"Roots is no more or less guilty of this than any other historical drama."
When it attacks us and our nation, our television producers should be more careful than they would be creating something that makes foreigners or ancient peoples worse than they were.
The white part of my family have been significant players in the development of this continent for almost 400 years.
Their sacrifices and efforts deserve attention to detail that TV may not show for ancient Greece for example, or Nazis in Private Ryan.
I don't want them smeared in an "over correction" during the affirmative action history of the last 50 years.
How are you being attacked. As many freepers who are against any apologies over slavery have pointed out: they weren't there when slavery was legal in this country, and thus they shouldn't apologize (and they even believe the government shouldn't apologize) for slavery and its effects.
"Roots" attacks slavery and its effects--unless you were complicit in either of those things, it shouldn't be attacking you.
Every single American has played a part in the development on this nation, and every single American (and every single human creature) has ancestors who have done both good and bad things. Proudly emphasizing only those ancestors who have good things to their name while acting as though those ancestors who have bad things (to their name) didn't exist is not the way to go.
The same for the country. This country has done great things: it is one of the oldest modern republics; in two centuries it went from independence to superpower status; its population has grown immensely due to a high birth rate and immigration;* it has generally kept the peace in the Western hemisphere while other continents were frequently ravaged by wars; it freely allows immigrants to naturalize into citizens; it has a policy of jus soli for citizenship; it remains a beacon of freedom (in many fields) for the rest of the world today; etc. etc.
This country has also done bad things: it has had a history of slavery; even those states in which slavery was banned allowed slavery to exist in fellow states; Amerindian tribes were removed from their lands although the government had treaties recognizing tribal ownership of typed lands; there were Jim Crow laws and miscegenation laws up until relatively recent history; etc. etc.
You can't (shouldn't) just take the good and not the bad with history. You have to (should) take both.
*Although some freepers believe it isn't so, immigration has been one of the drivers of population growth in the United States since before the country even existed (pre-1776).
Somehow, I don't think the sins of a television miniseries can be compared in any way with the sins of slavery.
Whatever faults in the miniseries, slavery was a sin--period. Any attempt to claim this TV show, because it didn't perform the absolutely impossible by blaming only those individuals responsible, is somehow guilty of smearing anyone is, frankly, ridiculous and embarassing.