Posted on 06/13/2015 5:08:48 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen
In 1976, Alex Haley authored the nearly 1,000 page, Roots: The Saga of An American Family. The following year, ABC aired a mini-series that was based upon it. Both book and television show proved to be tremendous successes. Now, the History Channel has officially announced that it will remake Root There’s only one problem: Roots is a fake and Haley is a fraud—and a fraud on multiple levels.
Dr. Thomas Sowell has some things to say on this matter about the original series “Roots”.
Basically, of all the slavery that has taken place in history, the “Roots” version is the one that the world thinks of when it thinks “Slavery”.
It was neither the most common form, nor the most brutal overall. But it served a purpose for the author and producers.
Of COURSE I made that name up, and if it happens it will the fastest of sound bytes .... but it'll be there ....
you heard it here, from me ... first.
Otherwise; people may "forget" that there were black slaves at one time and start to think that success is achievable for anyone who wants to pursue it. They are just doing their part to ensure the grievance industry continues to thrive.
I gave up on the History Channel years ago. It was my favorite and the main one I watched.
H2 was really good too once.
I was thinking myself that in the remake of Roots the great great great great great great grandson of Kunta Kinte becomes president of the USA BUT don’t discount Hillary claiming African ancestry.
I remember when Haley’s fraud was being exposed.
The general liberal viewpoint was that “The story itself was too important for people be concerned with fact”.
The usual “Agenda Matters: truth doesn’t” viewpoint of the left.
Blacks beholden en masse to the DemoRat Party— the modern saga of the slavery kept in hushed, blind denial.
I do genealogy and discovered that one of Obama’s distant ancestors was the man who introduced slavery to the New World.
While slavery is obviously wrong it was never in the best interests of a master to treat a slave badly. Sure there were incidents of mistreatment but it was by no means standard practice.
In some ways, slavery was a form of bondage for the owners as well. They were very valuable collateral at a time when men could go to debtor’s prison for failing to pay their debts.
James Armistead (Lafayette) was a slave who was a patriot spy under Lafayette who spied on Benedict Arnold after Arnold joined the British and he also fed false info to Cornwallis. After the war when slaves who had served were freed, Armistead was not freed because the law didn’t include spies. His owner William Armistead couldn’t free him because he would be jailed and James would become the property of someone else.
It wasn’t until the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America in 1824 that he found James Armistead still a slave. Lafayette (with the support of William Armistead who was a delegate) wrote a letter to the house of delegates asking for the release of James Armistead. Armistead took the name Lafayette to honor the Marquis.
That reminds me of Al Gore's admission that it is okay to lie if the lie causes people to listen.
"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."
It is interesting to note that the British enticed slaves to escape their masters and fight for the British, promising them freedom in return. (Dunmore’s Proclamation)
Then, they completely reneged on that promise after they used them, badly, as cannon fodder and such, and used loopholes to get them enslaved again, sending them to plantations in the Caribbean, etc.
This is not to diminish the actions of England in helping to stamp out slavery, who led the way in the West.
White slavers had no protection against tropical diseases and no knowledge of the geography of Africa for centuries. They simply traded guns and other things for their slaves.
The Dunmore’s Proclamation was a bill of attainder which stripped patriots of their property including slaves. The slaves themselves were given a narrow set of choices and as you say, the Brits reneged on their deal.
Given your speed and accuracy in responding to that post, I have a sneaking suspicion you were the Freeper who originally educated me about Dunmore’s Proclamation...
I am a history buff, but I concentrate more on some aspects/times of history than others, and this was a piece I had been oddly aware of until a Freeper brought it up in a thread.
It is those types of things that keep me a paying member of FR...:)
I’m a big fan of revolution era history. I find both friends and foes of the period to be fascinating.
Robert Rogers and John Graves Simcoe are among my favorites. Simcoe was a ruthless and brutal foe known for massacres of patriots at the same time he was a staunch abolitionist. The “Turn” TV series showed him writing a love letter to Anna Strong but historically he is believed to have written the first known Valentines day card to Anna Strong’s sister. He’s a big hero in Canada where every town has schools and streets named after him.
And to my incandescent and nearly incoherent rage, a monument to Haley and Kunte Kinte stands at harbor side in Annapolis Md. Garbage put there by Haley’s scheming hustling relatives and liberal white guilted pansies
not only was the book a fraud, but it’s perpetuated a false narrative about slavery for nearly 40 years. as i recall, the protagonist was out in the jungle one day when minding his own business when he was set upon by evil white slave traders from a nearby ship and captured, thus becoming a slave.
that’s an overwhelmingly false narrative. the vast majority of african slaves were sold into slavery by other africans as the result of tribal conflicts, to settle a debt, or captured by north african and arab MUSLIMS raiders from the north. north african and arab MUSLIMS have always been in control of the african slave trade and they still are to this very day!
the notion that somehow only western europeans should feel unique shame for what a small percentage of their ancestors did to africans they purchased from MUSLIMS is baloney. lots of western europeans were pressed into slavery themselves as they traveled the mediterranean, never to taste freedom again. in fact, MUSLIMS were trading slaves in africa for 600-700 years before western europeans first got involved.
but of course this fact was never mentioned in Roots, was it?
Unexpected?
Maryland is a lost cause. i escaped in 1992. way too many braindead liberals there.
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