March 15, 2017
Page 7
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O PINION
Painful Legacy of Our Collective History
Blank spots on
the family tree
M AndisA r outheni
Maybe you’ve seen
those
Ancestry.com
commercials pushing
Americans to “discov-
er their stories” by dig-
ging into their family
histories.
Millions of Amer-
icans find meaning from these
searches. My mom’s one of them.
She’s doing a deep dive into our
family history, reviving the stories
of past ancestors in America.
She discovered that the Ger-
man last name we had wasn’t our
original family name. Somewhere
— perhaps Ellis Island, once a
gateway for millions of Europe-
an immigrants — our name was
changed. That’s made it hard to
learn about our history before em-
igration.
On my father’s side, though,
by
the fog of history hides much
more than names — and it’s in-
credibly more painful. You see,
my father is African-American.
And for black Ameri-
cans, searches on sites
like Ancestry.com yield
blank spots on the fam-
ily tree.
Before the Civil War,
after all, our ances-
tors were considered
property, not people.
This means there are no marriage
certificates, medical records, or
school or census records. Instead,
pre-Civil War family research
means sifting through bills of sale,
auction records, and property led-
gers with uncertainty, as families
were often torn apart.
Even if my family had lived in
a state that abolished slavery be-
fore the Civil War, or if someone
from my family was a freed per-
son in the North, I’d still have to
do extensive research to find them.
Many free blacks were kidnapped
and forced back into slavery un-
der federal laws like the Fugitive
Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850.
African-American genealogy is
also difficult because of names.
Enslaved Africans were forced
to take the last names of slave
owners, which were often changed
when individuals were sold to an-
other family or institution. After
the Civil War, emancipated blacks
sometimes took on the names of
their former masters, as is the case
with part of my family, or made up
new last names altogether.
Even after emancipation, black
Americans continued to face per-
secution in the South and beyond.
Many fled West or North or else-
where, and the paper trail is non-
existent or impossible to follow.
When they did make it some-
where else, they still faced lynch-
ings, arson attacks, bombings, and
theft from hostile whites. These acts
of terror erased records and histo-
ries, along with families and people.
Now, however, there are some
Trump’s Magical
Thinking on Health Care
Take note of the
trick word ‘access’
J iM h ightower
Donald Trump, the
amazing wunderkind
of global luxury liv-
ing — and now our
nation’s phantasma-
goric, fast-charging
president — is prov-
ing to be a legislative magician.
In his campaign, Trump’s number one
promise was that he would “immediately”
repeal the entirety of Obamacare, then —
hocus-pocus and abracadabra! — Simulta-
neously replace it with “great health care
for a fraction of the price.”
Sounds impressive! No wonder his
White House media operation calls him
“President Action, President Impact.”
But it seems that the Amazing Donald
has abruptly learned that what magicians
do isn’t magic. They just perform illusions.
In other words, it’s fakery.
So Trump is now caught in the spotlight
of reality, unable to produce a workable
plan to “repeal and replace” Obamacare,
as he so glibly promised.
In fact, the GOP replacement scheme
by
he’s been backing would leave millions of
people with no health care coverage, while
reducing the benefits and jacking up insur-
ance payments for millions of others.
Frustrated, President Action recently
whined to a meeting of state governors that
“nobody knew that health care could be so
complicated.” Of course, by “nobody,” he
meant that he didn’t know — and therefore
no one could’ve known, since he knows
everything.
But now, in a truly amazing magical act,
The Donald has pulled a rabbit out of his
hat. His new Trumpcare plan, he brags,
will guarantee that every American will
have access to health coverage.
Before you erupt in applause, however,
notice the trick word he’s using: “access.”
That doesn’t mean you’ll get coverage.
You’ll just get access to coverage — if you
can afford it.
It’s the same as promising that everyone
will get “access” to owning a private jet
and living in a fabulous Florida golf resort,
just like Trump.
See, he truly is magical!
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower
is a radio commentator, writer, and public
speaker. He’s also the editor of the populist
newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. Dis-
tributed by OtherWords.org.
Advertise with diversity in The Portland Observer
Call 503-288-0033 or email ads@portlandobserver.com
exciting breakthroughs in the
search for family history for Afri-
can Americans.
The Freedmen’s Bureau Project
recently launched a new website,
Discoverfreedmen.org, which in-
cludes the names of almost 2 mil-
lion men, women, and children.
It brings together resources
from various archives, museums,
libraries, and digitized documents
collected by the Freedmen’s Bu-
reau, which was established in
1865 to provide services to newly
emancipated communities. Its ar-
chives include bank records, mar-
riage and death certificates, mil-
itary service records, migration
information, and so much more.
The new site also allows a par-
tial name search, which is a game
changer.
Oral histories of formerly
enslaved people are another in-
valuable resource — check out
the Library of Congress to start.
Others include records kept by
African-American newspapers,
Benevolent Societies, churches,
and so forth, which are available
online and in public libraries.
Finally, DNA tests are another
new tool for people tracing their
ancestry.
But DNA can reveal a pain-
ful lineage. For example, black
women were often raped by slave
owners or forced to have inter-
course with enslaved men to bear
children into slavery. How do you
deal with that in a family tree?
I’m grateful for the chance to
glimpse new branches of my fam-
ily tree. But ultimately, every one
of my African ancestors was kid-
napped from Africa. So even if I
find a ship manifest or pay for a
DNA test, I’ll never fully know
the places, stories, and families
that are my ancestry.
This is the painful legacy of our
collective American history.
Mandisa Routheni is the New
Mexico fellow at the Institute for
Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.