Paul K. Graham

You aren't a rational person if you can't reason out the differences between two sides of a situation.

3) The number of people in genealogy groups who are happy that our hobby and our employment opportunities in the field are being wiped out by an anti-intellectual right wing government will never cease to amaze me.

2) Even records made available through private companies are generally supported by government grants and contracts somewhere along the line.

Something I posted in reply to someone on Facebook: 1) The entire hobby of genealogy requires an active and fully funded government at all levels. Genealogy relies almost entirely on access to records created by and maintained by agencies, courts, and offices of government funded by taxpayers.

If a genealogist votes Republican and thinks the Constitution only applies to citizens, we cannot trust them to correctly interpret and evaluate legal texts about our ancestors.

If a genealogist votes Republican and thinks it is easy to obtain documents needed to prove identity and citizenship, we know that they have not experienced the burden of obtaining vital records and other modern government documents.

Every time I request assistance from an archive, I ask them to let me know of any costs, so that they know up front that I’m open to compensating them.

If a genealogist votes Republican and thinks dead people and former residents appearing on voter rolls is a massive problem, how can we trust them to correctly evaluate the evidence from historic voter lists?

If a genealogist votes Republican and supports increased tariffs, how can we trust them to correctly evaluate the economic realities that impacted our ancestors?

It is clear that data critical to genealogy (and other disciplines) is being systematically stripped from federal websites. Census Bureau data IS being removed, and census data geeks at IPUMS verify and are taking whatever steps they can to preserve the data for the future. Scary times we live in.

I thought learning about the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism in school was meant to be a warning, not a playbook.

Dorothy Porter in 1939, at her desk in the Carnegie Library at Howard University. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University

Dorothy B. Porter changed libraries 💜

The Dewey Decimal System used to only have two classifications for Black people: 325 (colonization) & 326 (slavery). Each book by a Black person was put into one of these classifications. A book of poetry? Classified as colonization.

Enter Dorothy B. Porter 🧵

Personal opinions are highly relevant. We aren’t machines. I edit a lot of genealogical work and regularly have to point out when genealogists expose their strong biases and lack of knowledge.

The word *should* is the important one. If a genealogist today wants to ban abortions, I assume they haven't learned the history, understood the context, and seen the human impact in records they should have knowledge about to compile a quality genealogy.

Call to action: New York! Speak out on records access It's starting again. Every so often, records access -- particularly access to vital records -- goes on the chopping block. And access to these critical records for family h...

Records access in New York is under threat!! Speak out NOW to keep access to vital records for genealogists! #Genealogy @FamilyHistory www.legalgenealogist.com/2025/01/28/c...

Just because we *can* analyze records for ourselves, we don't have the time to do that for every claim. We should be able to trust other people's work, and their political views cast doubt on their output.

All times. Healthy safe abortions have been conducted throughout documented human history. The only times they are unsafe is when laws are made to ban them.

That is correct. And the anti-abortion Republican does not understand or care that natural occurrences occur and are happy to put women in jail for having miscarriages.

I trust the current person infinitely less than the original record creator, since a trusted genealogist would have the experience in historical vital records to know why medical abortion is necessary for positive maternal health outcomes.

If a genealogist votes Republican and wants to outlaw abortion, how can we trust them to correctly interpret infant and maternal mortality evidence?

If a genetic genealogist votes Republican, how can we be sure they accept and understand that there are more than two biological sexes and gender identities and will interpret genetic results correctly?