Billy Crudup on "Finding Your Roots"

In My Humble Opinion
1

I saw this episode today, but I don’t know when it was first aired. He mentioned in the show that he was 53 when it was made, so it may be a couple of years old, but I think it was originally aired fairly recently. You can watch this on PBS Passport if you’re a member of one of the stations.

At one point he was faced with the fact that his 3rd great-grandfather was a slave-owner and that 60 years after slavery ended, one of those slaves, a woman, had continued to work for the family for a long time, and was being interviewed when she was 90. There was a hand-written paper where this woman was given, as chattel, to his 3rd great-grandfather. This is what he said, when the host asked him “What’s it like to read this”:

"I’m having, obviously, a lot of different reactions. Part of it is the personal experience I’m having, processing the story; and then there’s the material thing, actually thinking of her as a girl being sold to my great-great-great grandfather as a child, and being so entrenched in that system that there could be parts of her that were clinging to it still, as it was falling apart. And, getting into characters and thinking about people, if you’re Asa [the slave-owner ancestor], you’ve got two ways of imagining slavery that I can think of: one, you diminish the people who you’re enslaving; the other is you tell yourself you’re a good person, and that slavery exists, and you’re doing the best version of it possible. So I’m imagining that, for even this to be reported, he must have been selling the story to himself and others, that he was one of the good.

“Slavery must have been a kind of religion, in some way – to be able to believe that you could-- that somebody was less of a person enough that you could own them, that’s a kind of leap of faith that seems fanatical to me. But that’s part of our legacy.”

This situation comes up all the time on this show, where the subject of the genealogical research has to face the fact that ancestors were slave-owners, and they always get asked the same question by the host: How does that make you feel? This is far the most thoughtful response I have seen. I was very impressed, and very moved. If there’s an actor I would like to have over for dinner, it would be him.

p.s. I hope this partial transcription of the show content doesn’t violate our rules on copyright; it covers less than 2 minutes of screen time. If it does, I apologize in advance. It’s something that moved me that I wanted to share.

2

I am annoyed by these kind of gotcha reporters.

Personally, if I never knew the person I do not feel answerable to their actions even if that person is family. Heck…even if that person is alive now I am not sure how much I have to answer for their actions (e.g. a criminal brother).

I certainly have nothing to say about an ancestor who owned slaves (inasmuch as it somehow reflects on me…I’d be happy to decry slavery at every opportunity). It does not reflect on me. Judge me by my own actions.

3

This wasn’t a gotcha - it was an in depth exploration of Crudup’s ancestry. That’s the whole purpose of the show - it explores the ancestry of prominent people, with their permission and cooperation. No one asked him to feel responsible or answerible, just how it made him feel.

I agree with the OP that it was a very thoughtful answer.

4

Fair enough and his answer was thoughtful and a good one. And it is interesting to hear how an actor inhabits a role which may be a vile person.

Slavery = bad. I think most people are on that side of things and the only interesting responses are people who want to support or praise slavery.

I do not really see how an ancestor who did bad things figures into the conversation. Yeah…bad ancestor. So what?

5

Part of studying family history is taking some sort of inspiration or strength from the story of your ancestors as you see how their narrative is connected to your own.

So if you’re interested in genealogy, there is an inherent tension when you find an ancestor who (for instance) enslaved people. You’re not guilty or even responsible for their crimes, but they’re as much a part of your family story as every other ancestor from that generation.

@Roderick_Femm , I agree – it’s an intriguing situation and it always interests me how people react to this part of their family history. And Billy Crudup’s answer was an eloquent one.

6

There are whole states in the US trying to outlaw such discussions. They do not want to reflect on the naughty things their ancestors might have done.

I am all for revealing that history and it is interesting to know the history of your family. I think it is a worthwhile pursuit.

7

What if your family was well off, in part from generational wealth built on slave labor? I don’t see how it couldn’t be part of the conversation.

8

That is one brilliant answer to the question, for sure. It combines both the sense of accepting the reality with the understanding that this is a person far enough removed from you in time and life experience that you CAN try to evaluate them with no need to be defensive.

Which is part of what is behind that issue of wanting to censor the discussion. A defensiveness because those promoting those policies believe an honest portayal of the past is really an attempt to shame and place redress demands on them.

9

Then there’s Ben Affleck, who responded by asking the show to remove the part about how his ancestor owned slaves.

I’m a big fan of Billy Crudup and enjoyed his episode, including his response to this question.

10

Exactly so. Ancestry.com’s ad campaigns focus on using their tool to discover your cool/brave/interesting ancestors, and a feeling of pride and belonging that you might get from learning that. Understandably, they don’t feature what happens when you learn that you have an ancestor who did terrible things.

11

I agree that that was a thoughtful and intelligent answer.

But I gotta say that I can’t stand the way the host Henry Louis Gates dramatically and almost gleefully presents the person with some startling fact about their ancestor and asks some variation of:

“How does that make you feel?”
“What does that mean to you?”
“What do you think of that?”

And he keeps asking and pressing until they produce a sufficiently surprised, shocked, boggled reaction. Terry Gross wouldn’t handle it that way.

12

Yes, not only about ancestors who did terrible things, but also when some tragedy (like being killed in the Holocaust) is revealed to have happened to someone’s ancestor. It seems like every show is leading up to one of these questions, and I too wish he could find another way to draw a line under the emotional climax of the show.

I’ve said elsewhere I don’t much care for him as the host of this show. But I guess it’s his show in some sense, so it’s either watch him or don’t watch the show.

13

“How do you feel?” is the quintessential question of TV interviews.

14

Gates isn’t a journalist by trade; he’s a professor, historian, and literary critic. While he’s done quite a bit of TV hosting, I don’t think that he’s necessarily a good or skilled interviewer. I find the show to be interesting, but because of the information that’s being learned, and the interviewees; Gates doesn’t do a lot to add to my enjoyment of it.

Definitely agreed.

15

This is mostly what I think of. I’ve only found one direct ancestor who owned slaves (2). He was an immigrant to the Carolinas from Germany, but he was buried in Pennsylvania where his son who was my direct ancestor moved – and owned no slaves. I know I had abolitionists in my history, and a cousin found historical documentation that my three times great-grandfather’s farm outside Cincinnati was a stop on the Underground Railroad. I’m proud of those things, but the slavery part is something that bothers me.

I can’t see anyone – especially since generational wealth in this country often was built on slavery – not feeling a little shame. Just ignoring it as nothing to do with me.

On edit: I remember the Crudup episode and being impressed with this answer. I appreciate people being at least a little bit thoughtful. On Gates: I was surprised to find a folktale from Guinea that he recorded at the end of a Zora Neale Hurston book I read recently.

16

I found out from assorted documentary searches that, five generations back, an ancestor was the child of a long-term concubinage relationship in Jamaica in the late 18th century between a lawyer and a mixed-race woman, so one or two generations further back from that an ancestor was probably enslaved. However I know from will records that that lawyer bequeathed ownership of some slaves and acted on occasion as the reporting agent for his father’s plantation, which had a large number of slaves. However, there are also indications that said lawyer might himself have been illegitimate and therefore of mixed race himself.

He certainly wasn’t mentioned in his father’s will, and whatever wealth he left didn’t come down to my ancestor, so I don’t feel directly benefited financially (but indirectly, to the extent that our national prosperity benefited from slavery and colonialism - that’s a knottier question, of course).

It surprised me that there was clearly fairly regular correspondence between the family in Jamaica and London, children sent back to England for schooling and so on, implying plenty of material for a family saga novel or two. But I find it hard to get into the matter-of-fact mind-set that would have seemingly been comfortable with owning slaves, even among those of mixed race (unsurprisingly, the documentary evidence I’ve found doesn’t go back far enough to identify my enslaved ancestors).

17

This same thought has occurred to me (my ancestors that I know about were either midwestern small farmers or small-scale merchants) and I wondered if the issue of the actual contribution of slavery to the prosperity of the entire country, not just the slave-holding states, has been discussed before on this board. I think now might be a good time to (re)visit the subject, in light of current interest about reparations (understanding that reparations are not only intended to redress slavery but also all the types of racial economic discrimination that have happened since then).

18

They kinda do but not in the commercials. Finding Your Roots and even more Who do you Think You Are both have lots of Ancestry product placement. They have no problem attaching the product to bad ancestors.

19

The latter is quite intentional, as Ancestry is a sponsor of that show.

20

They are the main sponsor of Finding Your Roots but in the traditional PBS way. Ancestry resources are what is used on both shows.