Is My Genealogy Hobby Racist?
What I learned as a potential Son of the American Revolution.
Is my genealogy hobby racist?
The answer is… probably yes.
I don’t think I’m in the best place to say. I know that white people, like me, are notoriously clueless about the impact of our actions and the ways we participate in and benefit from racist systems. We live in a society where systemic racism is part many of institutions: education, justice, politics, and more, and genealogy is no exception.
I want to become aware of how racism is part of my ancestry research and how I can try to turn my genealogy hobby into a liberation project.
It started innocently.
When I first built my family tree online, I was interested to see if I had any ancestors who had fought in wars. Wars are turning points in the story of a nation, and for me to have a family member who was present during those times would link me personally to those turning points. I sought out military records for male ancestors, and I put images in my ancestors’ galleries to designate their service. Every generation in my tree has family members who fought in wars.
My research led me to a number of documents related to the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, also known as the SAR and the DAR. In the application process for these “lineage societies,” applicants have to document how one or more of their ancestors served in the American Revolution. Those documents are readily available, and they can give amateur genealogists like me instant satisfaction because someone else has already spent time documenting our connections to the Revolution.
In my case I discovered that one of my direct ancestors, John Deeds (AKA Johannes Jacob Dietz, 1749–1835 who was the son of German immigrants) of Franklin County, PA, served as a private in the Pennsylvania militia from 1780 to 1782 under a Captain named Samuel Patton. Pretty cool. I could be an official SAR.
Many white Americans can use these records to trace their family history. I say “white” Americans, because until recently, membership in the DAR and SAR was limited to white people, and because the organizations were founded to explicitly include only white people. The president general of the DAR said the following in 1912 in the DAR report to Congress:
“Another ideal that we stand for is that of the purity of our Caucasian blood, the perpetuity of our Anglo-Saxon traditions of liberty, law, and the security of the gradual elevation of the white man’s standard of living, which on this continent and under the Old Flag attained the highest level so far attained by any nation in the history of the world.”
The SAR and DAR were founded on elitist and racist principles.
The SAR and the DAR were started in the late 1800s during a time when the United States was experiencing an influx of immigrants who were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant. There were Jewish people and others coming from Eastern Europe, Catholics from Ireland and Southern Europe, and Chinese people and other Asian heritage people arriving in the West. Within this context, there was a push to maintain the dominance of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage people. There were new immigration laws and quotas, and people who could trace their lineages to colonial times tried to stop the U.S. from being overrun with non-WASPs.
An implicit goal was to keep any new immigrants locked in the “other/not real American” category in perpetuity. The only people who could be “real Americans” were those who were descended from the founders of the country. The DAR and the SAR invited people to prove their connection and importance by passing the test of genealogy, and new immigrants needed not apply.
Despite being clothed as service organizations, these groups functioned like so many other exclusive clubs such as golf courses, universities, fraternities, and secret societies; their members gained benefits from access to power and connections to individuals with power. It was and continues to be all about “who you know.”
The DAR and SAR were explicitly elitist organizations, and focused as they were on ethnic purity, these groups also deliberately excluded Black people and Native Americans.
The DAR and SAR connected their racial purity goals to the founding spirit of the Revolution. They portrayed the nobility of their WASP ancestors and they urged their white members to continue in that spirit of service, while actively excluding descendants of Black and Indigenous people — people who were also present during the Revolution.
It wasn’t just a service club. These lineage societies have actively shaped the way people think about history, through the building of monuments and the writing of history books, glorifying a semi-mythological version of history.
In 1894, four years after the founding of the DAR, the organization that became known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was founded with the goal of memorializing Confederate war veterans. The UDC went into a frenzy of monument building and writing of history textbooks, championing the “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War (known to the UDC as the “War of Northern Aggression”).
The DAR, SAR, and the UDC were all racist and elitist organizations aimed at upholding racial purity, and genealogy was the ticket to access.
In 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt famously quit the DAR when they barred Marian Anderson, a Black opera singer who was a friend of Eleanor’s, from performing in Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. Anderson went on to make a public performance at the Lincoln Memorial to an integrated crowd of more than 70,000 people.
Genealogy is also used to deny complicity with racism and slavery
Along with the white people who have used genealogy to connect with their/our colonial ancestry in an elitist and racist way, other white people have used genealogy to disavow their/our connection to slavery and white supremacy. In this version of history, the new immigrants who came over after 1865 (like many of my own ancestors!) and/or those who came to the North, were not responsible for slavery. For these people, Ellis Island became the origin point and an important landmark, and the story of the hard-working white immigrants who made America great has been attached to their/our ancestors. When speakers declare “We are a nation of immigrants,” these are the people the speaker is referring to.
This story of working-class white ancestors pulling themselves up by their bootstraps runs just as much risk of being revisionist history as the DAR/UDC Anglo-Saxon ancestor superiority versions. Much of the reverence for these post-Civil War immigrants forgets the ways that US Government policies systematically advantaged those white people over Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian heritage people. We are left with a “bootstrap white pioneer” myth to describe why these new immigrants thrived in America — they were just simply a better sort of people, and much of our (white) genealogy goals are around illuminating the stories of these amazing white immigrants.
What is the purpose of my personal genealogy project?
Is it racist?
How much of my initial impulse to find out about my ancestors’ military service was motivated by a desire to be recognized as a legitimate American? And how smug did I feel when my bootstrap ancestors fought on the Union side in the Civil War (you’re welcome America!) or came over after slavery was abolished?
Genealogy has long been used as a means to make power and privilege seem legitimate (patriarchy, anyone?), and the lineage societies’ magical “founding fathers” and the bootstrap immigrant myths are good examples of this. But those uses of genealogy only reach for part of the truth.
We can use the same set of ancestry resources and practices to use genealogy to undermine racism and elitism, and those are my goals.
In the 1970s, the publication and subsequent airing on TV of Alex Haley’s epic Roots set off a frenzy of popular interest in genealogy. Haley’s purpose in beginning his story in Africa was to claim a deeper history for himself and other Black people than most of the documentation which could go back to 1865. Nowadays, DNA testing is continuing this process through linking African heritage people to specific places in Africa.
When Haley’s Roots came out, one ironic consequence was that it set off a wave of white people seeking their own family histories, but Roots popularized genealogy for all people. Haley’s example helped people see their own stories as valid, and that opened up a necessary reckoning with both history and family history.
With the advent of searchable online databases and widely available DNA tests, hobby genealogy is seeing a huge new wave. I am part of that wave, and my excitement at finding my ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War is tempered by a desire to get a complete picture of the historical context which my ancestors lived in. To do this I need to wade through the myth-making that was done by early historians, influenced by groups like the DAR and the UDC, which attempted to write history to favor their elitist constituencies.
I couple my genealogy study with a desire to look at United States history from multiple perspectives. I have to recommend a recent book on the American Revolution by Woody Holton called Liberty is Sweet. Holton gives readers an understanding of the Revolution from the points of view of women, Black people, and Indigenous people.
Interestingly, the DAR has been having its own reckoning with history. In 2019 they invited Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly to serve on their National Board. She is the first Black woman to ever serve on the board.
I think it is important to learn full historical context to family history. This more complete history gives us the opportunity to imagine a future where every human is valued and every story is lifted up. It also decouples history from myth-making, because it does not require our ancestors to be unique or special or better than other people. They just were who they were.
Genealogy has a long way to go.
Recently Ancestry.com (my preferred research site) got in trouble with a “whitewashed” advertisement and when it made it harder for people with enslaved ancestors to find documents. It had the appearance that they were helping white researchers avoid the unpleasant news that their ancestors might have owned enslaved people. There was speculation that this was because the company didn’t want their customers to experience anything that would cause them to quit the website. Whitewashing and myth-making are alive and well in the genealogy world.
As a general rule, white people like me have access to much more ancestry information than Black people and Indigenous people. Descendants of enslaved people hit a brick wall after the 1870 Census. Because of this, hobby genealogy is much more accessible to white people.
Part of white privilege is document privilege. When white people like me build up mountains of documents about our ancestors, it may start to feel like people who are outside of the system are somehow less legitimate. In present day United States, “undocumented” people have few rights and privileges, and that prejudice extends to our ancestors.
In the Jim Crow South, white people could avoid the voting restrictions if their grandfathers voted (btw this is why I avoid using the term “grandfathered in”). Since descendants of formerly enslaved people had no documents before 1870, genealogy was used as a racist tool to deprive Black people of their rights.
In the case of Indigenous people, genealogy has long been used to deny individuals rights. In deciding who gained benefits from treaties or who was assigned land during Allotment, the U.S. Government used “blood quantum” to determine access. People who could not prove their ancestry or who were of mixed ancestry were excluded. This is still happening.
Genealogy as a liberation practice
My initial focus on the military service of my ancestors has broadened considerably over time. I have learned to not only focus on my male ancestors, but to look at historical context for every ancestor. This is a process for me of coming to a liberation genealogy practice within a white male-dominated culture. I want to use genealogy to understand and undermine privilege.
I invite you to join me in the process. As part of my liberation practice, I offer you my services and my access to websites as part of the gift economy. They are a gift to you, and you can decide to return a gift of your choice, or pay it forward. You can contact me directly at <gaertner.andy122@gmail.com> to start to learn more about your family history.
Resources:
Reference for quote:
Report of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution
Edit description
Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt
The Context
DAR attempting to be anti-racist-y:
DAR/UDC and racism:
UDC and racism:
Ancestry.com caught being racist:
A Jewish person questions the racialization of DNA testing:
Good summary:
Reference for DAR changes:
