A Lesson From History
Last year talking to my friend S, we somehow got onto the subject of racism because he was trying to give me a parallel. He went onto tell me about some article a Professor(!) had written in in some medical journal suggesting there was a difference in intelligence between races, and how it could be an explanatory variable.
Immediately my mind got lost. It went straight to genealogy, and how its never used enough. One thing I'm very good at is jumping as far as thoughts go. You talk about apples and perhaps internally I'll start thinking oranges. My friend jumped in at my hesitation, with "No he's wrong!", etc an indicator of how can you even be pausing here. A drifting mind, and I never got to explain where my thoughts subsequently wandered to, because conversation then moved on.
In the subsequent months, I've kept returning to the whole genealogy thing; how it could serve as a good vehicle not just in terms of racism but how history serves us towards acceptance in general. History can seem impersonal - why does it matter to me line - however, personal study can force ownership. Yes it does matter. In the process, you learn and with it forcing out myths surrounding irrelevancy of history.
To realise how you are a link in a chain, a temporary curator of genes and how history does indeed shape us who we are today. People overly like to think they are individuals, society constructs even pushes this belief, and don't me me wrong, they are. However, in part its a smokescreen. (For the record, I didn't suddenly just think of this; my thoughts are more appreciating depth as far as importance goes).
Today I read an article in The Guardian around the wider benefits of genealogy:
Encouraging genealogy is an effective method of combating racism. By understanding the diversity of one's own background, 'celebrating,' or at least respecting, the diversity of others becomes more likely.
I couldn't agree with statement more, and bottom line we're all ultimately related. There's not an infinite number of ancestors to go around. Go back 10 generations and you've got 1024 grandparents. Go back 40 generations its 1,099,511,627,775, etc. Its common sense we're all cousins, the further back we go, ancestors are going to appear on more than one place on our tree. The only real question is where do we meet within this forest.
In addition to researching my own family history, I've been trying to co-ordinate a one parish study for the past three years. With it, some interesting migration patterns, especially if you take this to a DNA level. Welsh people traditionally descended from the Celts, i.e. came from central Europe, (Austria - think Hallstatt culture). In other words, Indo-European people (shared with Greek, Italians, Balts, Persians, etc). What is totally fascinating how these branches have evolved into their own cultures, and makes the world much more interesting. Insert a plug how much I think English is a killer language.
The more you research history, the more you appreciate just how artificial in construction racism is. It cuts way past anthropology, and whatever else. How people group people through a common social construction and identity. That is not to say that racism that is experienced is not very real, or indeed how people group due to common identifiers; however, ultimately we belong to a single living existence. Only that matters.
Genealogy can also be a spur to education. We will pay more attention to history and geography if our families are caught up in it. There is also the sobering thought that as we evaluate our ancestors we focus on what our descendants will think of us – if they can be bothered to find out.
There's a lot to be said for historical research, ignore it at your peril.