Re-runs of "Roots"

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- "ROOTS" was the only book I knew my teenage son to read, aside from assigned school books, computer manuals and chess books. He was thrilled to receive a copy autographed by Alex Haley, courtesy of George Haley, his brother, whom I had met.

Alex Haley himself I never really met, though I saw him in person once because we went to the same barber in Los Angeles. Both then and in his television appearances, Alex Haley seemed like a very decent man. That is why it is especially painful to have to recognize, now that the television series based on "Roots" is going to be re-run on its 25th anniversary, that its enormous success a quarter of a century ago was a tragedy for blacks and for American society in general.

Why a tragedy? The short answer is what Winston Churchill said during World War II: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." Some disastrous policies had been followed in the years leading up to World War II, and Churchill had sharply criticized those policies at the time but, now that the war was on, looking back could only interfere with the life-and-death job at hand.

There are some very big jobs at hand for black America -- and looking back at centuries past is a costly distraction from the work that needs to be done here and now. Moreover, the past that people are looking back at in "Roots" is not a wholly real past. When challenged by professional historians, Alex Haley called his work "faction" -- part fact and part fiction. He said that he had tried to give his people some myths to live by.

It was not that "Roots" merely got some details wrong. It presented some crucially false pictures of what had actually happened -- false pictures that continue to dominate thinking today.

"Roots" has a white man leading a slave raid in West Africa, where the hero Kunta Kinte was captured, looking bewildered at the chains put on him as he was led away in bondage. The village elders were likewise bewildered as to what these white men were doing, carrying their people away. In reality, West Africa was a center of slave trading before the first white man arrived there -- and slavery continues in parts of it to this very moment.

Africans sold vast numbers of other Africans to Europeans. But they hardly let Europeans go running around in their territory, catching people willy-nilly.

Because of the false picture of history presented by "Roots" and by other sources, last year we had the farce of the president of Nigeria making demands on the United States because of the enslavement of people whom his own countrymen had enslaved, and on behalf of a country where slavery still persists, more than a century after emancipation has occurred throughout the Western world.

"Roots" also feeds the gross misconception that slavery was about white people enslaving black people. The tragedy of slavery was of a far greater magnitude than that. People of every race and color were both slaves and enslavers, for thousands of years, all around the world. Europeans enslaved other Europeans for centuries before the first African was brought across the Atlantic. Asians enslaved other Asians, as well as whatever Europeans they could get hold of. Slavery existed in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus ever got here.

Slavery, like cancer, was not limited to any particular country or race. To talk about cancer as if it were an American disease, or a white or black disease, would be absurd. If reparations were to be paid for slavery, everybody on this planet would owe everybody else.

There is no danger of that actually happening. The danger is that too many blacks, especially among the young and the ill-educated, will be backing into the third millennium still looking back at centuries past -- or at fictions about centuries past -- when there are opportunities all around them that most people in the rest of the world today would die for.

The ancestors of black Americans were not taken from some Eden, and there is no Eden for black Americans to return to today. If compensation were to be paid for the difference between where they are and where their ancestors came from, they would owe money, not receive money. But it would be ridiculous to lose the future because of the past.

Virginia Statutes on slaves and servants

An act about the casuall killing of slaves.
WHEREAS the only law in force for the punishment of refreactory servants (a) resisting their master, mistris or overseer cannot be inflicted upon negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them by other then violent meanes supprest, Be it enacted and declared by this grand assembly, if any slave resist his master (or othe by his masters order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accompted ffelony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther ffelony) should induce any man to destroy his owne estate.
October 1670 - 22nd Charles II, Act V, 1670,2:280.

And...

XXXIV. And if any slave resist his master, or owner, or other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such accident had never happened: And also, if any negro, mulatto, or Indian, bond or free, shall at any time, lift his or her hand, in oppostion against any christian, not being negro, mulatto, or Indian, he or she so offending, shall, for every such offence, proved by the oath of the party, receive on his or her bare back, thirty lashes, well laid on; cognizable by a justice of the peace for that county wherein such offence shall be committed.

Just a couple of examples of Virginia style racism. This from back in the colonial days. In the big picture, yes, slavery is a practice that existed for centuries before it came to America. But in the context of America, it was most certainly a matter of white enslaving black, and I don't understand Sowell's point in diminishing that. Is it his contention that a program about American slavery is detrimental if it doesn't cover the entire history of slavery in civilization?

I am not sure what the racial makeup of slaves was in Haiti, or, what was it, Santa Domingo, or some of those other Carribean slave havens, but I am pretty sure it was white masters, black slaves. Any3way, I understand the point that in all of history, there have been various slaves of various races, I don't get the point of that. Sowell seems to say that anything less than a universal treatment of slavery is harmful. I don't get that. I don't understand why a treatment of American slavery, which was racist, is harmful.

What if there was a parallel system of institutionalized slavery under the American system, one which did not affect blacks in any manner? Would that exculpate or inculpate the southern plantation owners from the racism charge?

In fact such a system did exist. The Indian slave trade was inherited from the Spanish and was never as firmly embedded in law but was carried on openly for at least two decades under American jurisdiction. It did not involve the millions of slaves that were imported to the south but thousands of Indian slaves were sold up and down the Rio Grande Valley. A black slave was worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, an Indian could be purchased for $50.00 or traded for a mule and some boot. Conversely, Indians/Comancheros took hundreds of white slaves from frontier ranchs.

After the Emancipation Proclamation such slavery and its replacement, peonage, were kept low profile but both were practiced well into the twentieth century.

One cannot deny the racial component of slavery but it seems that the more basic determinant is cultural disparity and pure power.

Is it his contention that a program about American slavery is detrimental if it doesn't cover the entire history of slavery in civilization? You may have localizes the origin of the whole point here.

No study has an obligation to "cover the entire" subject. Any such writing contains, as a matter of course, a statement of scope; that is, how the subset of issues in focus is related to the rest of the body of knowledge. Placing such a statement is mandatory in academic writing (and has been for centuries, as you know) as well as legal and technical papers (including such mundane things like software specification documents). It is fairly universal thus.

The reason for this is simple: mere concentration on a subset of issues (facts, regularities, etc.) creates in a reader a justifiable impression that this is the whole subject. A perfectly logical reader will make erroneous conclusions upon reading the study. Since the one writing the book is presumably more informed, putting the body of worked being offered into a proper perspective is considered to be the author's (fiduciary) duty to the reader.

It is to this omission that Sowell points in his article. He also points out that, in the absence of proper perspective, erroneous conclusions are drawn by many blacks in this country. You too can witness that in the form of the "reparation movement."

In sum, Sowell merely holds "The Roots" to an appropriate, well-established standard.

Not surprisingly, A. Einstein has put it much better than I did:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."

Sowell has eloquently argued that the "The Roots" has portrayed slavery simpler than possible.

***Why repeat something that is so patently false? ***

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."

Booker T. Washington 1911

You too can witness that in the form of the "reparation movement."

I don't interpret the reparations movement as being cause by an "erroneuous conclusion" derived from a TV show with a narrow scope, relative to the whole of human civilization. I see that more as an opportunistic movement. As for the scope of Roots, you and I will just have to disagree. The TV show was not an academic exericise; It was a dramatization of the experiences of African slaves brought to America. I don't recognize any obligation on the part of the producers to make any special statements to remind viewers that, for example, Egyptian slavery wouldn't be covered in the film. That would go without saying, IMO, just as it would go without saying that a movie about Mickey Mantle isn't about Ty Cobb.

This is typical apologist rhetoric. I know that Thomas Sowell is a well-respected academic, but again I don't get what he is driving at. I am not in favor of reparations, but not because of how the "numbers" would come out on some theoretical "balance sheet". I am opposed to reparations because the people responsible for the institution of slavery are all dead, and because I believe in 1861-1865, America paid its debt in blood.

But the question of whether Americans are better off than they would have been is not the question. The point that I think the Roots series made was the suffering inflicted on slaves by their masters. It was an obvious cruelty. If I go to your house, and take your child, and bring it to my mansion, and put the child in a better school, and feed him better food. Is he better off?

I don't interpret the reparations movement as being cause by an "erroneous conclusion" derived from a TV show with a narrow scope, relative to the whole of human civilization. I was not, of course suggesting that (please give me some credit here); only that the rhetoric of "The Roots" is universal now, and this is the only thing people see. It has become politically correct.

As for the scope of Roots, you and I will just have to disagree. That is fine, of course, we can do that.

Just note that our TV conveniently hides behind the facade of art when convenient. Technically, you are correct (but once again prefer to concentrate on the narrow rather than broad view): if viewed as art, one TV show does not have an obligation to give "properly broad" perspective. One of the main points of Sowell's article (and mine too) is that that series has not and is not viewed as art. Rather, it is viewed as a lesson and a fact sheet of social engineering. Well, sorry: in this case the author does have an obligation. You simply cannot have it both ways: if it is art, then view as just one man's story; if it is a quasi-documentary, then adhere to higher standards of truth.

As for broader point, just name one source of popular, hence accessible, culture that at any time in the last thirty years has suggested that slavery is not just an American problem. The masses are kept in ignorance, first by negligence and now by deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

I would submit to you that, especially when dealing with emotionally charged issued easily misunderstood by ignorant masses, one has a particular duty to adhere to the truth. We can, as you suggested, agree to disagree.

Regards, TQ.

The point that I think the Roots series made was the suffering inflicted on slaves by their masters. That is your perception, your understanding of the series. You have to acknowledge the fact, however, that most other people have not viewed it as such. You may be projecting your own wisdom and level of education onto others. Were The Roots been an isolated phenomenon viewed by people as just one author's perception of slavery --- would we be discussing this and would Sowell bother to write about some rerun of an odd old series?

If most people perceived The Roots as you do, I would agree with your characterization.

If I go to your house, and take your child, and bring it to my mansion, and put the child in a better school, and feed him better food. Is he better off?

No, he is not. As you put this correctly, this act is an absolute cruelty for anyone going through the experience --- the parents and the child. Note, however, that this is NOT the issue: none of the people involved is alive. The grand-grand-children of the kidnap victim are better off. It sounds harsh, but there is no cruelty inflicted on them: most people do not have any personal experiences with great-great-grandfathers anyway.

It is these people, descendants of the slaves, that Sowell and we discuss.

Re: Haley's plagiarism

It (NBC series of ROOTS) "was a lie, in two senses. Alex Haley's book, on which the miniseries was based, was a fraud---a made-up tale about his own family, leavened with plagiarized passages from a novel, The African, Harold Courlander, a white author. White editors and producers, and the white judge in Courlander's plagiarism suit, gave Haley a free ride, (Courlander won $650,000, but was told not to discuss the case.) But now black columnist Stanley Crouch admits Roots was "one of the biggest con jobs in U.S. literary history." The meta-story of Roots was almost as fraudulent as it details. The black experience in this country was woven with slavery and woe. But blacks also managed to fertilize vast tracts of the American spirit; the victims of the slave trade became triumphant cultural imperialists. America is the home of American blacks, not some lost and remote Africa. No wonder that, to tell the grim story he wanted to tell, Haley had to make up almost everything."

(source: National Review, February 11, 2002)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.