Does this Ancestry.com ad 'romanticize' slavery?  I don't see it, but then, I am frequently accused of not being "woke" enough.

USA Today:

Ancestry.com has apologized for an ad critics claim romanticizes the history of slavery.

The ad, which has since been pulled from YouTube by the genealogy testing service, shows a black woman and white man meeting during what appears to be the 1800s.

"Abigail, we can escape to the North," said the man to the woman. "There is a place we can be together, across the border. Will you leave with me?"

The ad then features the tagline "without you, the story stops here."

CNN reports the ad first appeared on YouTube April 2, but didn't catch the attention of social media until Thursday.

Is it that I'm not woke enough, or is it that I'm a normal person who sees something totally different in the ad?

nobody:

ancestry dot com: how can we overly romanticize & create an irresponsible, ahistorical depiction of the relationship between white men & black women during the period of chattel slavery that completely disregards its power dynamics & the trauma of sexual exploitation? https://t.co/s5BqnoSg9x

— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) April 18, 2019

What the hell is this @Ancestry?
Why do white people insist on romanticizing my Black female ancestors experiences with white men during slavery?

They were raped, abused, treated like animals, beaten, and murdered by white men. Stop with the revisions.pic.twitter.com/cDEWdkzJPm

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) April 18, 2019

One of about 1,000 awful things about this commercial is it ignores the fact that for black Americans - myself included - and for others in the diaspora, DNA and documentary ancestry information is as painful and traumatic as it is illuminating. These are not love stories. https://t.co/tuTpHwmnGk

— Kimberly Atkins (@KimberlyEAtkins) April 18, 2019

I found the ad touching and sentimental.  My first thought about the controversy was that white supremacists would hit the ceiling because of the portrayal of an interracial couple.

Little could I guess that there were other haters out there with a different agenda.

It could be that even most black people wouldn't think the ad "romanticized" slavery unless someone else pointed it out.  Would it have been unusual at the time for a white man to be in love with a black woman?  I suppose so, but it probably happened a lot more than history records simply because of the opposition of the public — in both North and South — to the existence of an interracial couple. 

Acceptable or not, love is love, and that's what came through in the ad.  But the ad became a target when those who get outraged for a living found an angle they could attack.  Ancestry, bowing to the inevitable backlash, did as it was instructed.

Rather than be "woke" like this, I think I'll go back to sleep.