No subject
Thu Mar 10 12:02:21 MST 2011
This notion of discrimination bothers me, because these groups are meant
to be targeted at specific lineages or connections. They are private
organizations that are inherently interested in a specific part of
history. It wouldn't do anyone any good to open a DAR lineage book up to
find members who had a non-blood lineage. At a time when genealogy is
trying to gain much more credibility among academics, some people are
saying that we should cast aside the nets by which we define ourselves.
After all, further defining ourselves is part of what many of these
groups are about. People join the groups to find a connection to their
ancestors and to feel closer to their ancestors, or
at least that's my opinion.
Like
many on this list, I could join any multitude of societies and lineage
groups because of my genetic history. The SAR, National Society of
Descendents of Early Quakers, and many others could be where I submit my
packet of information and join others in a dusty book in a library,
touting my bloodline. I choose not to in part because of finances, but
I'm not interested in genealogy and being worried about the who's who in
my genetic code, i.e. namedropping ancestors. Oftentimes, the working
class stories are just as interesting as those of the Mayflower
passengers or icons of the American Revolution.
The merits of
these groups is based quite a bit on the filters they have in place. I
have seen so many discussions on this list and a couple of others about
how technical we must be in our research--these groups assist in
forwarding that cause. Some of them are recovering from decades of bad
submissions themselves and are determined to reverse the tide by being
diligent in their screening of membership applications. If someone wants
to come up with a Society for People Who Were Adopted by Members of the
Sons of the American Revolution, but please don't trivialize the
institutions that are doing a great deal of good for historians and
genealogists.
That's my 2 cents.
If I stirred up the ant pile, I apologize.
~Kim Ostermyer
--0-297348714-1310308586=:51633
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<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Hi everyone,<br>I've read much of the discussion on the Time's article
and the various societies and biases or discriminatory screens that so
many of them use. I've thought a lot about the passions that people have
put forth in this discussion and I can understand. There's been the
splitting of the definitions of discrimination and bias and other
technical details.<br><br>In regards to lineage groups and other such
societies, my opinion is that the filters they use are necessary to
represent the particular subsection of history of which they are tied in
with. It wouldn't be prudent to allow adoptees who do not know their
biological parents' lineages into say the Sons of the American
Revolution without the proper documentation. Do we allow women to
celebrate themselves on Father's Day? Is that discrimination? Or can you
say that fathers were discriminated for generations for not having a
holiday of equal merit as mothers? Sorry for the tangent, but one can
really pick at things when you pull the moral microscope out the closet.<br><br>The
biases are part of the groups' charter, to cherish, to disseminate the
history of whatever past they represent. I have a former teacher whose
mother just joined the DAR after laboring for years on the research.
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