The Dark Side of Our Genealogy Craze
By Honor Sachs,
The Washington Post
| 12. 13. 2019
Understanding our roots may foster empathy — or division.
This holiday season, millions of Americans will receive gifts allowing them to explore their genealogy and ancestry. People will give loved ones DNA testing kits or subscriptions to ancestry websites, allowing them to map out their global origins and trace their ancestors’ journeys to America from around the world. This advent of popular genealogy illuminates our diverse origins and highlights how immigration histories are critical parts of our personal stories and national narratives. But the rise of genealogy may also, paradoxically, exacerbate the virulently anti-immigration fervor propelling President Trump’s policies and increase racial inequality. How do we know this? Because it happened before.
The last time Americans experienced a genealogy revival on a scale similar to today was during the 1970s when Alex Haley published “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.” Haley’s story followed the life of the mostly fictional Kunta Kinte from his capture in 18th-century Gambia to his life as a slave in the United States, and traces the lives of his descendants over two centuries and seven generations, culminating with a family connection to Haley himself...
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Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
