Categories: Clichés, Genealogy, Identity, Mythology, Native Americans

A couple of years ago, I overheard a white-identified American ask an African American “do you even know where in Africa you come from?” He did not ask: in fact, he barked it. The African American had been staking claim to, and legitimating, his identity in a group setting, associating class and economics with a kind of uniform experience by black-racialized people. The white one found it odd that a millionaire African American would make such claims, and that the African American does not have the phenotype usually associated with Africa in the world.

Many peoples in the Americas with certain physical traits have heard this question a million times over. Usually it is asked in a mocking tone, in other words, belittling the person for (the questioner assumes) not knowing “who they are,” and “where they come from.”  On occasion, the question is absent of this attitude. This anecdote serves a perfect launchpad to exploring identity and ancestry in the United States today.

Myself, and virtually all genealogists that I know, can confirm: clients often come with a clear identity of how they self-identify and either attribute that identity to their ancestors, or make declarative statements on “who” their ancestors were. Example one: several years ago, I had a client, who was Cajun-identified (therefore white-identified, too), who swore that her ancestors, except one branch, were Acadians. The exceptional branch, she alleged, were Cherokee Indians. She hired me to document the latter. Off I went into dusty volumes to document her “tree,” which turned out to be more of a shrub since her family had remained in the same community for 200 years, and had been intermarrying with everyone in the community for that same amount of time. This proximity theoretically made it easy to trace her branches, but when you marry cousins and steps over several generations, who share the same forenames and surnames, it quickly becomes Rougalou-ish. Her community was, genealogically, far from a monolith, however: there were a few Acadians whose grandchildren found themselves there, plus some German-speakers from Pennsylvania and Germany, west Africans, and descendants of Malagueños, Catholic Americans, and Catholic Italians. It was, literally, a melting pot, as way, consequently, her shrub’s branches. After exhaustive research, I determined that a) there were no Cherokees … no Indians, at all, and b) only 4 of her 16 great-great-grandparents, were of Acadian descent. In fact, those “Cherokees,” were Louisiana Creole mulattoes and quadroons. She was shocked … so much so that she severed contact. I never heard from her again. My question for her then, remains the same today: your ancestors are from everywhere, so how does this knowledge impact who you think of yourself as racially and ethnically?

On a similar note, very often, ordinary people in the former and present colonies of Europe think of their “bloodlines” beginning when the colony began, and somehow they view that as only a few generations ago. Over 90% of my clients only seek information pertinent to the Americas. Once I return their reports, all of the birthplaces of their identifiable ancestors who made it to the Americas, a fair amount are perfectly happy to accept that, and proudly boast of their being #% French, #% Jewish, etc. They tell me how they always “felt” that they were x and y, and now have the evidence. Out of 511 individuals we directly descend from, in 8 generations, we only choose a handful to focus on and claim. Odd, right? Odder and more disconcerting: those ancestors who came to the Americas, they come from people, too, and they may not always be what your ancestor was.

I like to use the MACARTY de Mactaig family of colonial and provincial New Orleans. Nowadays, the family is mostly known through the infamous Marie Delphine DE MACARTY, thrice married and known today by her married surname, LALAURIE. She was a Creole as they came, and multigenerationally Francophone. Yet, as her surname points out: her not-so-distant ancestors were from Catholic Ireland. Her great-great-grandfather was Bartholomew M^cCARTHY-M^cTAIG, who reportedly served as captain in the Irish Regiment of Albemerle. He left Ireland when conditions for Catholics became uncertain under the newly founded Anglican Protestant Church, settling in France by 1600. He integrated quickly, joining the Royal Navy, was beknighted in the royal military honorific order of Saint-Louis, and, among these positions of importance, he served as major-general of Rochefort. One of his sons, Barthélemy Daniel DE MACARTY, born in France, left to French colonial Louisiana with his brother Jean Jacques Baptiste DE MACARTY, as an officer in 1732. Delphinse surely identified as a Louisiana Creole, and without a doubt proudly as being of French descent. Beyond France, only 4 generations earlier, her paternal side had come from Ireland, where they had been for many generations. They, too, the Irish M^cCARTHYs and M^cTAIGs, came from someplace else. ¹Stanly Clisby Arthur and George Campbell Huchet de Kernion, Old Families of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1931): 330-334. See also Sacramental Records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, vols 1-4.

This relates to black-racialized peoples in the Americas being cornered about “where in Africa ‘they’ are from,” and the reason is simple: it is partially because, as shown above, people tend to view their ancestors who arrived in the Americas as monoloths of some stagnant population, and also because Africa, by its very name, has been conceived by outsiders also in a monolithic way. Africa is one big village where everyone looks the same, acts the same, all have big booties, horse-hung dongs, and are “black as tar.” Though both sets of these ancestors – Europeans and Africans – themselves are imagined in the American mind as originating in stagnant populations, at least people will identify ethnic or national differences between Europeans. Europeans are rarely monolithicized. Africans, however, an entirely different story.

In the end, it seems to me, that one’s “ancestry” is only certrain branches of one’s tree’s many branches. The reasons we choose those branches to identify with are far more complex than an article, or series of articles, can offer. Skip GATES says “we come from people,” but those people come from people, too … and it goes on and on until the beginning of mankind. So, next time you ask someone of presumed or known African descent “where they come from,” ask yourself if you know where you come from beyond generations born in the Americas. A better conversation to have would be: I wonder if we are related, and how. That’s a far better way to endear someone, and unite around something you share.

– Christophe Landry