"Finding Your Roots" - Derek Jeter, Billie Jean King, and Rebecca Lobo

I recently had some relatively minor surgery on my left wrist.  You'd think being off work would give me lots of time to catch up on blog posts, wouldn't you?  It is amazing how much energy even a small surgery can drain from you.  I'm recovering just fine, but suddenly I'll be totally wiped out and need to take a nap.  And the fact that the surgery was on my wrist means that typing for long periods is totally out.  But I'm still working on catching up on my backlog of Finding Your Roots episodes that I haven't posted about.

"Born Champions" opened by posing the perennial question of where superstar athletes get their incredible talents:  Are they inborn, or do they come from hard work?  The question was not actually resolved during the episode or even really addressed again, reminding me of poorly constructed high-school reports.  As it turned out, all three guests — Derek Jeter, Billie Jean King, and Rebecca Lobo — had ancestors who were athletically inclined, even if not to the level of our celebrities.  But all three celebrities also worked very hard to attain the success they did.  So the question remained unanswered.

As for the research, well, it had its ups and downs, as usual.  One of the more annoying moments was when our host, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was discussing Derek Jeter's ancestry.  Jeter is biracial; his father is black, and his mother is white.  Gates described how the researchers searched for whites with the name Jeter in the area where Jeter's family had lived to try to determine the former slaveholder.  It's frustrating enough that hobby genealogists use that deprecated method, but Gates must know about Freedmen's Bureau records, which are a much better way to do slave research.  He is supposed to be a highly regarded professional.  And he also talked about how many slaves took their former owners' names.  You'd think he would also mention how current, modern research has shown that the majority of former slaves did not do so, so it is not necessarily the best approach to assume they did.  Well, I would mention it.

In talking with Billie Jean King about the 19th-century adoption of her grandmother, Gates declared that "adoptions aren't part of the public record."  They certainly were part of the public record prior to the early to mid-20th century.  They were usually indexed with the probate cases in civil court records.  To the best of my knowledge, very few states retroactively closed early adoption records when they began to seal adoption records in the 20th century.  I have not only found adoptions listed in the probate index, I have gotten the records.

And now to pick on the ever-popular autosomal DNA results (cocktail-party conversation, remember?).  Gates told Rebecca Lobo that we "all inherit 12.5% of our DNA from each of our great-grandparents."  Well, not exactly.  While it's pretty safe to say that we each inherit 50% of our DNA from each of our parents, the random mixing that happens with each generation means that the percentages beyond that can vary, and after a few generations you might lose all DNA from one of your lines.  (I know that Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, wrote about this in one of her posts, but I can't find the specific one.)  So depending on exactly how far back Rebecca's hypothetical Jewish ancestor would be, she might no longer have any of that person's DNA.

We know that the celebrities don't do the research on this program, any more than they do on Who Do You Think You Are?  One of the differences between Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are?, however, is that in the latter, the celebrities actually visit several of the locations associated with the histories of their families.  On Finding Your Roots, Dr. Gates is the only person we see visiting those locations, such as in this episode when he is filmed at Ellis Island.  Sometimes I wonder if that makes the celebrities on WDYTYA feel more connected to the information they're learning about their relatives.

"Finding Your Roots" - Alan Dershowitz, Carole King, and Tony Kushner

I have continued to watch the new season of Finding Your Roots, albeit in "encore performances" (PBS doesn't really have reruns, right?), but I find myself continually underwhelmed, both by the stories and by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., himself.  It isn't that the family stories aren't interesting — if I thought family stories were boring, then becoming a professional genealogist would have been a bad career move — but the method by which Gates presents the information does not lend itself to suspense.  It's hard to get excited when he says, "Please turn the page."  Since he is not actually telling a narrative but merely picking out essentially random facts, the "revelations" often seem to be a connect-the-dots puzzle that has not been completed.

The overall presentation style does not help.  Like an elderly aunt trying to extend her nephew's visit by doling out treats slowly over time, the guest finds himself obligated to stay longer and longer.  This sense of deliberate dragging out is heightened by extensive use of bland B-roll shots as filler.  How many times can we watch Gates walk slowly across a lawn or a room, gazing soulfully up at the sky or into the distance?  Or see yet another nameless researcher in an unidentified repository scroll through yet one more roll of microfilm with no context?

Something I have found extremely annoying is when a celebrity asks Gates, "Where did you find this?"  Most of the time Gates merely dissembles, but he has actually responded, "I can't tell you that!"  Well, why not?  What's the big secret?  This is PBS, and it's supposed to be educational.  Must our education be limited to hearing how great Dr. Gates is, and not how an ordinary person may learn about his own family?  Is access to these documents limited to people with big TV budgets?

And one more pet peeve.  The opening of each episode includes some CG text in the lower left corner of the screen:  "A film by Kunhardt McGree Productions . . . ."  I hate to deflate Dr. Gates, but these are not films; they are television episodes.  Films have plots and narratives, something lacking in Finding Your Roots.

Because there is little of substance to to talk about in the program, I thought I would be able to combine commentary on more than episode in a single blog post.  I surprised myself with what I had to say about only this episode, so I guess I will have a few more posts covering the program.  As several episodes have been aired since my first post, I decided to pick up again with one I watched more recently, coincidentally the one with three Jewish celebrities.

As I've mentioned, we have no continuity to follow in the research process, so it's impossible for me to say anything about that.  Since Gates declines to let his guests or his audience know about the big secret repository where he finds all of his stunning revelatory documents, I obviously can't comment on that either.  Unfortunately, that mostly leaves me with negative observations on some of what Gates says during the program.

In "Our People, Our Traditions", Gates presented Books of Life (should I include a trademark designation with that?) to Tony Kushner, Carole King, and Alan Dershowitz.  We watched the standard short background on each guest and the slow, painful parceling out of tidbits of information to each of them.  I will admit, probably the most startling thing I've heard on this show, or almost anywhere else, was Kushner's recollection of the woman in Lake Charles, Louisiaia, who asked him, "Where are the horns?", because she truly believed the old anti-Semitic myth that Jews have vestigial horns on their heads.  Seriously?  In the 20th century?  I hope that woman didn't breed.  I am so thankful I no longer live in the Deep South.

At one point, when talking with King, Gates commented, ". . . like all Jewish Americans have experienced prejudice."  Excuse me, but just where the hell does he get off making a blanket statement like that about several million people and passing it off as fact?  Am I the only one who noticed that remark?  How can he purport to know that every single solitary Jew in America has experienced prejudice?  Did he conduct a survey?  I sure didn't get a copy of it.

When speaking with Kushner about his family's move to Louisiana, Gates discussed the fact that many Jews who moved to the South in the third quarter of the 19th century did so not only for economic opportunity, but specifically because they were willing to do business with recently freed slaves, whereas many of the white residents of the areas would not do so.  I was happy to see this point made.  Even into the 20th century this situation persisted; Kushner's family started its lumber company in Lake Charles in 1927 and thrived in part because they were happy to serve the black community.  (Hey, what do you know!  Not every comment is negative.)

In relation to Dershowitz's ancestors, Gates explained they were from Galicia and said it was "now located in Poland."  That would be a significant surprise to the many people in what was formerly Eastern Galicia, which is solidly part of Ukraine now.

This same segment with Dershowitz included an interesting piece of information I had never heard before.  Dershowitz discussed an old Jewish religious law that did not permit observant Jews to travel on a ship on the Sabbhath, which is consistent with what I understand of similar restrictions, such as not being able to drive or ride in a car on the Sabbath.  He didn't state when this law was modified, but if it had not been, Orthodox Jews such as my own grandfather's parents would not have been able to make the trip to the "Goldene Medina", because the ship passage took more than seven days and therefore necessitated traveling on at least one Sabbath, if not more.

Truly unfortunately, Gates did not quash an old wives' tale regarding immigration when he had the opportunity.  King said she had been told that her family's name was changed at Ellis Island.  This myth persists today even though many credible and knowledgeable sources have explained why it simply could not have happened.  Instead of categorically denying the possibility, though, Gates said merely that it "almost never happened."  Why even leave that door open?  It NEVER happened.

I think Gates and his team may have bitten off a little more than they could chew with this theme.  They were apparently unable to trace any of the celebrities' families back very far.  I think the farthest he got was to a second- or third-great-grandfather for one person.  I noted several instances of missing maiden names on the family tree sketches that were shown.  This affected even relatively recent generations, such as David and Mollie Glajman, King's paternal grandparents.  Very few family photographs were displayed and identified; most of the images appeared to be "generic."  No really big revelations.  And they didn't even talk about the DNA results, apparently because the basic results were very predictable.

And since this episode was about Jewish research, have you ever noticed the underwriters for the series?  Dr. Georgette Bennett, Dr. Leonard Polonsky, Candace King Weir, the Daryl & Steven Roth Foundation — that's a lot of Jewish names, isn't it?

"Finding Your Roots" Begins Its New Season

The new season of Finding Your Roots has started, but I'm running a week behind on viewing, because PBS is airing the program against NCIS.  I'm sorry, but I've found it easier to watch Finding Your Roots at alternative times than to wait for NCIS to appear in my On Demand menu.  So maybe I'm not totally obsessed by genealogy after all.

As anyone knows who has watched both programs, the premises behind Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are? are very different.  A WDYTYA celebrity starts out by talking about a specific question he wants to know the answer to or wondering if something in her family background has any relationship to what she is like.  The program sends its celebrities around the country and sometimes the world in search of documents, even though they are not doing the research themselves.  We watch the process of discovery and follow one clue to another (though as I often comment, the path shown may have huge leaps and departures from logic).  The question voiced at the beginning is handled by the end of the episode.

In Finding Your Roots, on the other hand, we do not see any of the research.  Each episode has a theme of some sort and three to four celebrities whose stories tie into that theme.  It would appear that the theme and a predetermined narrative are chosen, and the producers then look for celebrities whose stories fit, though it's possible they have a pool of celebrities they research and then put together themes and narratives based on what they find.  Our host, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents each celebrity with a completed book, and during the episode a few items are highlighted and sometimes discussed.  We are completely removed from the research process and rarely have knowledge of how information was discovered or how one piece connects to another.  We're very much on the outside looking in.  From my perspective as a genealogist, there's little to comment on, because it is impossible to follow the flow of research.  All that's left is an entertainment piece and possibly finding out about a new research resource, such as the episode featuring Sanjay Gupta, in which I learned about the existence of some written family records for Indians prior to Partition.

So far I have seen only the first episode of the new season, "In Search of Our Fathers", featuring Stephen King, Gloria Reuben, and Courtney Vance.  For differing reasons, each of the celebrity guests grew up not knowing their fathers.  As expected, various discoveries were made about their fathers, and they came away knowing more than they had.  But some things puzzled me.  For example, Gloria Reuben said that she had not been able to learn the names of her father's parents from her mother.  The way the story was presented, it appeared that Reuben's parents had married in Canada.  Canada's marriage licenses require both parties to list their parents' names.  So why was the information not available from that resource?  Did they not marry in Canada?  Did they marry at all?

Then I thought that several parts were phrased poorly.  When discussing King's father's decision to change his name from Pollock, Gates acted surprised that the researchers were not able to find out why he changed it.  What's the big surprise?  It's rare to find documentation of a name change in the early 20th century for anyone.  When Gates talked about the influenza pandemic, he said it "wreaked havoc across the country."  That's quite an understatement, considering that part of the pandemic's infamy comes from the fact that it was worldwide.  And when speaking of Vance's father, in the beginning Gates said he was a foster child, then later used the word adopted without any explanation for the change in terminology.  The foster care system and adoption are very different legally and emotionally for the people involved; the terms are not interchangeable.

On a personal level, I don't like hopping back and forth between each celebrity's story.  I find that technique merely emphasizes the lack of continuity that is inherent in not following the research process.  I find Gates' habit of reading directly from his notes to be somewhat stilted.  I also don't like Gates' heavy reliance on DNA and how much credibility he gives autosomal results.  Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, has explained very clearly that these numbers are essentially "cocktail party conversation" and nothing more.  On the other hand, something I really enjoy about Finding Your Roots is that since it's on PBS, I don't have to suffer through an Ancestry ad during every commercial break; they're limited to one appearance in each of the beginning and ending underwriter sequences.

"Finding Your Roots" - Margaret Cho, Sanjay Gupta, and Martha Stewart

Yes, I know I'm behind on posts for Who Do You Think You Are (and I really do intend to catch up, but I've been in training since February 27, which has played hell with my schedule).  And I know that this was the eighth episode of Finding Your Roots, and I haven't commented on any of the earlier ones.  So why am I jumping into the middle like this?

This episode of Finding Your Roots touched me in a very unexpected way.  The focus was on experiences of first- and second-generation Americans.  One of the aspects discussed was how these children born in America have felt cut off from much of their family histories.  One thing in particular that was mentioned was the belief that no records existed that could help them learn more about earlier generations of their families.

My stepsons' grandfather, Karm, was from Khatkar Kalan, Punjab, India.  Along with researching the rest of their family on both sides, I have tried to research Karm's family in India.  One thing I was quickly told by many people, both native-born Indians and people married to Indians, was that there simply aren't records for natives from the period during which India was ruled by Great Britain.  The British barely did any record-keeping for their own people; they totally ignored records on natives.

The only thing close to "records" I had heard of previously were for Hindu families.  When someone in the family died, you went down to the river and spoke to the man who was your family "chronicler" about the death.  He would then remember it and add it to the history of your family, but it was all oral.  He passed on the oral history to his son, who became the new "chronicler."  I even spoke with a professor who was born in Rajasthan about this lack of documentation.  He went back to India years later to try to find some record of his own birth.  Even with the resources available to him at that time, he found absolutely nothing.  He learned that his brother had arbitrarily chosen a birthday for him.

But the researchers for Finding Your Roots found something!  Apparently not all the family histories are oral only.  Two brothers are responsible for Gupta's family chronicle.  The records are only for the men in the family, but they are written and they go back eight generations.  When I saw the book I was in tears.

Karm was Sikh, not Hindu.  I have no idea if similar books might exist for Sikh families.  But just learning that written records from before Partition exist for any native Indians gives me hope.  Karm's family is said to have been prominent (Karm's grandfather was supposed to have been the last "headman" of the village before the British took over).  Important families in other cultures are more likely to leave records documenting their history; why not in Punjab?

And I promise that as soon as I can I'll get back to Who Do You Think You Are? ....

"Finding Your Roots" Delayed in San Francisco Area

The new PBS series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. premiered tonight on many PBS stations, but not in the San Francisco Bay area.  We have four PBS stations in the area -- three of them aren't broadcasting the series at all, and the fourth was doing pledge programming tonight.  So I have to wait until Tuesday to see the opening episodes.  I hope everyone enjoyed it, but please no spoilers until then!

For those in this area, KQED is the station that is broadcasting it.  They will show the first two episodes on Tuesday, March 27, on KQED 9 and again on Thursday, March 29, on KQED Life.  Next Sunday they will go to the regular schedule.