Ancestry.com has to pull slavery-themed BW/WM IR commercial.

A lot of people on social media are worked up about this, but I honestly don't see how this is worse than "Slave Play" or that Nazi-themed love story that Amandla Steinberg was in. This is the kind of revisionist history that Black "feminists" and the swirl crowd have been aggressively pushing with "Black men are the real oppressors" narrative.

Strangely enough, while people are pissed at Ancentry for not having "diversity in its board room," there isn't anybody criticizing the actress who agreed to demean herself like this just to get on TV.

Also, while Canada didn't have slavery and was a destination for runaway slaves, in the 19th century, it was far from any kind of racial utopia that accepted mixed race couples.

 

Wow. Who is the stupid mad men who did that?

 

I feel like it was a "Madison Avenue Woman, of the Shonda Rhimes variety.

 

I guarantee you that there was either a Black woman or a gay Black man (or both) on the team that produced this commercial.

That trash "Slave Play" was produced by gay BM.

 

I got love for "the promised land" so I can't hate . . . I nearly tear up when they play the Canadian National anthem at sporting events . . . thinking about all those men, women and children who died so tragically short of that glorious destination . Our anthem makes me gristle by comparison now that I know that last verse empowered slavery!

Maybe this really happened in someone's ancestry . . . like he is a Quaker in your family tree from way back when??

Vanessa Williams got white great-great-grand daddies on both sides so who can say really circumstances like this didn't happen in the 19th century for somebody somewhere in Amerikkka?

 

True indeed.

 

There countless stories of black people escaping North either as individuals, couples or in a pack. I have read a whole lot of this history in fact. While they at times got assistance en route from white people/abolitionists, there are no stories that I can recall of white individuals travelling covertly with their black lovers to locations more accepting of interracial unions. Not saying it never happened, but that if it did it was so extremely rare it isn't worth representing in a commercial (maybe a novel) that is supposed to be representing more larger and wider truths in the history of our ancestors. The story of this commercial makes it seem as if the two people are on the run. A far more likely scenario would be the white person buying the black person a passage to the north or the white person having the black person pretend to be their slave or servant in order to get them northward. It is almost insulting to show this white guy on the run with this woman because white guys weren't really on the run or at danger by trying to escape to the North with their black lovers. It was black men who would far more likely be the companion of a black woman in these instances, black men who would put their neck on the line. If the commercial wanted to really do justice to those bold folks who put everything at stake in taking such a chance it should have used a black male, But that would mean seeing black men in a romantic light I suppose.

I am not mad at Madison Avenue for this commercial because commercials have been the only medium in which portrayal of unions between black men and white women are presented as much as those between white men and black women. Madison Avenue have given us some outstanding advertisements centering around BM/WW pairings. But I do have a bone to pick with Ancestry.com because if I'm not mistaken it was also the same company that gave us the commercial of the black women who could trace her origins to an unidentified African society ran by women. Guess what. There weren't many of those societies in the known history of Africa so that was nothing but a feel-good fantasy promo for feminists and black women specifically. Don't believe the commercial even identified what nation-state it was supposed to be which further proves the commercial was more about the narrative they wanted to push rather than history. Those folks should have done more research and come up with a name. This suggests to me that if there isn't a strong black female or black gay or black simpy-man presence in the executive mix of the company, then the ranks are filled white dupes who buy into the notion of doing the bidding for their black female idols.

Btw my sister was the one who brought this commercial to my attention and the backlash that followed. I was more surprised about the backlash than the existence of the commercial itself.

 

Why are folks so upset about this commercial, when we all know this stuff (The white slave master & black slave mistress) actually happened in real life?

 

I think it has a few things to do with

1. Much like the prisoner/prison guard situation, a slave can’t technically consent

2. It softens the history of chattel slavery in America, in the hopes of getting the public to focus on fantastical stories of “interracial love” as oppose to the destruction it caused to a people.

3. It also provides slight revisionist history, similar to the changing of the word “slaves” to “workers” in McGraw Hill textbooks for students.

Just to name a few. I also highly doubt that if the genders were reversed, they would have ever agreed to it. So, from an “interracial love” standpoint, it is ultimately hypocritical.

Of course, this is only one man’s opinion.

 

In my view it only has to happen once in someone's ancestry for it to be validated. I remember Louis Gosset Jr and Michael Jai White in a lifetime or Hallmark movie about a well-to-do IR couple in 19th century Canada which they claimed was true.

I'm not saying it did or didn't happen . . . but if it did even if only once in a generation of slaves well God bless them.

There are rare IR couples involving indigenous Americans too . . . Megan Foxx, Jessica Beil who is to say their stories didn't defy the odds originating as the did in the Tennessee Valley and Colorado Territory respectively . . . probably life or death IR at the time their ancestors were conceived but they endured and survived some harsh winters, outbreak of cholera, Spanish influenza whatever?

I'm not knocking these unique or miraculous ancestors.

 

https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/0...depicting-slavery-era-romance-after-backlash/

@darkcurry Wow at this video title from AtlantaBlackStar.com 1st time I've seen a black media outlet use the term "Interracial Agenda or Propaganda".

 

1-Because the commercial makes the white male a hero even though it were white men who created the laws and put people in bondage that caused the situation in the first place. As a result we are given an idealized and romanticized version of white men in this advertisement for the purpose of masking white men's monstrous indiscretions and letting them off the hook for what they actually did.

2-Because it makes the white man as not only the one who plants the seed of the idea for the black woman about escaping north, but also makes him (and their relationship) as the reason why she is considering it in the first place. She thereby has less autonomy and seems more willing to go seek freedom (or better rights) up North not because what it would mean to her as an individual who has lived all this time with little to no rights of her own, but because she can't bare to be separated from this anomaly of a white man.

3-Speaking of anomalies...because this commercial presented the white male as a savior figure who does the right thing out of love. That's a misleading narrative even if it did happen a handful of times in that era (which I'm certain he people who put together this ad had no evidence at their disposal of such an occurrence). Imagine if the company had an idea to do a commercial about a Nazi meeting secretly with a Jewish girl he "loves" with the promise of escorting her safely out of a camp or out of Germany before the camps became reality. You think such a commercial would have ever been approved?

4-We actually don't know if the white male is a master and the black woman his mistress or whether he is an average Joe who fell in love with some enslaved black chick or freed black woman of color living in the brutal South. But it does't matter because the narrative the commercial is spewing is bullshit anyway. In the vast majority of cases the pairing of white men and black women were not romantic as this commercial attempts to portray; they were FORCED unions with one side having all the power so far as consent and decision-making goes. This ad wants to pave over that vicious history by presenting this rose-tinted fantasy. For white men in power who actually did fall in love with or develop some feelings for black females they raped/had sex with, offering them freedom was pretty much never an option. Nor was it often an option for the children that resulted from these relationships. Those women and the children were still property whom the masters would not let out of their sights. They may have allowed them a living standard that was less harsh than other blacks, but they would not allow them out of their proximity. While there were some real life instances of such white dudes marrying black women in such circumstances, those occurrences were extremely rare. Extremely. And that makes sense. Why would such white guys defy laws or put their standing at risk to marry slave women when they already retained the opportunity to have sex with them on their own terms whenever they wanted? They certainly weren't shipping these ladies and children to more free lands in the north nor were they leaving behind their riches and wealth to join them. As for white men who didn't own slaves, I'm not aware of any true stories of such guys falling in love with black women and then escaping from the South with them for the sake of marriage. Not saying it didn't happen but if a commercial wanted to make the case for it, the company should have at least found a real life example to go by.

5-Because this ad tried to sell a narrative of a romanticized good white man who was putting his neck on the line in the South to lead a black woman, a black person, to a better place. That's pretty insulting to what was going down during that time and those that had to endure it. Black people were the ones who put their necks on the line, not white men. And black people decided to do this because they wanted better lives for themselves. Any assistance from whites came almost exclusively from sympathetic white abolitionists who were already living in free territories. You see the laws had been passed that made it the responsibility of any white person, whether in the South or the North, to report on or apprehend any slave they came across who had escaped captivity or trying to escape captivity. So white people in the North who were part of the Underground movement would assist by giving black people places to hide during their journey northward. But white people were not participating in walking on that journey with the escaped slaves and they most definitely weren't leading the way. Black people made their way on their own. They typically had to escape from the South on their own although sometimes they would be led by another black person who was risking his/hers own freedom by going into the South to retrieve them. But the point is white people were not physically next those black folks who took that path. This revisionist commercial paints a false picture.

 

Good Lord. I too saw this TV movie you are referring to and it may or may not have been based upon a true story. But that is besides the point because the movie did not portray a white person leaving behind his/her white privilege and putting themselves in danger by going on the run northward with the black person they fell in love with. No one is arguing that black/white unions did not occur. But these marriage unions occurred between people who by in large met in territories where such unions were already allowed. What wasn't happening were black-and-white couples who escaped to the North in order to be wedded and live out the rest of their lives together. That's Harlequin Romance Novel territory, not anything resembling history and reality.

 

Its the first time I've seen such terms tossed at presentations of relationships involving white men and black women....other than here of course.

Usually such slandering is directed, from both sides, at any media representation of black male/white female couplings.

Anyway this commercial's narrative is not much different from countless romance novels written by black women about the period of slavery in America. Where was the pushback for all of them?

 

Hallmark insisted it was a true story . . . emphatically so and though we don't know where exactly the IR family originated we know they faced the horrors of the antebellum South so they could save their daughter and after rescuing her returned to Canada with Mike Tyson lookalike in tow lol. How did Vanessa Williams of upstate NY (Syracuse?) come to be? Family from TN and CN according to that ancestry show with White great-great grandfathers on both sides apparently? I won't deny the plausibility of a simple 30 second commercial . . . especially one where the White fiancé could very well be a Quaker because NOTHING about this short ad portrayed him as a slave master.

JS, would you deny the compelling nature of Captain Newton Knight?? His IR love story was far more incredible and implausible than this Ancestry.com commercial . . . but we know it's true via his descendants and Mississippi court records. I'm just saying that the premise of that commercial is so outlandish . . . did this White guy launch a counterrevolution and assert dominion and control over three counties while establishing a new republic?? Did he build grade schools where all children could enroll and be educated regardless of race? Did he lead a militia of Freedmen which enforced Reconstruction by bringing the midnight riders to justice in the light of day . . . be they the butcher, the baker or candle stick maker?? The lengths this commercial guy is proposed to have taken to secure his IR descendants pales by comparison . . . Capt. Knight was 94 years old and still trying to kill the Knights of the White Camelia (KKK) during the zenith of their power in the Roaring Twenties . . . he insisted that he be buried next to his Black wife even though the New South outlawed their Reconstruction era marriage

 

Newton Knight is an outlier. I wrote that such rare exceptions exist but that not enough to try to romanticize the "help" given by white males during this time period. And even Knight's story has nothing to do with a white guy being the inspiration for a black woman to contemplate freedom by going north nor being someone putting his life on the line trying to escort her there. And Quakers were pretty much exclusive to the North and were not travelling down south to end up running off with black slaves they fell in love with. Where are you getting this from? I've read my share of books and materials on blacks who escaped to the North on foot and on ships, trains, wagons. None of those black people were accompanied by white folks, it was always other black people providing that assistance. In fact one recent book on the subject that I read a couple of years ago emphasized that society has this view of white people being the main heads and leaders who ran the underground railroad movement when it was actually predominantly black people who were getting things done. There were white abolitionists and other sympathetic white people who.donated money and food and at times provided hiding places. But they rarely got their hands dirty and almost never put themselves at risk as freed blacks in the North did for their Southern counterparts. This commercial makes a mockery of all of that. It's the old white man as hero in the narrative of people of color.

And going back to Knight some historians have thrown skepticism at actions he had been credited for but don't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

 

...because this is absurd revisionist history. Those relationships weren't love stories where white men swept BW off their feet and took them to the "paradise" of Canada, which was, in reality, a British protectorate with the exact same cultural sensibilities of the US at the time, just less the slavery. (See the newspaper excerpts praising the Klan in Canada from the 19th century in my OP).

Take Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. First off, Hemings was actually the half-sister of Jefferson's wife. She was descended from a line of mixed-race house slaves that had been owned by Jefferson's wive's ancestors. Hemings had so much white ancestry that you wouldn't have considered her "black" except for the one drop rule. Despite the fact that Heming's mother and grandmother had been in longterm relationships with their masters, they were never fried, nor were their children.

Oh, there's also the fact that Hemings was literally a child when Jefferson started his "romance" with her. Depending on the sources, she was 12-14 years old when Jefferson started raping her.

If you want to talk about the history, you need to represent it accurately. This is why you got so many ignorant fucks walking around talking about how Black people fought for the Confederacy and how there were Black slave owners in the US, because they don't understand the reality of existence for Blacks in slave states. There were no property rights, no freedom of movement for freedman (who weren't even allowed in most slave states), and it was even illegal for Negroes to learn to read and write, which explains the deeply ingrained strains of ignorance that runs through many Black communities in the US.

You people need to READ history from multiple sources so that you can understand the real context of the past and present.

 

Co-sign. The sisterhood is angry about this, but silent on all of the bedbench swirl fan fiction that is has been produced in large quantities by Black women over the past several years.

Tariq Nasheed put the authors of this trash on blast a while ago after he kept getting harassed by a Black "feminist" who makes her living peddling this garbage.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BcKsYvyFm5E/


It's a very confused group of people whose sense of indignation isn't driven by any kind of principles.

The only palpable goal here seems to be forcing Ancestry to hire Black (female) executives.

 

Holy crap @ those books. Had no awareness of that genre and I spend a lot of time in the bookstore.. I’m not from a wealthy area do relationships even happen like that often

 

I believe this is the fantasy...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36344407-maid-s-black-babies-for-the-billionaire

And this is the reality...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40819145-this-hoe-got-roaches-in-her-crib?from_search=true