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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1750s from Germany.  I am proud of my Teutonic heritage.  [/quote]
Whatever for?[/quote]

Why wouldn’t PP be proud?[/quote]
Well, you know death and destruction?[/quote]

NP.  That's kind of bigoted.  Germany has made many positive contributions to world culture in music, philosophy, art, engineering and science.

The United States hasn't been less genocidal than Germany. We just didn't lose a war and get held to task for it. [/quote]
Aren't we kind of doing that now to ourselves? Acknowledging that settlers nad the gov committed a genocide, was not democratic and used the disguised of fighting to democracy and freedom to invade, murder, and achieve economic prosperity?[/quote]

DP I say this as a white person whose ancestors weren't enslaved for centuries (so I realize this viewpoint would be different if I had descendent from those who managed to survive such a horror): I don't really understand the need to be proud of ancestors. I imagine that most whites had ancestors whose views, whether on women, child labor, race relations, religious differences, death penalty, whatnot, would repel us.  Most of us did not have a Bach or Kant or Goethe among our ancestors to point to. Okay, I admit if I did have one of those giants among my relatives it would make me kind of proud, or at least enjoy telling others, not that I had anything to do with their greatness.

I find genealogy fascinating because I'm interested in history. I can trace ancestors back to the 1600s in Ireland and central Europe.  I can't admit to any real affection for these people I never knew, just curiosity about their lives, about what compelled them to emigrate and then move around the US, and about what traits might have been handed down through the generations.  I imagine they had difficult lives, though ordinary for their times, and that some of them probably had talents that they didn't get to nurture. And that they had loves and loss and struggles like most people. I know none of them ever got ahead in life financially. And I can also acknowledge that I bet they would be as upset and horrified by who I am today (I gave up the faith, I married someone dark-skinned, with whom I lived for years before we married) as I would be of their world views.

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