Top 20 Most Awkward Moments on Finding Your Roots

Finding your roots can get awkward. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most embarrassing and uncomfortable discoveries on the genealogy series, “Finding Your Roots,” that left celebrity guests a little uneasy. Our countdown includes George R. R. Martin’s grandmother’s affair, Gayle King’s European ancestry, not Julia Roberts, and more! Would YOU ever want to dig into your ancestry? Let us know in the comments below!

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[Onora]

A nice reminder that if you go back far enough we're all related to heroes and villians, commoners and kings.

[redmoondesignbeth]

A friend did my genealogy recently. I'm 72 and it's been a shock to my system. First, My ancestor Mary Barnes CT was hanged as a witch for having opinions in 1662. Then it turns out that my dad was not some midwestern hick but the son of a powerful Chicago Gangster. The house I grew up in hidden in an Indiana cornfield was the hide out.

[kevinriley]

Man, Blanche took it better when Dorothy told her that she had a relative born in Buffalo & that she was Jewish.

[LissBee-np]

having secondhand embarrassment for someone you never knew is a strange concept to me

[chrisprevatt]

It baffles me that brown skinned Afro Americans are surprised that they have some white ancestry. Most African American and Caribbean people are mixed to some extent. Compare Will Smith and Hounsou Djimon.

[iluvcamaros]

Them: I am basically Malcolm X.
Him: Your grandaddy was Robert E. Lee
Them: 😮

[madtheghost]

"It's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you"

[irenem]

Life is messy. People are flawed! And we are no better than the people in the past. I hate the graceless judgment of history.

[lucindapick]

Wanda Sykes episode was so shocking it became part of her standup routine. Worth the watch!

[johnlabus]

I have some thoughts. 1) Any white person who takes pride in descending from among the first Europeans in America shouldn't t be surprised that there are slaveowners somewhere in their past, even if their family wasn't from the South 2) Anyone with Puerto Rican ancestry shouldn't be surprised to see Iberian/Spanish DNA in their own. 3) Anyone who knows that they descend from the slave trade shouldn't be surprised that they also have some European DNA as it's well known that slave owners are known to have raped their female slaves.
There are definitely some rarer surprises here like having free black ancestors who were slave owners themselves, but most of these things aren't that surprising.

[jant]

So, a light brown celeb finds there's a white ancestor and they are actually surprised. Really? I could look at each one and tell them that without doing a ancestry background.

[wheelzwheela]

4:14 No I had no idea” Nice recovery. Imagine if a white celebrity found out he was partly black and yelled It would ruin his career.

[cindydowning]

We are who we are. We become what we choose

[grudgejudy]

It seems like the takeaway from this show should be that we can’t be responsible for the mistakes of our ancestors, we have to look towards a better future, but too many people look in the past. There have been so many mistakes throughout history, it’s inevitable that every person will find something they don’t like in their ancestry.

[monsters]

I find it funny that all these light skin black people all think they are 100% black. I am light skinned, so I don’t pretend that I am 100% of Hispanic origins . My research shows just how mixed I am. I find it fantastic that my family didn’t see race as an issue and went for what they wanted regardless of the times.

[joelwright]

You’re not responsible for your ancestors. You had no control over what they chose to do. Any surprises should be at worst merely interesting. Getting upset about it is weird and pointless.

[msl]

How could Sunny not know that she'd have Spanish ancestry if all Puerto Ricans are a mix of indigenous Taino, Africans, and Spaniards? There is no such thing as "Puerto Rican" DNA markers. It'd be a mix of Caribbean indian, European, and African. I though everyone knew this.

[manxkin]

Why would someone from Puerto Rico be surprised to find that they have Spanish roots? I’m not embarrassed by the actions of those who came before. Why should I be? Interesting reactions from the African American people featured here when they find they have white ancestors.

[gladyspuyarenavalentin]

Puerto Ricans are mix of European, African, and Taino. Of course, there most be ancestors involved in the slave trade. It may be hard to accept, but it is history.

[Nurichiri]

My mom was adopted and while she found her bio mother she was never able to find more about her bio father than a name the egg donor provided. I took a DNA test through Ancestry after her death and found some second cousins on mom's side with names that didn't match up. Turns out egg donor either lied or was mislead about sperm donor's identity. One of the second cousins reached back out to me and we figured out who sperm donor was. That was a family that has a load of drama to this day.