Chelsea Handler Finds Out her Grandfather Was a Nazi... OK?

I have had this article sent to me several times today, and I wanted to say something about it. 

Chelsea Handler is no friend to Trump or anyone else without a D after their name, and like many others similar to her, she has decided anything but that D means Nazi. In a strange twist, she found out - and was told on TV - that her grandfather was an actual Nazi. 

This is, apparently, whipping the masses into a frenzy because - *gasp* - this woman who thinks everyone is a Nazi is related to an actual Nazi! That makes her... evil?

Well, no. As none of us are responsible for the actions of our ancestors, neither is she. And doing the same thing back to these people gets us nowhere. This is reactionary revenge measures, and what good is that doing? Do you think it is going to make her change her ways? Is she going to look at people with no D after their name and see them differently? It isn't. She may refrain from using Nazi - mostly likely not, because it is the catch term from the left right now - but she isn't going to think differently about non-D folks. 

In the last two years or so, I began trying to trace my family history. I found a lot of strange things that I never knew about my family. The biggest find? I come from a very long line of Virginians. This was a life changing moment for me since my grandmother hated southerners with the fire of a thousand suns, and my mother and I believed our family had strong ties to Philadelphia and surrounding areas. Turns out, my grandmother was born there, but she was the first of our family line to be born outside of Virginia since the late 1600s. Our family spent generations living in Bedford, Virginia, with the occasional straggler who ended up in Lynchburg. 

This interested me to no end and I began to dig a lot deeper. I discovered my family has taken part in every single war that involved the USA aside from the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our last family member in the military was my cousin who served with the US Army in Desert Shield. We had the most - a father and all five of his sons - serving in the War of 1812. And I admit, I got excited to see three family members fought in the Revolution. Then I found my three ancestors who served in the Civil War. 

For the Confederacy. 

Image my mom's shock when I told her our family had no Union soldiers at all. On my dad's side, the family wasn't here until well after the Civil War. So this was it. As I dug even deeper, I found it. 

One of my ancestors owned slaves. This was news to me and my mom. I couldn't find much information about the slaves since they weren't written down like real people at that point, so I don't know their names or anything like that. But it appeared from the paperwork that it was actually a family - a husband, wife, and child. I was able to trace the family somewhat, and it appears my ancestor kept them together and they stayed with him until the slaves were freed. But when I realized I had a slave owner in my bloodline, I became almost obsessed with learning something about these slaves, anything. I got my anything in the realization that he didn't separate the family and they were freed together. But again, I never did find out their names. 

My ancestor owned slaves. I didn't. I hold no guilt over the fact that I had a slave owner in my family. I didn't know him. No one in my family still living did. And either way... I am not responsible for the sins of my ancestors. I will not feel guilt over it nor will I make "amends" to folks who were also not slaves. I didn't own them, you weren't one. That time is over. Do I wish he hadn't? Of course! But I can't change history. He's long dead, and so are those slaves. 

But in light of that, can we really hold a Nazi grandfather against Chelsea Handler? No! She's a garbage person. I don't like her even slightly. But I am not going to expect guilt or hold it against her that her grandfather was a Nazi. She wasn't a Nazi, her grandfather was. She has no control over that, nor can she change it. And she owes no one an explanation or reparations. Her grandfather may, if he's still alive, which I doubt, since she's pretty old herself now. 

So let's stop. This reactionary turn around revenge is a useless waste of time. Don't do to them what they do to us... be better than them. That isn't hard to do. 

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