Thursday, April 23, 2015

Family Histories and Ben Affleck

I haven't read anything on Ben Affleck's embarrassment about an ancestory being a slaveholder.  I did catch a bit on the evening news last night, and I think I have the gist:  He found out an ancestor was a slaveholder, and he's embarrassed about it.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, Ben, Congratulations!  Welcome to the melting pot that is the gene pool that led up to you.

Look, you go five generations back, you're looking at 32 different people, who coupled and ended up producing you.  You go back six, and you've got 64 people.

Here's the the thing.  Look at your family now.  Can you do anything about what Cousin Butch does?  Maybe, if you're name is Cousin Luke, and you're a WWE Hall of Famer, but I'm guessing not.

Now, what about those people who are dead?  Can you go back in time and talk to them?  Maybe teach them the folly of their ways?  I'd like to ask that of Ben Affleck specifically, because I still feel like there's some weird shit going on with his being cast as Batman, and I think traveling through time, altering events so that happenstance lines up according his design might be an answer to many of my questions.

Anyway, here's my point.  If you go back 6 generations in my own family tree?  You have slaveholders.  We've found the proof.  One ancestor in Georgia owned about 30, at one count.

Also in my family tree?  A preacher who fought for abolition, who served in the Union Army.

There's everything in your family tree, Ben.  You can't help what's there.  I know.  I've got a butt-ton of cousins procreating in Grainger County, Tennessee, between the years 1800 and 1900.  And that number of 64 people when you go back 6 generations?  I've only got 62 individuals, owing to the same person occupying two different spots in the tree.  So if anybody should be embarrassed, it's me, for my love of applesauce.

None of this even mentions the 19 cousins on both sides of my family that are still alive today that I couldn't force to go an any direction but the one they decide is right.

We're an obstinate bunch, that way.

My point is this:  you can't pick your family.  Even less can you pick your ancestors.  And if you're embarrassed by what's there, then you're not the guy who should be playing Batman....

1 Comments:

Blogger alice said...

Yep.

8:43 PM  

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