#yes there is white guilt involved here but op doesnt sound like theyre solely trying to make themself feel better

[translucio]

okay i never add stuff on reblogs but this one just made me feel the need to speak up lol. as a black american descended from slaves, i personally don't think it would be assholish to reach out to surviving descendants of people your family kept as slaves, PROVIDED you do so respectfully. like if your message is basically "hey, i found this out in family records, i humbly apologize for their actions and hope you're well, here is a copy of the relevant records in case you would like them for your own family records." with no prompting for further contact unless they want to initiate it. i feel like that's fine. even better if you send em some cash. just thinking about how i and my immediate family would feel if it happened to us, yeah it might be weird but it wouldn't be like a Violation or super upsetting like some of the commenters are saying. we don't have a lot of records of our ancestors because of slavery, so if a stranger was able to provide some that filled gaps in the tree that'd be neat. anyway that's my personal opinion, i voted NAH :shrug:

WIBTA for trying to find information on the descendents of people who were enslaved by my ancestors?

I (30, M) am from a mostly white family and was doing some genealogy digging. I found one branch of my direct ancestral family who lived in the USA and owned several Black slaves- they were mentioned in a will by first names, there were maybe 4 or 5 people. Maybe it's sympathy, white guilt or selfish, morbid curiosity, but I want to know if those people survived- what happened to them, how their families (if there are any) are now. I know the city where they would have lived, and checking records there would be a good start.

On one hand, I feel like more white people should take accountability and learn about their specific family misdeeds. I don't have much of anything to my name, but who knows? Maybe in some small way I could make their life better. It doesn't fix anything but avoiding it is cowardly and smacks of people who pretend white supremacy is "fixed now."

On the other hand, "hey, your great great great great grandparents were enslaved by mine and I dug through their records to find you and let you know I think that was fucked up" feels like an absolutely insane sentiment to hear. And doing something like anonymously keeping tabs on a family is creepy. It's not like there are any estates to sue- at least that we ever knew about.

I also know from my friends that are Black that a lot of questions go unanswered when it comes to family history, and that not knowing and having to assume can be traumatic too.

At the end of the day I just want to know if they have any living relatives today, if I can even find out what happened to them after slavery. WIBTA for this?

What are these acronyms?