The New York Times seems obsessed with using the Obamas to educate its readers about America's racial history. So it was no surprise to me that when the paper recently filled out Michelle Obama's family tree, it summed up the findings as "the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans." I'm not picking on the Times for making everything about the president a teachable moment on race. (I do the same thing every week, only I use myself as the lab specimen.)But I found the piece alienating. It presented Michelle's lineage as an ineluctable five--generation march to the White House, without seeming to account for any of the real human struggles behind the genealogy. The article's tone was so bloodless, not unlike the "begats" section in the Bible: "Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama's ancestors—including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields—for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency." Where's the acknowledgment that such discoveries could unleash strong, ungovernable feelings in the living relatives, even if that includes the first lady, who has ceded her right to privacy?Black people know, intellectually, that they come from bondage, but it's another thing to confront the details of those ties and explore them emotionally. It's kind of like This Is Your Life, but only the bad parts. I learned this firsthand after I worked with Ancestry.com this summer to track down my own roots. The company has collected millions of bits and pieces of our collective story from slave-ship logs and trading records to church memberships and emancipation records. But when genealogists researched my family, they couldn't find anything earlier than the 1910 census. Before that we were either property (and many of those records have been lost or destroyed) or beneath the government's notice. Even after 1910, records for African-Americans were shoddily kept. What the state of South Carolina did with my father's birth certificate is a complete mystery. Whole centuries of my history are lost to me simply because of the color of my skin. That makes me really, really angry and sad. I had braced myself to be upset by the discovery of my family's slave history, but I certainly wasn't prepared to get a whole lot of nothing. It's trippy and heartbreaking—dreading the past, while at the same time grieving for the personal history you'll never know.So if you're going to go digging around, looking for anyone else's roots and writing about them on the front page of a newspaper, you need to examine the emotional surround, too. The Times goes out of its way to explain many of the paradoxes of slavery, yet somehow neglects to say why "as his [Shields] descendants moved forward, they lost touch with the past." Not to quibble, but they're glossing over a lot of upsetting history in that sentence. So many African-Americans were too traumatized by events earlier in their lives to discuss that sad personal history readily with their children and grandchildren—something I've seen in my own family. I've heard different explanations for my great-grandfather's move from Florida to Connecticut: the KKK was after my great-uncle or perhaps there were simply better opportunities and less discrimination in the North. Though no one was eager to fill in the blanks, silence never erased the damage. As a long-dead white man once famously wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."I respect the Times's urge to tell the world the story of our past. It's a wonderful feeling to know who you came from; when I saw my great-grandfather's signature on that century-old census form, I wept for joy. It's amazing how a digitized image of a piece of paper can make you feel like a legitimate part of the world (especially when you have more than one friend who can actually trace his roots back to the Mayflower). I suspect Michelle may have felt a bit of that too. But let's tell it like it was—200 years of struggle; hard work; memories, good and bad; failures; and resurrection. Despite the historic election of Barack Obama, discrimination and racism still exist and they are still tied to the color of our skin and linked to our country's past. The more honestly and completely our story is told, the easier the present is to bear or celebrate.

The trouble with genealogy is that people only lay claim to carefully edited parts of their lineage, and little else. But for ever body that has a distant relation to Abraham Lincoln, there are about one thousand descendants of horse thieves that ended up hanging from trees. I think people explore their roots hoping to find something to be proud of, but end up wishing they didn't know about great great uncle Louis the pedophile that died in prison.

I wonder if the auther ever thought the that lose of her family history wasn't about racism but just about the passege of time and the fact that records prior to 1900 were unreliable. But she instantly(knee-jerk) assumes that it all about racism. Why do blacks think they're the only ones who got screwed over by America? I wonder if she has ever researched what it was like to be a poor white immigrant from Ireland in 1904? Or what it was like to be poor white farmer in the 1920s struggling with the Depression? But then again, i read Newsweek everyday and Ms. Kelley essays always rely on race. i wonder if she can write science-fiction......it would probably be story about space slaves!

Slavery is painful history not only for African-Americans, but for the descendants of plantation owners. In learning my family history, I could never understand how my Huguenot ancestors escaped religious persecution in France, only to become slave owners in Florida. The Girardeaus' inexplicable transition from oppressed to oppressors was laid out in black and white in the family bible, which listed the slaves' names and ages. As much as I, and everyone in my family, wished this part of our history could be erased, imagine our delight when Democratic Nominee Barak Obama broadcast a message to the national convention from the Missouri living room of distant Girardeau cousins. I am pleased I had the chance to move beyond my ancestors' misdeeds and cast my vote for that great man.

That great man? You reminisce about your family's shameful past of slave ownership, then you call Obama a "great man?" Because he is black? It surely wasn't for his track record because he had none. A freshman senator with teleprompter skills.

Doesn't sound like your family's tendency towards making decisions based on race has changed very much.

Thank you for a thought provoking essay. Although I agree that genealogy can be painful and that Michelle Obama???s ancestry is personal, I think it was important for the NY Times to write about it and I thought it was a good article. We can learn from our country???s complex and often painful history, and Mrs. Obama is a part of that history. I don???t feel the Times should have made the article more emotional since they were just trying to convey how far we have come as a country from slavery to an African-American President. Mrs. Obama and her mother were informed of the documents and facts as they were uncovered by the researchers before the story was published and declined to comment since it was so personal. The reporters may have glossed over some of the more upsetting details because they didn???t know all the history from the documentation they had, maybe they didn???t want to infer what happened and why people did what they did. I thought the article did discuss why the family moved forward with a quote from Helen Heath, a woman who attended church with the family, who said:
???We got to the place where we didn???t want anybody to know we knew slaves; people didn???t want to talk about that.???
As a descendant of slave owners, learning about some of my ancestry was painful for me, although it may not have been as painful as learning that your ancestors were slaves and subjected to abuse. Pain, physical as well as emotional, is a subjective thing. When I read the plantation diary of my often quoted ancestor, Bennett H. Barrow I find myself looking for the good side of the man and not the details of the number of whippings he inflicted upon his slaves. I didn???t choose to have this man as an ancestor; I???ve learned a lot about him from his diary but still don???t really know him. One thing this article has made me consider is to go back and look at the censuses to see if any mulattos were listed for Bennett Barrow. Another well known Civil War diarist, Mary Chesnut, made comments about the hypocrisy of the southern women and their denial of the mulattos in their family, and I might be doing that. Barrow???s attitude in his diary seemed to be strong opposition whites and blacks intermingling, but who knows. One thing you can learn from studying genealogy and history is that life was very different in the past. I think we tend to perceive history through our current customs and morals, which is fine, but I feel we should also try to understand the culture of the time we are dealing with in order to truly learn from it. Studying the past is often hit and miss but more documents and information may come to light as more people become interested in unraveling it.

Raina I enjoy your articles in Newsweek and have been especially intrigued by the ones you have written recently on race.
I agree that I dialogue needs to be ongoing to help improve understanding. This summer over the period of about 2 months I was struck by the number on times the issue struck a cord in me. I was compelled to write a number of reflections on my own history and experience. I would like to participate in the dicussion and offer my thoughts and experience. It is likely unique as I am an old, white woman who grew up in the segregated south and a am a descendent of slave owners to boot.
I would appreciate it if you could let me know how I might be able to share my thoughts with you.

I get the point here but it's not just African Americans who have lthis issue. We don't start to think of preserving the roadmap to our past until we've burned enough bridges to be sure it's no longer a threat.

I hope you did not get too emotional about your great-garndfather's "signature on the census" because that was not his signature. Census records are completed by census takers, who write down the person's name and mark the boxes for other applicable information. No one "signs" the census--didn't you notice that every name on the page was in the same handwriting? Aside from that, your comments reflect an overwhelming lack of knowledge about genealogical research, not to mention an enormous amount of self-pittying whining about the horrible lot of Blacks who you apparently believe were treated discriminatorily simply because you cannot find an ancestor's name prior to 1910. The reality is that even whites have a difficult time locating their ancestors'names, for various reasons. First, until 1840 or 1850, only the name of the household head was listed, with separate boxes after that to write in the number of members of the household who fell in categories by age and gender. There were also boxes for slaves. None of these were listed by name. Second, some persons may not be listed because they evaded the census, were in transit to another home, and even because they were not at home when the census-taker arrived. Even worse is the fact that people were illiterate and did not know how to spell their own last names so that the census taker spelled it the way he/she heard it. And "hearing" could also be a problem when accents were involved, including backwoods accents such as my white ancestors had. I have found the name "Reynolds" spelled in a variety of ways, including "Ruinolds." It can take years and a good bit of luck sometimes to actually find what you are looking for. If you are really interested in locating ancestors, and not just in whining about ill-treatment, try other means, such as birth and death records, church records, cemetery lists, old Bibles. The list is infinite. But please stop acting as though the census is a perpetuation of mistreatment of Blacks. If mistreatment is reflected by the census, then everyone was mistreated.

What about White American's roots? I do not know of any country who has done more for more people on the face of this earth. The fact that those who are offered opportunity and refuse to take advantage of it...no thank I don't care to become educated even if it is free types... should not be allowed to punish and enslave those who want education. What about the White Americans lineage? I guess no one has a story except Black Americans. No one else matters...you would think.

Hello Dear Raina Kelley,

I read your article, "Rooting Around in the Past, Why genealogy can be painful", with great interest.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/218065

I was struck by your statement that "But when genealogists researched my family, they couldn't find anything earlier than the 1910 census."

I would challenge that, given enough accurate information, any African Ancestored Genealogist could find your people at least back to the 1870 census.
The cream of the crop of African Ancestored Genealogists can trace your roots back beyond 1870.

I'm a family historian and genealogist - and an evangelist for African Ancestored Genealogy. From my base in Santa Fe, New Mexico I can reach from the West Coast to the East Coast
and places in between to other professional African Ancestored Genealogists that can assist you in finding your people.

If you are serious in learning your roots, there are African Ancestored Genealogists that I can hook you up with.
You are not alone, you have an extended family, of spirited, dedicated and professional researchers that will help you in finding your Ancestors.

What say you?
Can I/we be of assistance?

George Geder

Peace,
"Guided by the Ancestors"
HTTP://GEORGE-GEDER.NET
HTTP://TWITTER.COM/GEORGEGEDER

Knowledge is power. I can appreciate your struggle in researching African Ancestored Genealogy, but do not try to do it alone. Never depend on one source. Ancestry.com is just the tip of the beginning of what you can find. Seek out a commuity of people who share a similar interest of not just finding "the bad parts" , but telling the entire story of a people who dared to live and thrive despite their situation.

Slavery does not define our history it explains a situation. Not all blacks were slaves or remained in slavery. I have an ancestor who was a Free Woman of Color in the Republic of Texas manumitted in the 1830's who used the court system to maintain her freedom and to protect her children after her death. This information has been gathered from many sources and people. Some day descendants will be able to pick up one source and read about her life, but I must continue to detect , prove and interpret the historical time period Celia Allen lived in.

Check out afrigeneas.com You will experience random acts of genealogy kindness from family historians and professional genealogist that can help you on your journey.