Recently I borrowed the PBS genealogy series, called FINDING YOUR ROOTS, featuring Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a great number of famous people with diverse backgrounds. Watching a TV series one show after another is a different experience than tuning in once a week, and I wrote down my impressions.
1) I have a lot of respect for Louis Henry Gates, Jr., especially since he has flat out stated that Africans SOLD other Africans as slaves. There has been a lot of denial on that issue. He has said that the stories of people being captured and taken away while out in the bush are greatly exaggerated - generally just not true. I note that this is part of the story in the book and TV series Roots.
2) There is an underlying anti-racism theme in these shows and a lot of pride about what ancestors, especially Jews, have suffered. A great many of the featured famous people have some non-white ancestry, so a person who is completely or mostly white is a rarity, and some are learning about their Jewish, Asian, or other than white ancestry. A fact is a fact, DNA research has progressed rapidly, and my suspicion is that it's actually very difficult to find a lot of people today who don't have some non-white ancestry. That's because it is a myth that white people dominate this world. So this underlying theme is about people trying on the fact that somewhere in their past, documented or not, someone reproduced with someone of another race. Sadly this often means rape.
3) Lots of historical references that put the ancestors in their historical context is terrific. I've always loved learning history through the characters in the story and think this is essential for writing your own family history.
4) Cutting edge DNA is used and explanations of how it works is very helpful to understanding the possibilities in research. For instance in Gates own family tree, no one knew the name of his white ancestor but through several DNA tests one particular match came up, and now he gets to explore that through documents, interviewing, etc.
5) It's always obvious that the show plugs the Ancestry genealogy database company. That's OK but remember there are many other electronic resources that can be of great use and that we can still hire professionals, go to archives, historical societies, graveyards, and so on that are NOT up on any database.
6) I have a couple more DVD's of the series ordered, but so far there has not been one person from a Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, or other Central-Eastern European background WHO WAS NOT JEWISH. If there is a sub-theme of the ancestors suffering, Catholic, Christian, and other religious people of Europe also suffered. It's not all about slavery in the United States and the WWII era Holocaust! (Update April 2 2015: Just watched a show about Martha Stewart who does have Polish Ancestry and it turns out some Moslems in Poland too! - So, OK, she's the exception.)
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