Assimilation into Whiteness in our Own Family Lines

“The great force of human history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do…It is to history we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is and shaped one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, therefore one enters into battle with that more historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate, oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating, one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power and also changes history.” - James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” 1965

Here's some hot quotes from this sessions readings:

• "A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open." - Toni Morrison, speaking of how immigrants are only assimilated into whiteness (and gain white privilege) once they learn to hate and mistreat blacks.
• "White men - from Norway, were they were Norwegians [not white people] - became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women. This moral erosion has made it quite impossible for those who think of themselves as white to have any moral authority at all." - James Baldwin
  

Jewish Assimiliation
There were a few articles that looked at the specific case of Jewish assimilation into whiteness - in Europe, Jews were the "dark" ethnic minority subject to centuries of discrimination, slavery, and genocide. Come to the U.S., the community at large opted to become white and participate in racism against Blacks and other people of color, just as now it is the Zionist Jews who are oppressing the Arab Palestinian on the basis of race.
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The buildup for this week was extensive: we were asked to spend some time investigating our family histories - not just genealogy, but trying to put our ancestors lives into context. As we are all white, we know thatmostly our families came as immigrants from Europe. Why did they come? What challenges did they face as immigrants? What jobs/roles were open to them? What were their social networks?

Family Tree
I personally got caught up in climbing my family tree - tapping into online genealogy resources that helped you fill out your tree based on work others had done, as well as connecting you to primary sources - such as census records, land grants, newspapers, etc. (I did this thru ancestry.com, which is expensive but gives a free 2 week trial so I spent all my free time those two weeks really digging in.) I found tons of interesting things, such as the Spanish land grant proving one of my ancestors' title to land in Florida from 1816, stories of the first Purvis (John Purvis) coming to the colonies in the mid 1600s, confederate pension records of another ancestor, etc. I also talked to my grandma a bunch who shared stories and photos, like the gem to the left, which is my great-grandfather, maybe around 1916, with the ginormous tomatoes from the family farm. I learned that the German side of my family, which immigrated in the late 1800s, came over as Lutherans who wanted to escape conscription into the military. From then on, the Lutheran community was their main support network - which ends, on my lineage, with my mom.

Half of me was overjoyed to feel long roots in Florida, the other half was left with questions about how my family and their communities figured in to the Seminole Wars and the civil war. One of my g-g-g-grandpas was definitely on civil war confederate pensions, but said that he served home duty. I really wanted to uncover something that showed where my ancestors stood on the issues of slavery and native genocide - participants? slaveholders? economically locked out? passive bystanders? resistors? - but I didn't find anything that revealing.

During the actual session, we got together in small groups based on where in Europe our principal ancestry descends from, and just talked about our families and what we learned in our research.

Why Study your Family History?
Why did Catalyst put Family History in the Braden program? It is a deliberate strategy to fight the assimilationist force in the US by understanding the different cultures our ancestors came from. Our ancestors were not culture-less - that is part of the myth of whiteness. The process of becoming white goes hand in hand with loss and dehumanization, brokenness, violence - this is the legacy of white supremacy. But whiteness was deliberately created to break unity which means that it can also be deliberately dismantled. People have resisted and tried to reclaim history/culture (including ourselves). We can create a cultural shift which leads to social and economic shifts.

The questions we ended the session with was this: What's it going to take for white people to see ending white supremacy in our self interest? And what role are we going to play in making that happen?