What if Your Ancestors are Confederates, or Boomers

Maintaining a Sense of Continuity with the Past when the Past is a Problem

Grandpa wasn’t perfect

Neither will you be

But he did some worthy things

and made your history

It is very hard to proceed in creating a family without some sense of honor and respect for your ancestors. Think of Olympic runners passing the torch from hand to hand. As he runs, torch held high, he feels the force of all the runners behind him pushing him on and holding him up.

But what if your ancestors don’t model values very well?

Dad, how come Grandpa only had two children?

Mom, how come Grandma is going on a cruise instead of coming for Christmas?

What if your ancestors were somewhat sketchy by today’s standards (this is everybody’s ancestors) and our society holds them in contempt?

Dad, Tommy says my ancestors were Confedrits, it means we owned slaves and hated black people.

Media control and home schooling can relieve the pressure on the second problem but cannot make it go away.

The problem is acute because strong group identity NEEDS that sense of continuity, and the more you are essentially starting your family as a conscious, multi-generational entity the more you need it. New s tructures need old foundations.

Today’s transmission addresses how to create and preserve a sense of identity and honor reaching into the past even when the past is challenging.

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Expand the scope of your ancestry

If you go back far enough, everyone has ancestors on both sides of every societal problem. Invader and invaded. Quisling and resistance. Slaver and enslaved.

As one steader put it

I am probably descended from both slaves and slave owners. It's just the way things were back then.

I tell my kids they have winners and losers in their family tree.

Yes, Grandpa only had two kids, but Great-Grandpa had 8.

Avoid Presentism

We shouldn't hold past people to present social standards, b/c our society isn't perfect either and has no standing to claim transcendent superiority

We have a very close family especially at holidays because we think it’s the best way, but Grandma was taught different ideas about that, she still loves you.

Add Historical Context

For things in the past that go strongly against contemporary standards, the contemporary view on it usually leaves out a lot of nuance that doesn’t necessarily justify the past but makes it a lot more understandable.

I have been listening to contemporary civil war songs for months now and not once do the soldiers sing about fighting for slavery. Never

You can also blame larger societal forces when the problems you are talking about aren’t unique to your particular ancestor.

I have found 'their virtues were their own, their sins were those of their time' to be very effective

You don’t know how it was to be Grandpa growing up. Everyone he knew and everything he read told him there were too many people and we were all going to starve. There was no internet and only three TV channels which all said the same thing over and over. We are very proud of Grandpa that he still had two children. We are angry at the injustice that was done to him, keeping him from having

Be Comparative

Your ancestors weren’t uniquely bad. No blood guilt. There are probably people who did worse than them.

Slavery was not unique to one culture or society; it was a widespread practice across the world, including in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. If we trace our lineage back far enough, most people would likely find both slaves and slave owners in their family tree.

Focusing solely on the last 200 years can seem arbitrary because it misses centuries of global history where slavery was practiced by nearly every society.

However, it's also crucial to acknowledge that the Western world, including the United States, eventually recognized the moral and ethical issues with slavery and moved to abolish it.

I honestly think the easiest way to defuse this narrative is just to speak frankly and objectively about other historical cultures. My daughter asked me what a "dalit" was today

The most compelling forms of historical revisionism (to me at least) are additive, not subtractive.

A lot of people Grandpa’s age didn’t have kids or got divorced. We are very glad Grandpa had two kids and stayed married.

We are going to miss Grandma at Christmas but she is still a lot more involved with you kids than a lot of Boomers are.

If you are in the unique situation where your ancestor was about as bad as can be imagined, you are in luck. Kids love stories of epic bad behavior from their kin and villainy has a kind of numimous sanctifying power. If your ancestor was Simon Legree, be sure to disapprovingly and frequently tell your children was an awful black-hearted evil scoundrel he was. It will do wonders for your children’s sense of family pride.

Yes, Grandma is probably the most selfish person ever to live. Do you know that [insert large fund of rueful anecdotes here]

Present a Narrative of Continuity within Change

Learning from your ancestors instead of judging them. Honor them by improving on what they did. They would want that. Some things we only know are problems because our ancestors did them and found out the consequences for us.

Encourage a discussion about how we learn from history to better our future, rather than using it solely to judge individuals today by the deeds of their ancestors.

We start as the sum total of what has come before us, but we have no control over that. However, we do have control of what we add to that sum.

Focus on their Virtues

Anyone and any era looks bad bad bad if you only look at their faults.

Your confederate soldier ancestors had the valor and honor of answering when their name was called

We really are going to miss Grandma because she is the best cook ever!

Don’t Forget the Cool Factor

We are always likely to impute unlikely virtues to the cute.

The most important coolness factor is yourself.

The reality is that any plausible formula will usually work if you are high status in your home, your kids love you, and they see you showing an interest in and respect for your ancestors

Almost no formula will work if these are missing

The reality is that any plausible formula will usually work if you are high status in your home, your kids love you, and they see you showing an interest in and respect for your ancestors

Almost no formula will work if these are missing