Ancestry.ca, the Canadian outpost of the genealogy site Ancestry.com, has taken down an ad that was criticized for appearing to romanticize slavery. It was deemed an irresponsible retelling of an already reprehensible history.

ooooh my god LMAOOO who approved this ancestry commercial??? pic.twitter.com/Isy0k4HTMA — manny (@mannyfidel) April 18, 2019

The commercial, titled Inseparable, is a part of a Canadian ad campaign by Ancestry that tells the story of various histories cinematically. In this particular video, set presumably in the 1850s, a black woman and white man duck into a side street, where he presents her with a ring. “Abigail, we can escape to the north,” he says, eliciting her immediate skepticism. He continues: “There’s a place we can be together, across the border. Will you leave with me?” The ad ends without a clear answer, but the postscript is a mock-up of a marriage license for Abigail Williams and James Miller, dated 9 April 1857. While it is not made clear if she is a slave or a free woman of color, the portrayal does imply the couple is having a forbidden affair for the time period. It’s also not evident if the story is fictional or a retelling of an actual account.

According to iSpot.tv, the 30-second advertisement had been purchased for 90 slots before it was cancelled. Posted on Ancestry’s YouTube channel on 2 April, the commercial had only aired a few times before it was removed. After the backlash, Ancestry provided the Guardian with the following statement: “Ancestry is committed to telling important stories from history. 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. We are in the process of pulling the ad from television and have removed it from YouTube.”

Anomaly, the creative agency responsible for the advertisement, previously won a Ad Age award for agency of the year in 2017. The agency declined comment, at the request of Ancestry.

Ancestry also put out an ad of a young man begging a doctor to clear him to fight in a world war, and another of a family preparing to leave Ireland due to the potato famine, all ending with: “Without you, the story stops here.” In an interview with StrategyOnline.ca, the Canada country manager of Ancestry, Bill De Groot, said he wanted to show the people of the past in a more humanistic way, saying: “They had trials and triumphs just like us.”

The ad sparked outrage after it was posted to Twitter on 18 April by several users. Desus Nice, of the comedy duo Bodega Boys, retweeted the video with the comment: “Oh y’all wildin wildin”. In a later tweet, he parodied the dialogue of the ad using a fictional account of Rosa Parks’ December 1955 arrest:

White man: you can’t sit here!



Rosa parks: why not?



White man: because you already have a place......in my heart.



*ancestry dot com logo with a soft fade out* — Desus Nice (@desusnice) April 18, 2019

Many accused the heritage and genealogy site of romanticizing slavery and the antebellum period, noting this retelling of history is probably ahistorical and doesn’t touch on unfair power dynamics. One Twitter user pointed out black-and-white miscegenation laws were not in place in Canada at the time, but were enforced by vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Oh for f---



This is the work of @AncestryCA.



No, Canada didn't have blatant anti-miscegenation rules on the books, but anti-miscegenation was enforced.



By the Klan. Which Canadian municipalities allowed to operate in broad daylight (when they weren't handing them charters) https://t.co/rkiPxMddek — Andray (@andraydomise) April 18, 2019

Some surmised that the conception of the ad might have been made by a non-diverse staff, therefore not taking into account the response or implications of what an ad like this might mean.

One of the most troubling things about this is that Ancestry (and/or their agency) probably think this ad is "celebrating diversity." — Amy Silvers (@A_Silvers) April 18, 2019



