MovieChat Forums > Skin (2009) Discussion > Ancestry.com - be prepared for a shock

Ancestry.com - be prepared for a shock

posted 12 years ago by valsobo
16 replies | jump to latest

These days with genetics testing and the availability of family records and stories through Ancestry.com and the like, people should be prepared for just about anything - including the occasional "short sharp shock"

I've watched "Who Do You Think You Are?" and seen black people be shocked and saddened that there were slaves in their background (really?) and horrified that they weren't MORE black because their pedigree had turned up babies born from relations between those slaves and slave owners (seriously?) My point is that if people who can realistically expect these sorts of revelations find themselves SHOCKED the rest of us can expect at least one or two little... ugly secrets.

Mine came fairly early on. I began digging deeply in the family record in an attempt to uncover some sources and/or earliest indicators of a genetic medical condition. If we could find early evidence we could help younger generations. THAT requires a little more than names and dates - little bit deeper DNA sort of digging.

One of my earliest discoveries was that a full one-quarter of my ancestors were emigrated from Germany. I was horrified and disgusted. Almost stopped looking right there, because it was something I absolutely DID NOT WANT and did not want to know - and it didn't even involve skin color. God, NO - Not GERMANS! **I'm not kidding about this**

Let's face it - we human beings can be dangerously stupid sometimes - and cruel.

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

W T F kind of post is this??????????????????

stop hating on germans. you have very serious issues. i hope you find that mental illness gene

drugs...changed...everything..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MGBn3KawM&feature=related

[–] valsobo 12 years ago

Did you even watch the movie "Skin" before you went off on me like this? The movie "Skin" is about real "haters". My post related to the movie and meant to point out that EVERYBODY has their prejudices and issues, with none of them making much sense.

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

yes i am finishing the movie right now.

so you were joking when you said it made you sick about being part german?

i think that is what i saw in your post.

One of my earliest discoveries was that a full one-quarter of my ancestors were emigrated from Germany. I was horrified and disgusted. Almost stopped looking right there, because it was something I absolutely DID NOT WANT and did not want to know - and it didn't even involve skin color. God, NO - Not GERMANS! **I'm not kidding about this**

drugs...changed...everything..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MGBn3KawM&feature=related

[–] valsobo 12 years ago

My point was this - knee jerk reactions to people of other races, other colors, other sexual preferences - for no other reason than society has deemed it so OR it was the way you were raised - is sad, destructive, dangerous, ignorant. Good Lord, this girl's own PARENTS threw her away - sheeeesh.

Members of my family were killed by Germans in two, no - wait ... FOUR different wars. The pain that caused my ancestors, my immediate family, meant that I was raised to believe that the German race were a people that were inborn megalomaniacs who needed constant control and managing to keep them from attempting to rule the world and kill off everybody else...................... AGAIN This is what members of my family believed. It wasn't accurate. It certainly didn't include EVERY person who had ever lived in a territory claimed by Germany.

Because of this, my first reaction on discovering that our immigrant ancestors were German created the knee-jerk reaction OH GOD NO!!! Anything but that!! And that was a stupid reaction. I acknowledged it, didn't accept it as my own, and moved on to learn more. And I have truly come to love this hardy little band of people who ran away from PRUSSIANS to start a new life in a wild scary place called 'The Antipodes' - Australia.

And you might have asked the clarifying question BEFORE you launched the 'hater' rant.

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

AND YOU MIGHT HAVE MADE YOUR ORIGINAL POINT LESS NEBULOUS, SO THAT I WOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN IT IN THE WRONG CONTEXT.

seriously, you communicate in an unclear fashion, and then it's *MY* fault for taking you for what you said?

that's so ridiculous i don't know where to start.....

drugs...changed...everything..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MGBn3KawM&feature=related

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

These days with genetics testing and the availability of family records and stories through Ancestry.com and the like, people should be prepared for just about anything - including the occasional "short sharp shock"

I've watched "Who Do You Think You Are?" and seen black people be shocked and saddened that there were slaves in their background (really?) and horrified that they weren't MORE black because their pedigree had turned up babies born from relations between those slaves and slave owners (seriously?) My point is that if people who can realistically expect these sorts of revelations find themselves SHOCKED the rest of us can expect at least one or two little... ugly secrets.

Mine came fairly early on. I began digging deeply in the family record in an attempt to uncover some sources and/or earliest indicators of a genetic medical condition. If we could find early evidence we could help younger generations. THAT requires a little more than names and dates - little bit deeper DNA sort of digging.

One of my earliest discoveries was that a full one-quarter of my ancestors were emigrated from Germany. I was horrified and disgusted. Almost stopped looking right there, because it was something I absolutely DID NOT WANT and did not want to know - and it didn't even involve skin color. God, NO - Not GERMANS! **I'm not kidding about this**

Let's face it - we human beings can be dangerously stupid sometimes - and cruel.

i am pasting your op here, in case you try to edit it to make me look stupid.

you see, friend, your original point is better explained in your subsequent post, but if you look at your op you see you left off the 2nd half of you, let's say, punch line. you never explained in the op that you later felt differently than you were led to believe by the influence of your relatives, who dislike germans. you left that part out, then you misrepresent my reply as 'hateful'

so you think it's my fault for misunderstanding you? that's hilarious.

can you not SEE the trail of what happened here?

(and if you can't, that does not surprise me either. people just aren't able to be objective these days. regarding that trait, you are acting very unlike your german ancestors. at least they have rationality going for them lol)

i just love how people these days take a position then blame others for their own position.

gee freaking whiz.

[–] valsobo 12 years ago

I just think it's hilarious that you chose to zip right past "Please clarify" - opting instead for your flaming insult.

You're funny.

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

there was no indication you hadn't made a complete thought there. why should i ask you to clarify something which looked already clarified? seemed coherent to me

okay look. i am not gonna keep doing this with you. you explained, i understand, that's good enough for me. i am glad you don't hate germans. that's all i was concerned about, not the rest of all this banter we have struck up

(though i do think you should consider how things come across in the future. your OP was disjointed, looking at it in retrospect now)

cheers mate, let's be friends

drugs...changed...everything..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MGBn3KawM&feature=related

[–] valsobo 12 years ago

We'll be friends, absolutely - I don't use a masking ID so you can find me anywhere... Linkedin, Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com.au, etc. etc etc.

And, ya know, it's a message board - not a novel. I save that writing for Amazon - so I keep it shorter here. Nobody's paying me to write more than this here.

Cheers indeed

[–] LTUM 12 years ago

so you're a writer? me too

you are val sobo? or is that whole thing your surname?.....

drugs...changed...everything..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8MGBn3KawM&feature=related

[–] whwhite86 12 years ago

Wow. Arguing with people on the Internet really is a little like participating in the special olympics....

[–] matmcv 10 years ago

Jokes about the Special Olympics are prejudiced against mentally disabled people.

[–] lvroberson-375-549257 12 years ago

Valsobo, I understood your post exactly as you originally wrote it. It is perfectly clear. I don't know why that other person didn't get it unless they have a reading comprehension problem. Let it go :-)

[–] kxg2248 10 years ago

I knew exactly what the OP meant. I have a friend who is first generation American with parents born in Germany. Her grandparents never admitted that they knew ANYTHING at all was going on with Jews being treated poorly, let alone killed, in WWII. Yes, they knew the war happened. Yes, they supported the war effort because it was their country that was being attacked (in their mind).

I believe strongly that there is much more anti-Japanese sentiment in the US than anti-German sentiment, and it is purely racial. How many German-Americans were sent to interment camps? How many Italian-Americans were for that matter?

Yet people go all crazy when a Polish or Ukrainian Nazi guard is found, implicating ALL Poles or Ukrainians yet Germany is off the hook...

[–] DaveHedgehog 10 years ago

One side of my family is half Australian and half Macedonian. The other half of my family is English and I mostly resemble that stock so I'm very pale. Anyway, the Aussie/Maco side of the family discovered a few years ago that the Aussie side had Aboriginal blood only a few generations away (my grandmother's mother's mother; as she had passed away before my grandmother was born, her mother had kept it a secret). They were acting weird around me one day and I asked what was going on and they told me what they'd discovered and that they were worried how I'd react :/ I couldn't have cared less. They have some racist sensibilities but it didn't really bother them either.

It really does shock me how much this kind of thing can bother people. I've never really understood why people have so much connection to their skin colour or race, but maybe it's just coz I'm white and I don't particularly like or care about Australia.

Aristotle versus Mashy Spike Plate!

[–] matmcv 10 years ago

Even given your family's experience in wars involving Germans your kneejerk anti-Germanism is a little ridiculous to me TBH. I don't mean because it's kneejerk, but because it doesn't seem to be based on any real understanding of the history involving Germans. Are you American? You should know that Germans are the largest ancestral ethnicity in the whole USA, larger than English. More counties in the country have German surnames as the most common than any other ethnicity. More people claim or have assigned German-American ethnicity than any other, 49 million. Germanness is at the heart of American identity. No white Americans whose ancestors had been around for 100 years should be surprised at German ancestors.

But then I also wonder, what are these four wars you're talking about? How far back are we going? Hessians in the Revolutionary War? I wonder if you're straining at gnats here. And let's not forget Germany did not have political including military unity before reunification in the mid-19th century. Before then any 'Germans' participating in wars were only ethnically German, not nationally, not as part of some all-German oppression of other countries as in WW2. Before this time most fighting Germans were involved in was with each other, most infamously in the 30 Years War.