{"id":57485,"date":"2019-02-04T18:09:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T18:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57485"},"modified":"2019-02-04T18:12:38","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T18:12:38","slug":"why-you-should-dig-up-your-familys-history-and-how-to-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57485","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Dig Up Your Family’s History — and How to Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why You Should Dig Up Your Family\u2019s History \u2014 and How to Do It<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2019-02-03<\/p>\n

Jaya Saxena<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSally Deng<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

Learning your history is forced reckoning, asking you to consider whose stories you carry with you and which ones you want to carry forward.<\/em><\/p>\n

My middle name is the name of a Confederate<\/a> soldier.<\/p>\n

Before that it was Scottish, the name of an indentured servant<\/a> who came here when America<\/a> wasn\u2019t a country, when he was just one of many who were brought over. The name stayed on the Atlantic coast<\/a>, passing through my Confederate ancestors, onto my loving grandmother who taught me how to birdwatch, finally landing on me, a mixed-race woman with a Jewish partner living in New York City<\/a>. Somehow I don\u2019t think that soldier would be too happy about that.<\/p>\n

In America, the question of \u201cWhere am I from?\u201d usually means, \u201cWhere did my family live before they arrived\/were forcibly shipped to America?\u201d Recently, there\u2019s been a push to answer that question through DNA tests<\/a> \u2014 Ancestry.com sold 1.5 million kits<\/a> on Black Friday<\/a> in 2017 \u2014 which claim they can tell us exactly what percentage Norwegian or Nigerian we are. But there are catches. The tests can compromise our privacy, with the possibility that our genetic information would be sold to third parties<\/a> without our knowledge, and they don\u2019t truly reveal our origins so much as reveal who has similar DNA<\/a> right now. Also, and perhaps more important: Culture does not come from DNA. It comes from lived experience, traditions and stories passed down, from actual people who shape our perceptions of the world.<\/p>\n

This is why I\u2019ve enjoyed learning about my family through good old-fashioned genealogy research. Scrolling through pages of old newspapers or deciphering handwriting on a census is how I found out I\u2019m descended, on my white side, both from Union<\/a> and Confederate soldiers, from slave-owners and abolitionists, and possibly from witches (I\u2019m still trying to verify that one). And it was in doing this I learned that, on my Indian side, Yeats<\/a> wrote a very patronizing poem<\/a> inspired by my third great-uncle.<\/p>\n

These are more than facts. They\u2019re the myths that are a part of the story of yourself, whether you like them or not. Learning your history is forced reckoning, asking you to consider whose stories you carry with you and which ones you want to carry forward.<\/p>\n

Genealogical research can be daunting, no matter how chipper those Ancestry.com ads seem. And while a DNA test can help, there\u2019s probably more to your story. Here\u2019s how to start…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning your history is forced reckoning, asking you to consider whose stories you carry with you and which ones you want to carry forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,20],"tags":[18157,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-57485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-jaya-saxena","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57487,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57485\/revisions\/57487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}