The students told me that they believed enough in "blood tells" that they weren't willing to take on unrelated children, and the adoption rates were very poor at that time.
You'd think that might've been an issue in areas of the South, since "blood tells" is also a quiet constant. My grandmother used to rail about a certain surname, since that clan stole all our ancestral land, back in Scotland. I ignored most of it, even if I did listen, because that was maybe three hundred years and more. Whatever, Gramma! Until I had a college roommate from that clan. "Thieving," my grandmother said, with a wink, like it was our own quiet joke in private... until the day my roommate moved out, and took half my CD collection with her. I called Gramma, and we were both subdued, if slightly self-satisfied at being proven right: "clearly, blood does tell." And she made me promise never to marry someone with that surname, and I wasn't gonna argue because obviously, blood tells!
(Which is just CRAZY, but there it is.)
Their sense of strain and effort and frustration was so clear, they were *trying* so hard to communicate with me, that I was willing to meet them eyeball to eyeball and keep trying. But it did end up pointing out to them just how alien I was.
Thank you for at least recognizing that it's an attempt at connection, not a test or a way to trip you up or make fun of you or point out your inadequacies. I mean, some of these responses don't seem to realize what I thought I'd made pretty clear: that if a Southerner wants to offend you, she won't even ask the question in the first place. That all those taken-as-nosy questions were overtures of friendship. I feel kinda bad on behalf of the people trying hard to extend such hospitality, and outsider-newcomers throwing it back in their faces. I mean, I understand the reasons why the outsider/newcomer might feel that way, I do... but I also know what motivates the question. I guess I feel bad for all parties.
I'm coming out of an entire culture of isolated, atomized peasants who left everything they had, often not by their own choice, and it's like a kick in a scar to get reminded of it.
Seeing how that was effectively both sides of my family, on every side, I think the way the current socio-cultural setup clings to family-tracing is because if you go back past a certain point... there's nothing. So maybe part of this is the results of rebuilding in the wake of that desolation. I mean, my mother's father's name is not the original; it was changed to hide the family connection due to the Proscriptions. (I believe "White" and "Brown" and "Black", if traced to Georgia, are also signs that the family was originally Scottish and took a generic-sounding color-name as "code" to indicate Scots-ancestry without triggering, well, being shot for being Scots.) I found out after marrying that my then-SO was my fifth or sixth cousin via the Irish part of the family... and then I found out he was also a ninth cousin through the Scots side, too, one I'd never realized because each son of that family took a different surname to hide before fleeing to the colonies. My ancestor took a simpler form of the clan-name, but his ancestor (the youngest), took the surname "White".
(No, I haven't the faintest clue how someone more than 200 years later put them back together again. Ship missive, I want to say, but really... I boggle.)
Which may also be why saying your family emigrated through much hardship is something -- at least from what I've ever seen, and my mileage is hardly universal -- that others do respect. Like I say elsewhere, it's whether you'd want to know, if you could, that really demonstrates how important family is to you. But if you can't know due to war, disaster, death, disease, whatever... well, you can't know, then. But what you can know, you hold dear.
no subject
Date: 4 Apr 2011 04:00 am (UTC)You'd think that might've been an issue in areas of the South, since "blood tells" is also a quiet constant. My grandmother used to rail about a certain surname, since that clan stole all our ancestral land, back in Scotland. I ignored most of it, even if I did listen, because that was maybe three hundred years and more. Whatever, Gramma! Until I had a college roommate from that clan. "Thieving," my grandmother said, with a wink, like it was our own quiet joke in private... until the day my roommate moved out, and took half my CD collection with her. I called Gramma, and we were both subdued, if slightly self-satisfied at being proven right: "clearly, blood does tell." And she made me promise never to marry someone with that surname, and I wasn't gonna argue because obviously, blood tells!
(Which is just CRAZY, but there it is.)
Their sense of strain and effort and frustration was so clear, they were *trying* so hard to communicate with me, that I was willing to meet them eyeball to eyeball and keep trying. But it did end up pointing out to them just how alien I was.
Thank you for at least recognizing that it's an attempt at connection, not a test or a way to trip you up or make fun of you or point out your inadequacies. I mean, some of these responses don't seem to realize what I thought I'd made pretty clear: that if a Southerner wants to offend you, she won't even ask the question in the first place. That all those taken-as-nosy questions were overtures of friendship. I feel kinda bad on behalf of the people trying hard to extend such hospitality, and outsider-newcomers throwing it back in their faces. I mean, I understand the reasons why the outsider/newcomer might feel that way, I do... but I also know what motivates the question. I guess I feel bad for all parties.
I'm coming out of an entire culture of isolated, atomized peasants who left everything they had, often not by their own choice, and it's like a kick in a scar to get reminded of it.
Seeing how that was effectively both sides of my family, on every side, I think the way the current socio-cultural setup clings to family-tracing is because if you go back past a certain point... there's nothing. So maybe part of this is the results of rebuilding in the wake of that desolation. I mean, my mother's father's name is not the original; it was changed to hide the family connection due to the Proscriptions. (I believe "White" and "Brown" and "Black", if traced to Georgia, are also signs that the family was originally Scottish and took a generic-sounding color-name as "code" to indicate Scots-ancestry without triggering, well, being shot for being Scots.) I found out after marrying that my then-SO was my fifth or sixth cousin via the Irish part of the family... and then I found out he was also a ninth cousin through the Scots side, too, one I'd never realized because each son of that family took a different surname to hide before fleeing to the colonies. My ancestor took a simpler form of the clan-name, but his ancestor (the youngest), took the surname "White".
(No, I haven't the faintest clue how someone more than 200 years later put them back together again. Ship missive, I want to say, but really... I boggle.)
Which may also be why saying your family emigrated through much hardship is something -- at least from what I've ever seen, and my mileage is hardly universal -- that others do respect. Like I say elsewhere, it's whether you'd want to know, if you could, that really demonstrates how important family is to you. But if you can't know due to war, disaster, death, disease, whatever... well, you can't know, then. But what you can know, you hold dear.