Ancestry.com Blew My Mind

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

family treephoto © 2007 Rick Audet | more info (via: Wylio)
Ancestry.com has been doing heavy TV advertising on some of the networks I watch regularly. I know a few people who have used Ancestry and have enjoyed it. Personally, I haven't had much interest in digging into my family history. I mean, I want to know, but I don't want to know; if you know what I mean.

When I first started seeing the commercials, I got really jaded. I don't know where it came from. The conversations in my head went something like this:

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather not see written evidence of how my family was probably split up and I definitely don't want to know who owned my great, great grandparents. But thank you anyway.

It got to the point where I'd change the channel when the commercial came on. It seems so irrational and silly, but it's true. I'd get this little ball of anger in the pit of my stomach. I know I could spend several weeks on a therapists' couch to figure out where all those feelings came from! 

I do get angsty and bitter during Black History Month so I'm sure there were some residual feelings from there. Call me crazy, but the mental images I get when I think of African Americans and trees aren't the kind to inspire me to log onto their site.

But then I saw another commercial and my whole perspective changed. This one had an African American man as the actor. He said pretty much what I had been thinking, only politely. Then, at the end of the commercial, he said something along the lines of, "sure, I saw that my grandfather came here as a slave. But I also saw that he ended up a business owner."

KABOOM!

My mind? It was blown.

In that one sentence, Ancestry managed to completely change how I felt about the site. I'd been thinking of it from a totally negative viewpoint. I had such big blinders on, I couldn't even see the positives. Who knows what kind of information I could find if I were ever to dig into our family history?! It can't all be bad, right?

I guess I should say thank you to Ancestry. I always appreciate a good swift kick in the arse and being forced to re-think previous misconceptions. ETA: Heather's comment below reminded of something I meant to put in my post which is to commend Ancestry for recognizing there might be a need for that kind of commercial message and handling it in such a compassionate (though realistic) manner.

Who or what has kicked you in the arse before?

*This is not a sponsored post. I tried to find the actual commercial on You Tube but couldn't. If you find it please leave a link!

4 comments:

  1. A huge problem with the way we teach history, in regards to African-Americans, is that we make it all about victimization instead of including stories of empowerment.

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  2. Wow! What a great post. This instantly made me think, "What am I missing because I have blinders on?" It is so easy to judge something in an instant. Thanks for this reminder to look with an open mind. :)

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  3. After watching that show on NBC I forget the name of it, the one with the celebs looking up their ancestry, I decided to try it. It has amazing information about my family who were African Americans. They had draft cards of my ancestors, death certificates etc, and census records. It is hard finding people during slavery times so I'm still working on that. But I highly recommend it if you want to do your own research.

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