Who Are We?

Do you know who you are? I mean, really. 

Now that is a pretty big question for a puny little blog like this. I know that. The problem is that I am always inspired to ask that question every time I watch a show that I despise but can’t avoid – “Finding Your Roots.” It is the only show I know that each week displays why what it stands for is wrong.

What it stands for is that we don’t know ourselves until we know our specific “roots.” What it displays is how much that premise is bullshit.

On the show, this very esteemed and well-known historian, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explores the genealogy of famous people and then tells them about it.  Sometimes they trace this record back a thousand years. At the end, Henry rolls out an enormous chart for each guest. On the chart is a depiction of all the boxes and lines that connect centuries of sperm discharge. Unfailingly, the family history that these stars learn induces in them, first, utter astonishment, and then causes them to make that gurgling sound that people make when they are holding back tears but want everyone to know that they are holding back tears. One thing that the divulging of this generational chronicle doesn’t do, however, is change not one iota who those celebrities really are.

For example, one show featured Joe Manganiello (well, they don’t always get A-listers). It turns out that in his genealogy two generations back, he is descended from a Nazi soldier, and on the other side, only a few generations ago, his ancestor was black. Now, I haven’t followed Joe around since his appearance on the show so I can’t attest to this, but I’m guessing that the odds are pretty good that he has not now become a black Nazi.

Just the other night, the guest was Richard Kind (see, I said they weren’t all A-listers). He found out that his great-grandfather had been murdered, that the murder was never solved and that there was suspicion of mob involvement. Given this discovery, it is fanciful to think that Mr. Kind, will not continue to be anything but true to his last name (assuming he already has been).

Admittedly, these are extreme examples, but not by much. All the stars say that what they’ve learned gives them a deeper understanding of how lucky they are. Given the zillions of variables that precede their individual creation, it is beyond miraculous that they are even here, and especially in the exalted place where society has placed them. Those are all very valid things to say. The point is in what they don’t say. They don’t say that they are going to change their character to better conform to those whose names they see for the first time in all of those boxes on the giant chart.

You can say, well, what about the DNA thing? Doesn’t that mean that we are the result of our ancestors’ chemical composition? But again, the show inadvertently puts the lie to how much the DNA matters. Yes, it matters. But only up to a point. What the show actually demonstrates is that we are all such an admixture of types and even races of people that it is futile to point to any one part of that genetic soup and say, “that’s where I got my DNA.”

When Dr. Gates rolls out that giant chart, he isn’t showing us that who we are is a function of anyone who came before us. He is showing us that who we are is a function of everyone who came before us – no matter the race, no matter the religion – saints and angels alike. 

So, who are we? We are a little bit of everybody, and wouldn’t it be nice if we abandoned the notion that our ancestry makes us different.