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NewsCut
Bob Collins

Ancestry.com romanticizes slavery to sell you a DNA kit

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Slavery is good marketing for Ancestry.com, the outfit that sells DNA tests. It's not a good look for the firm. Whitewashing never is.

Clint Smith, a Harvard PhD candidate, tried to tweet some sense into ancestry.com

So did Josh Crosson, the senior policy director at EdAllies, the Minnesota organization that advocates for better education for the underserved.

Bishop Talbert Swan provided a history lesson to the company.

Last evening, Ancestry.com apologized, but how do you even produce the ad if you have even a thimblefull of historical knowledge?

"Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history," the company said in a statement. "This ad was intended to represent one of those stories. We very much appreciate the feedback we have received and apologize for any offense that the ad may have caused."

(h/t: Paul Tosto)