I have never ever felt a shred of so-called white guilt. I think it only affects liberals.
I bought a bunch of books at an estate sale one time. One of them mentioned a Little Bill who was a black birder out of Bristol, England. Did a bit of research and found a family relationship, who cares.
That was a rerun—that being said, ALL of those “Who do You Think You Are?” shows are either guilt trips (If your family happened to own slaves or be conservative) or high fives (for feminists and the progressive way-See Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen).
I'm white and I don't have a connection to slavery.
The historian makes a generalization based on skin color.
Ironic isn't it.
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.
Other than the sound a frog makes what’s a Reba?
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......
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.
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
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.
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.
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