Ancestry.com deletes ad criticized for romanticizing slavery
Genealogy database Ancestry.com has deleted a controversial commercial criticized by many for romanticizing slavery.
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The ad set in 1800s America depicted a white man asking a black woman named Abigail to “escape to the north” with him.
“Will you leave with me?” the man asks, ring in hand.
The Ancestry.com video, titled "Inseparable," ended with an on-screen "marriage certificate" suggesting the couple wed in Canada in 1857.
ooooh my god LMAOOO who approved this ancestry commercial??? pic.twitter.com/Isy0k4HTMA
— manny (@mannyfidel) April 18, 2019
Though the ad originally aired on YouTube on Tuesday, April 2, the video made the rounds on social media this week, prompting accusations of the romanticization of slavery in an era "of chattel slavery that completely disregards its power dynamics & the trauma of sexual exploitation," Clint Smith, a PhD candidate at Harvard, tweeted.
nobody:
— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) April 18, 2019
ancestry dot com: how can we overly romanticize & create an irresponsible, ahistorical depiction of the relationship between white men & black women during the period of chattel slavery that completely disregards its power dynamics & the trauma of sexual exploitation? https://t.co/s5BqnoSg9x
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Other historians, reporters and academics took to social media to call out Ancestry.com’s “reprehensible” commercial.
While it’s true that 1 in 4 black folks who test their male line through DNA end up finding a white man, it ain’t because of no damn slavery love story. I’m so tired of y’all. https://t.co/UwknpDDniL
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) April 18, 2019
I used this service a few years ago. And when I realized I was more than 10% European, I wept.
— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) April 18, 2019
Not from shame for who I am, but from anger from the trauma of how it may have come to be.
This commercial spits on the trauma in our veins and the fight of our ancestors, @ancestry https://t.co/KBpqB6XPZg
Where @Ancestry . Com white washes the centuries long rape of black women by white supremacist slave owners & pretends it was a romanticized love story so they can now get your DNA to sell to marketing companies 😑
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) April 19, 2019
Smh beyond ridiculous & tone deaf.pic.twitter.com/EbmnQ3uEqC
The DNA testing industry is clearly building a robust biz model on the intergenerational trauma of being torn from ancestors and history. The Ancestry commercial is annoying, but idk if we’ve yet totally reckoned with what the model means and how bad it can get.
— Dad (@fivefifths) April 19, 2019
The company made a public apology to the media Thursday as backlash grew.
"Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history,” spokeswoman Gina Spatafore said in a statement. “This ad was intended to represent one of those stories. We very much appreciate the feedback we have received and apologize for any offense that the ad may have caused.”
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The original video, which directed users to ancestry.ca, has since been removed from YouTube.
In 2016, a group of geneticists found in the DNA of 3,726 living African-Americans "marks of slavery's cruelties, including further evidence that white slave owners routinely fathered children with women held as slaves," the New York Times reported.
As they examined proportions of European DNA in the population, the scientists also noted that X chromosomes, which are inherited in higher percentages from women, had greater African ancestry than other chromosomes, suggesting slaveowners “were raping the women they held captive,” the researchers told the Times.
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The findings, they reiterated in the study, were "consistent with historical accounts of 'a marked decline in both interracial sexual coercion and interracial intimacy' at the end of the Civil War."
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