African-Americans search for their roots.

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Kathy Drago

African-Americans search for their roots.

Legg inn av Kathy Drago » 20 nov 2006 00:58:29

Almost 30 years ago, “Roots” made its way deep into the American popular
consciousness. It was not assumed, at first, that this multi-part TV saga
of a family—from its progenitor’s capture in Africa through generations
of American slavery and freedom—would be the blockbuster that it did in
fact become. To have done with it, ABC dumped it into a single week,
thinking it would draw only a limited number of viewers. Instead “Roots”
glued Americans to their seats. It created both the concept of the
miniseries and, more important, a black genealogy craze that has yet to
abate. The continuing effects of that craze are visible in the
proliferation of black family reunions.

My own family started having official family reunions in 1975 or so, when
I was a young teen. That was just long enough before “Roots” to allow us
to look down our noses at the arrivistes who were merely, it seemed,
taking up a fad. But our condescension didn’t last. Like eight-track
tapes, our homespun BBQ-and-Kool Aid reunions at Aint Pee Wee’s faded
away after “Roots,” outclassed, outspent and overshadowed by a new kind
of family gathering. Over time, it has become a high-tech,
multimillion-dollar industry.

These days, thanks to email, Web sites and advances in DNA analysis, all
50 states are vying for the reunion trade—not least the lucrative,
high-toned black reunion slice of it. Between 2000 and 2002, 34% of
adults traveled for family reunions, according to the Travel Industry
Association of America. It’s unknown how many of them were
African-American, but we do know that minorities accounted for about 19%
of the $90 billion spent on domestic travel in 2002. Convention centers
and the hotel industry know that black reunions are cash cows; many have
designated specific offices to lure the trade. At least three major hotel
chains offer reunion packages and advertise them in minority
publications.





Atlanta is a family reunion hot spot. With its many civil-rights-movement
destinations, it has uniquely designated a Chamber of Commerce job to do
nothing but grease the “Roots”-seekers’ wheels and count the $20 million
bale of nostalgia-tourism that blacks bring to the Peach State each year.
Meanwhile, the African nation of Ghana has embarked on an “apology”
campaign aimed at luring its nouveau riche, long lost children to forgive
it its role in the slave trade and spend their travel dollars in the
motherland.
Extravagant trips to African birthplaces may still be rare, but even the
most run-of-the-mill reunions now involve banquets, cruise boats,
chartered buses and fashion shows. Fancier reunion groups hire
genealogists to unearth family trees or award scholarships from family
foundations. The African-American family reunion is a cockeyed
opportunity to gauge the upward mobility and strong family ties of blacks
generally.

Sophisticated reunions of real size and scope—attendees might range from
50 to 350—would not be possible were African-Americans not combining
their strong familial ties with the organizational skills they have honed
at their new niches in the professional world. Back in the day, one of my
few female relatives to have escaped a uniform in order to type in a
government office would, on the sly at work, mimeograph copies of our
hand-drawn family tree. Today a plethora of comprehensive reunion
planning Web sites, like Temple University’s Family Reunion Institute and
the African American Genealogist’s Family Reunion Primer, allow families
to research their histories and conduct online planning meetings from
their homes, public libraries and offices.

While a widespread interest in genealogy is sweeping America generally,
blacks seem to be the most swept along, excited to hear about the dusty
roads and swimming holes of their families’ pasts and, yes, about the
lynch mobs and slave auctions of the towns that their forebears fled like
a pestilence. Many Americans whose families have been here for
generations know little family history beyond the lives of their
grandparents, but such ignorance is usually by choice. Often enough, the
members of the older generation would just as soon forget about life in
Poland or Italy or Ireland, and many of their kids don’t think to press
the issue.

But the family-history ignorance of blacks has a different source: It was
designed and enforced by law and custom. Brought against their will from
Africa, then stripped of family, religion and culture, our ancestors were
legally property; record keeping was for the owners’ benefit, not the
slaves’.

Black history was further shrouded by the rape of black women and the
taboo against identifying white fathers. After the Civil War, the
freedmen spread out geographically, and there were no rules about their
newfound need for last names; those who didn’t choose their former
master’s name chose others more or less randomly. Hence the proliferation
of names like Washington or Freeman and the difficulty of discovering
clear ancestral lines.

Far from tracing their families back to Africa, as the storyline of
“Roots” seemed to encourage, most blacks can barely trace the lineage of
both parents back two generations. And the farther down the socioeconomic
ladder a family had found itself, the longer its members took to become
literate (and thus leave records). For blacks, it is no easy thing to
discover your own history.

Upper-crust blacks have always fetishistically tended their pedigrees so
that they can brag about how long their families have been free; now that
we field hands are free too, we’re using our educations to excavate our
pasts, insofar as we can, and to embrace those blacks who namelessly
persevered for us. Such a leveraging of education and success, however,
may be one reason that the reunions of my own tightly knit family petered
out.

After “Roots” and our neighbors’ attempts at grand reunions, Aint Pee
Wee’s backyard started looking different to us. We tried to go upscale
overnight, but the security guards, cooks and truck drivers in my family
were flummoxed. They found themselves torn between their children’s
demands for hotel rooms and the hotel’s understandable desire not to cram
a single room with 15 people. “Why waste all that space?” some of our
frugal reunionist relatives would be thinking.

By the mid-’80s, our reunions were the domain of the elderly, the very
young and, of course, the women. Taken over by the Northern-born boomers,
our homespun reunions got prettified and pricey. Most of us, including
the planners, can’t afford three days and two nights at the Marriott for
a family of five plus the reunion fees. No doubt like other families, we
seem to prefer not holding reunions if they can’t be fancy. I’ll know
that my family has achieved the proper mix of education and down-home
common sense when I’m invited to a reunion that’s held in a state park,
where we camp out and enjoy each other’s company. And maybe award a
scholarship or two. Aint Pee Wee would approve.

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