Is anyone watching "Who do you think you are?" on NBC with Reba? (BARF!)

NBC Television ^ | 4/20/2012 | TSgt

[TSgt]

I walked in the room and my wife has it on.

Reba just found out her 4th generation grandfather owned slaves and now she feels like a horrible human.

The historian just said, "We white people must understand that we have a connection to slavery so we all can heal."

I gagged.

[MacMattico]

Oh, and he worked his *ss off, there were no government handouts. Hey, I want some reparations! /s

[Ax]

The only connection to slavery I have is my great grandmother. She came to this country from Ireland as an indentured servant to a rich family in Grosse Pointe, MI.

[CatherineofAragon]

I don’t know of anyone in my family who owned slaves, BUT even if every ancestor I had owned them, I never have. My conscience is clear, so don’t try that white guilt crap on me.

[X-spurt]

Because the intent was to offend.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Will they research Obama and actually report that HIS family owned slaves? Nope.

[baddog 219]

And there were more white and asian slaves than blck...

[TigersEye]

Other than the sound a frog makes what’s a Reba?

[El Cid]

Slavery has probably been around since the time of Nimrod. It exists today... Not only in its metaphysical form in the United States where many are enslaved to the entitlement culture, but also in actual form in Africa (Sudan, and other areas). Yes, it has been an unfortunate practice in the history of man, which fortunately is not as prevalent as it once was, but to dwell on the past, and hold grievances for things that happened years ago ( and generations ago,) is cancerous.
If someone wants to begrudge the fact that someone in their ancestral tree was a slave, they should start first with the actual men-stealers - in the case of the hyphenated Americans who ancestors were slaves that came from Africa, that would be other African tribes. And perhaps be miffed at your ancestor's tribes that allowed themselves to be so weak to be taken as slaves... If they wanted to take a dispassionate look at the matter, they should be thankful that there were 'customers' that were willing to save them from the grave - which their captors would have otherwise buried them in if there were no 'customers'.

[Nepeta]

I learned in my 40s that some of my ancestors owned slaves in Alabama.

I didn't do it. I don't even know the names of these ancestors. I didn't abuse or use anybody. I have no guilt for things I did not do.

I also did not indulge in fantasies about mansions with white pillars, about fancy dresses, and being waited upon by faithful house slaves. Slavery was and is an abomination.

[Intolerant in NJ]

We’ll heal fine when the race-pimps stop using a condition that ended over a hundred years ago to drive wedges between people and keep the wounds weeping......

[yldstrk]

I don’t. And I don’t feel guilty. My people came here after being in a Japanese concentration camp and having left Russian for China after the Commies took over. Blacks may hate me for my whiteness but did their dad spend 3 years in a Japanese concentration camp from the age of 10 to the age of 13?

So any erroneous presumption about white “privilege” is completely wrong.

[StonyBurk]

I caught the part where Reba made manifest her new age touchy feely religion standing on the green looking up saying “I feel...” How like another actress who spoke of spiritual things not connected to Christianity. I caught how she ,in her ignorance ,couldn’t understand why anyone would put a ten yr old boy on board a tiny ship —as an indentured servant. It seems the ages for “college” in the American colonies was between 12-16. I seem to recall in many cases a boy was no longer a child at 16.The Pony Express—the American cowboys —
Now we have thirty year old children who have never experienced adulthood.our schools our society denies them the experience.

[niteowl77]

My dad never had much contact with his paternal side of the family because his father passed away when dad was quite young. I happened to run across some information - erroneous information, as it turned out - about a supposed semi-famous ancestor, but it led me to better information that fit in with what family apocrypha I had picked up over the years.

Turns out I have a couple of branches of the family featuring slave owners in the 1600s and 1700s. The first I am aware of was a planter in the then-new colony of Maryland, another a former British ship's captain who inherited a "plantation" from a bachelor uncle, and the last was an ex-overseer who married an employer's daughter, got fed up with the "peculiar institution" and emigrated N of the Ohio River in the 1830s. Since all of dad's paternal side first showed up in colonial North America in an area running from Philadelphia to South Carolina, it would have been virtually impossible for them to not have had some dealings with slavery.

(My dad's maternal side showed up from Germany in the late 1850's-early 1860's... I assume they abhorred slavery, but alas, none of them seem to have donned a blue uniform to help end the practice in the US.)

Whatever "white skin privilege" or pecuniary advantage I am apparently presumed to enjoy due to a pre-1840, slave-based economy has eluded me: whether through primogeniture, dissolution or simple bad luck, dad's branches of the family seemed to descend the socioeconomic ladder until they hit rock bottom in the 1930's. (The Great Depression didn't wipe them out, it only added to their overall misfortune.) In the caste system of small-town Iowa in the late 1930s, dad's family had reached the bottom of the barrel and was close to busting out the bottom and digging into the floor. That he and his siblings did relatively well was due to their own grit and abilities, in many cases including military service that was less than pleasant.

Reba has never been the deepest thinker of her ilk (I knew someone who worked with her back when she was actually a marketable act), and this latest round of prostrating herself before the media establishment goes right along with her wool-hatted hoplophobia. My own ancestors didn't pay for my sins and did not authorize me to apologize for them; I return the favor. If Reba wishes to do otherwise and thereby enable the eternal vengeance and perpetual entitlement crowd, so be it.

Mr. niteowl77

[W. W. SMITH]

A father may be held responsible for a sons conduct, the content of their character. The obverse, a son can not be held responsible for the fathers conduct, again content of character.
If a man holds slaves and his father is still alive, the father has a lien on his son’s lack of character. If a man holds slaves and he has a son, the son does not have a lien on the fathers lack of character.
The descendants can not be held responsible for the actions or inaction’s of their ancestors.

[octex]

I didn’t find anything offensive about that episode. It was actually one of the better ones; Reba was very open with how she felt about her family history and I found the whole thing very moving.
**********************
Exactly the way I felt, Sandy!

[x]

Reba just found out her 4th generation grandfather owned slaves and now she feels like a horrible human.

I didn't watch the show, but found this on the Internet:

"When I found out my four-times great-grandfather was trading children, that broke my heart. To be taken away from your parents, your home, and just, there ya go . . . ," Reba said on the show.

So her feeling "like a horrible human" was only a part of her reaction.

When somebody finds out something like this all of a sudden how are they supposed to react?

Harry Connick Jr. had a similar reaction on HL Gates's genealogy show, and it's not clear that Harry's ancestor owned slaves -- he just fought for the Confederacy.

But, really, if you're the kind of person who reacts differently, you wouldn't be the kind of person who gets invited to be on shows like these.

[PROTESTBYPROXY]

My family was indentured Quakers from Lincolnshire! Where is my entitlement? My Grandfather was a sharecropper until 1962. WHERE is my entitlement?

[Not A Snowbird]

Because the intent was to offend.

Nonsense. I've watched this show from the beginning, and that is not what they're about.

[wardaddy]

My ancestors had slaves as did most southerners today...somewhere in the ancestry.. and a fair number of antebellum descended northerners...northerners forget once there were some platations up north...even in places like New Jersey and Long Island

but I don’t care...not one damned bit

slaves here lived longer than the ones left behind in Africa

and they ate better and lived with less warfare...and they were shown western ways like family and Christianity

so where’s the beef/

and today...I mean really ...where would you rather be from...the Congo or Alabama?

this is such stupidity and exemplifies the broken spirit of whites

Reba honey...great boobs but you are one

I bet Norvel knows better

*my wife’s folks...the Wades and Barksdales of TN and MS were huge slaveowners...we still tend to their graveyard

[PghBaldy]

It hasn’t felt that way in many ways, but my life has been so easy compared to my ancestors.