Facing Injustices Head-on through Critical Family History
I grew up hearing a story about my grandfather who, with nothing but a third grade education, ended up providing for his family and doing well economically. The story's implication was that he worked hard for what he got, and if he could do it, so could anyone else. For a long time, I didn’t think to analyze this story critically. Like many other people, I simply accepted it. (He did work hard, by the way, that part of the story I’ve never disputed.)
As I discussed in a recent talk invited by the
Sutro Library
in San Francisco, I began developing
Critical Family History
as I delved into my own white family’s historical experiences, replacing the historical amnesia I had grown up with, with a fine-grained look at how social systems had worked for, and for the most part benefited, my ancestors and ultimately me. I sensed that locating me and my people within that past would provide a basis for joining efforts to address injustices that have long historic roots, injustices that I have inherited and for the most part benefited from. I am not by any means the first person, nor the first professional class white person, to dig into my ancestors’ roles in creating, maintaining, and benefiting from social systems at the expense of people who have been minoritized and/or economically poor. But I think that I have provided a language and some examples that are helping to bring to the table others who are interested in, thinking about, or already engaged in this work.
My own work can be found in a handful of academic articles (such as "Critical family history: Situating family within contexts of power relationships" published in 2016 by the
Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
, and "Becoming white: Reinterpreting a family story by putting race back into the picture" published in 2011 by
Race Ethnicity and Education
). It can also be found in three novels:
White Bread
examines culture and language that German ancestors were forced to give up, even as they benefited from white supremacy.
The Inheritance
tells the story of a white person coming to grips with being a descendant of the colonizers of Indigenous peoples, and what one might do with that knowledge.
Family History in Black and White
, which will appear in about March 2021, explores racism today and historically through viewpoints of two school administrators, one Black and the other white. Stay tuned for that one, I think it’s my best novel yet.
In mid-2020, I guest edited a special issue of the journal
Genealogy
, focusing on
Critical Family History
. Seventeen articles by authors in the U.S. and New Zealand explore topics such as uncovering a family's settler colonial history, examining what it means to be Black in an interracial family, finding out how white grandparents became citizens (the process for whites was not like the cumbersome process today), using photovoice to find untold stories in a Vietnamese immigrant family, and seeking dual U.S.-Cabo Verde citizenship. These articles show different ways of using Critical Family History, but what they all have in common are revelations that come when one's family is explicitly situated within historic relations of power.
Just a couple of days ago, I was thrilled to be featured in a wonderful article in an Australian online-publication called Conversations.
That article
, "Truth telling and giving back: How settler colonials are coming to terms with painful family histories" highlights several white people in Australia and the U.S. who are uncovering “their family histories as a way of re-examining the impact of centuries of dispossession and slavery of Indigenous peoples.”
When I started working with the idea of Critical Family History, I sensed that it has power to engage members of diverse groups of people in a critical examination of our shared pasts, and particularly pasts in which some of our ancestors built structures to benefit people like themselves, at the expense of other people. Those structures still exist. We inherit them. We can dismantle them. Many examples are now showing how.
As I discussed in a recent talk invited by the
Sutro Library
in San Francisco, I began developing
Critical Family History
as I delved into my own white family’s historical experiences, replacing the historical amnesia I had grown up with, with a fine-grained look at how social systems had worked for, and for the most part benefited, my ancestors and ultimately me. I sensed that locating me and my people within that past would provide a basis for joining efforts to address injustices that have long historic roots, injustices that I have inherited and for the most part benefited from. I am not by any means the first person, nor the first professional class white person, to dig into my ancestors’ roles in creating, maintaining, and benefiting from social systems at the expense of people who have been minoritized and/or economically poor. But I think that I have provided a language and some examples that are helping to bring to the table others who are interested in, thinking about, or already engaged in this work.
My own work can be found in a handful of academic articles (such as "Critical family history: Situating family within contexts of power relationships" published in 2016 by the
Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
, and "Becoming white: Reinterpreting a family story by putting race back into the picture" published in 2011 by
Race Ethnicity and Education
). It can also be found in three novels:
White Bread
examines culture and language that German ancestors were forced to give up, even as they benefited from white supremacy.
The Inheritance
tells the story of a white person coming to grips with being a descendant of the colonizers of Indigenous peoples, and what one might do with that knowledge.
Family History in Black and White
, which will appear in about March 2021, explores racism today and historically through viewpoints of two school administrators, one Black and the other white. Stay tuned for that one, I think it’s my best novel yet.
In mid-2020, I guest edited a special issue of the journal
Genealogy
, focusing on
Critical Family History
. Seventeen articles by authors in the U.S. and New Zealand explore topics such as uncovering a family's settler colonial history, examining what it means to be Black in an interracial family, finding out how white grandparents became citizens (the process for whites was not like the cumbersome process today), using photovoice to find untold stories in a Vietnamese immigrant family, and seeking dual U.S.-Cabo Verde citizenship. These articles show different ways of using Critical Family History, but what they all have in common are revelations that come when one's family is explicitly situated within historic relations of power.
Just a couple of days ago, I was thrilled to be featured in a wonderful article in an Australian online-publication called Conversations.
That article
, "Truth telling and giving back: How settler colonials are coming to terms with painful family histories" highlights several white people in Australia and the U.S. who are uncovering “their family histories as a way of re-examining the impact of centuries of dispossession and slavery of Indigenous peoples.”
When I started working with the idea of Critical Family History, I sensed that it has power to engage members of diverse groups of people in a critical examination of our shared pasts, and particularly pasts in which some of our ancestors built structures to benefit people like themselves, at the expense of other people. Those structures still exist. We inherit them. We can dismantle them. Many examples are now showing how.
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