In all the reporting and other writing I’ve done about political peacemaking, I’ve never heard anyone bring up family history. This just isn’t something people typically think of as a way to reduce polarization and achieve more peace across differences.
But maybe they should?
In the wake of one of the most bitter elections in American history, it was hard to shake this sense at this week’s RootsTech conference. Underlying this seemingly staid convening presumably about “connecting with the past” was something that felt abundantly relevant to the present — perhaps even revealing a radically fresh solution to the escalating tribalization and polarization around us.
While interviewing people about a report exploring this possibility, I spoke with a co-founder and lead genealogist with the Holocaust Reunion Project, Jennifer Mendelsohn, who told me about her immigrant grandfather who “spoke with a thick accent and ate weird foods.” Although he was “a very proud American,” she said, he clearly “was not American born.”
Yet the sisters of her grandmother, all of whom were born in New York City around the turn of the century, “did not approve” of her interest in marrying this man. “They looked down on him and thought he was lesser because, you know, they were born here and he was born there.”
Over a century later, when Mendelsohn decided to dig deeper into her grandparents’ story, she was surprised to discover these sisters’ parents had been in the country for less than five years when they were born. “It’s a long American tradition that, once people get assimilated, they tend to look down on the next group of people who are coming.”
“If you can breed that sort of contempt after five years in the country,” she told me, “what does that look like when your family’s been here for 50 years or 100 years?”
“So many Americans have kind of lost touch with their immigrant past,” Mendelsohn said — little realizing that “just a few generations before, they were in the same position as some of the impoverished Central and South Americans who are trying to get here now.”
She proposes: “Every American should investigate their family history.” It’s got me wondering, what if that actually happened?
“There’s this amazing thing that occurs where we’re able to find ways that you and I are connected,” said Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch at the RootsTech conference this week. “Where we find out how we’re connected, we then treat each other differently.”
Imagine a public health experiment where everyone in America — including an estimated 262 million adults — created a FamilySearch or Ancestry or MyHeritage account, sent off a genetic ancestry test, or looked up a family journal from an ancestor. What effect could that have on the country as a whole?
A micro-version of this experiment took place when 67 people randomly selected from various countries all received the same DNA test, part of a viral advertisement campaign several years ago. What was most striking was how many participants who acknowledged some dislike for certain nationalities were shocked to discover some of their ancestors hailed from that very place.
For instance, a Kurdish woman with hard feelings towards Turkey found out some of her ancestors were from that region of the world. A British man discovered ancestors in the very country of Germany he felt some prejudice against. And an Icelandic man who saw himself as somehow superior was humbled to see a mix of several European nationalities.
Humility. Empathy. Compassion. In stark contrast to nationalistic chest-beating, these are the qualities arising from hearts drawn out to forefathers and foremothers.
Abhilash Pillai, one of the researchers at SBL, a major leader in genealogy for India SBL told Deseret News “what we are actually enjoying now has been a result of the struggles that our ancestors have faced at a period of time.”
In his online RootsTech keynote, Ndaba Mandela similarly noted that his grandfather, the legendary South African president, Nelson Mandela, had spoken about “all the mountains that you have to climb in order for you to achieve your goals.” The writer then added, “what about the mountains that your ancestors had to climb in order for you to get to where you are today?” They deserve our acknowledgement, he said, because “without those ancestors who have climbed those great hills and great mountains to get you to where you are, where would you be today?”
Paul Nauta, a senior communications manager at Rootstech, told me about taking his children back to Italy — to personally visit the land where his family worked the land for hundreds of years — before ultimately coming to America, after deciding they couldn’t make ends meet.
“You can’t describe what it does to go back where their ancestors are from,” he said. “It’s changed them.” Far beyond the impact of simply hearing the story, descendants were deeply moved by walking the olive orchards and seeing a little home their family owned near the outer wall of the town.
“There’s this calmness that kind of comes over. It brings this stillness that I know who I am.”
“You stand on shoulders, right?” Nauta reflected. “You stand on shoulders of those that have come before you ... you are who you are, because someone else has paid a price for you to be here.”
When discoveries like immigration roots start happening “the world becomes a lot smaller place,” said Ann Harrison, Director of Global Engagement at RootsTech. “That breaks down those walls, and really helps us see each other as one global family.”
Professional genealogist Adina Newman, another co-founder with the Holocaust Reunion, described genetic research as pressing us to become more welcoming of multiculturalism. “I have relatives all over the world, and I think DNA kind of breaks down those barriers to see, ‘oh, I have cousins in Europe still, yeah, I have somebody who went to Australia’ …. it really brings people together."
At the RootsTech conference itself, a larger scale social experiment demonstrates much the same point. Within the RootsTech app is a feature called “Relatives at Rootstech,” which looks across the millions of attendees and figures out relationships.
Major genealogical sites have similar features. “That is really binding to know,” said conference participant Nancy Goddard, “it just makes you more loving, because you really are related by blood.” Her husband, former Utah State professor Wally Goddard added, “We belong to each other.”
After mentioning how her husband learned he has literally tens of thousands of relatives participating in the RootsTech conference, Sandy Andrus, whose DecipherInk app helps people around the world interpret genealogical documents in various languages, told me, “If you know that you’re related to 42,000 people, how can you be mad at anybody?”