Lost Ancestry: I Am A Descendant of Slaves

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Several times a day I see an advertisement for ancestry.ca. The purpose of this site is to give people the ability to trace their family lines. The people pictured in their ads are always White. Each time I see this commerical I feel a nagging tug in my heart. At first I wasn't sure why all of the White centric advertisements hurt me, until I had a conversation with the unhusbands nephew. He spent a few months tracing their family line and was able to give the unhusband several facts about their family that no one had known about. He even found a lost branch of the family a couple hundred miles away that he plans to reconnect with. We asked for a copy of his research, because we thought it would be great for our boys to learn about their roots.

A few months later I was having a conversation with Sparky. He mentioned that his mother was extremely interested in their family bloodline and had managed to trace his fathers side of the family back ten generations. As a White Anglo Saxon family, the records were just waiting to be gleaned. I found myself filled with jealousy. As we were talking, the Ancestry.ca advertisement played again and I knew why those ads had always filled me with rage. No matter how many times I type in the information that I know about my family, I will always hit a brick wall, because I am a descendant of slaves.

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