Ancestry.com’s Racist Ad Tumbles Into a Cultural Minefield
On Thursday, the world’s largest DNA testing company, Ancestry.com, pulled a video advertisement amid a cascade of criticism on social media. The ad, titled, “Inseparable” and cinematically shot to portray a gauzy, gothic moment on the streets of the Antebellum South, depicted a white man offering a black woman a ring and imploring her to “escape to the north” with him. In the captions, they are referred to as “lovers.