I was called a racist today because I said that Roots is untrue....

[Elok]

Originally posted by Dissident
It was the biggest television event in history. so I'm told. I was too young to watch it.

Er, I think that would be news during the moon landing. Or the CMC. Or even the final episode of M.A.S.H. I live in the wealthiest majority-black suburb of the country and all I ever heard about Roots in school, or anywhere, was that it was about slavery and rather popular. I know more about that Beloved book that Oprah wrote. Or did she just push it a lot? I just remember the rough plot from press releases, which is more than I can say for Roots.

[Agathon]

Roots was a really terrible film. About the only good thing that came out of it is when the Goodies took the piss out of it.

[MrFun]

What was terrible about Roots -- either as the film, or in literature form?

I only saw the film version, and it was very revealing -- I thought it was good.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
Let me see. South Africa is in Africa. Therefore South Africans are African. So if some bloke from Cape Town moves to America, I guess he'd be an African American.
Same applies to Arabs and Berbers from North Africa. You don't have to be black to be African. Then why do you have to be black to be African American
It's just bloody semantics.

The guy from Sierra Leone didn't understand our semantics:

American inter-nationality= [land of ancestry]-American.

They weren't saying that they were African, they were saying they are Americans of African descent.

[Dr Strangelove]

I didn't know that Alex Haley made up the entire family history he portrayed in "Roots". I find this particularily disconcerting since he made a point of the lengths he went to research his family during his much touted interview with Barbara Walters.

I liked the mini-series though. I believe that its portrayal of the experience of African Americans during the antebellum era is generally valid. When one takes into consideration the environment of the 1970s, a time when racial integration was still being hotly contested, I can understand why Mr. Haley "spiced up" the story behind his novel.

[chequita guevara]

I've never heard that Haley made up the stories before.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I've never heard that Haley made up the stories before.

I hadn't either, though it may be a question of degree. It was historical fiction by and large, unless you believe that a lot of illiterate people managed to keep their intimate family history intact through the slavery era. Unlikely. So my expectations of just how exact the account was were very low to begin with.