Most of the women on my matrilineal side share the hobby of doing extensive research in family history. Like tracing the family tree back to the 1500s level. It’s kinda cool being able to have a cohesive story of where my family has been and what they’ve done or been through. It still seems kinda….feudal adjacent in a sense.
Idk my lefty self-crit sense is tingling. What’s the line on this? Obviously there is a great deal of white privilege in even being able to, but often enough privilege seems to be something everyone should have rather than nobody having it. Thoughts?
Some distant relative of mine did a fairly extensive genealogical study of our family, going back to our arrival in the Americas with Winthrop, and even going back to pre-Norman England. If the work is valid (and part of me is skeptical), we're apparently descended from the old Anglo-Saxon nobility of Mercia. Kings and earls and knights and the like.
None of that changes the fact that I'm a late twenties schlub making shit money in a warehouse outlet, trying to get through college and get out of a ramshackle apartment. Genealogy can be interesting, and I believe it's a good thing to know your family's story, but it's ridiculous when people make it their personality or use it to big themselves up. I mean, plainly I'm not any kind of aristocrat now, am I?
Almost all Western Europeans likely are, just like they're all descended from Charlemagne. The work just shows how you're descended from them. And of course going that far back is always iffy.
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I don't see it as anything more than a cool little bit of trivia to drop when people ask me questions about myself and my family.