, often carried the battle flag during their extrajudicial operations. The flag, already a symbol of slavery and the romanticization of the old South to many, became a symbol of lynching, adding another layer of fear for African-Americans.

The Confederate battle flag, as President Obama has recently stated, belongs in a museum, the proper place for an historical relic. I recognize the yearning of Southerners to differentiate themselves from the rest of the nation; it is a region with an incomparably fascinating cultural landscape. But the symbol Southerners have chosen to represent themselves is tainted- a hopeless source of racial tension in a region and country desperate for unity. Hold a convention. Send delegates. Craft a new symbol for the South, a symbol that showcases the diversity and the contributions of all of the South’s people, a symbol that doesn’t disenfranchise millions, and leave the battle flag in cemeteries where it belongs.

But let’s not stop there.

Let’s abandon our state and national flags. The Confederate battle flag is not the only representation of fear and evil flying in our country. To Native Americans, to Asian-American internment victims, to oppressed minorities, to innocent bystanders around the world, the Stars and Stripes represent the brutal and violent actions that Americans have allowed to define us for far too long.

Let’s take some time off.

Let’s recognize the full equality and autonomy of women.

Let’s stop persecuting our LGBTQ citizens.

Let’s stop treating property as more valuable than human life.

Let’s stop spying on and killing without cause our international neighbors.

Let’s cease the structural oppression of African-Americans through police brutality, racist drug laws, discriminatory housing policy, unequal education standards and labor prejudice.

Let’s reform our immigration system to finally reflect the dream of the New Colossus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Let’s address the foundation of our country- the widespread, systematic slaughter, forced relocation and theft of Native American peoples, cultures and lands.

Let’s build a society that lives up to the excellence that we vainly presume to embody.

Until then, we don’t deserve a flag.