First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 6, February 14, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The eight television episodes of “Roots,” based on Alex Haley’s best-seller, were watched by more people than any other program in history. All told, some 130 million people viewed it on ABC. All or part of the series was seen in 85 of the homes with TV in the U.S.
The massive response demonstrated that the people of this country are hungry for knowledge about their own history, especially the history of their class and national oppression – their struggle for freedom. The attractiveness of “Roots” can be seen in comparison to the steady diet of Fonzie, Bionic Woman and super-cop shows that we are fed regularly.
“Roots” gave us a glimpse into the long history of Black slavery and oppression of which millions of Black and white people have long been kept ignorant. The TV series has sparked widespread discussion. To some degree, it has helped awaken pride and awareness in a society where Black people and all working people are usually portrayed in the most degrading manner.
“Roots” also focused attention on some of the best Black actors and actresses in the media, allowing them to play something other than the usual pimp and hooker many are forced to play to earn a living.
But to really understand “Roots” we must look at its class viewpoint. Which class does it serve and from what point of view does it look at this history? We must ask, does it portray this history as it really took place? What does it include and what does it skip over? Finally, what are the lessons that it offers the viewers? Do these lessons serve to further the struggle or cripple it? Who does it show as the friends and enemies of the oppressed people?
Haley’s search for his family history is interesting enough, but the book and TV series are being presented as much more than that.
The story of “Roots” is being promoted as an act urate portrayal of Afro-American history. Enough scientific historical work has been done, however, to show that the view of Haley and ABC is in many ways a distortion, filled with half-truths and many outright lies. “Roots” promotes a view reflecting the class outlook of its author. It is a view serving the capitalists – the very class responsible for the continued oppression of Black and all working people during and since slave times.
Malcolm X, in his famous speech “Message to the Grass Roots,” referred to two strata of Black slaves, “the house Negro” and “the field Negro.” Haley’s story is the story of the “house Negro.” His family is one of the few Black families who managed to become landowners, capitalists and part of the bourgeois intelligentsia. “Roots” reflects the world outlook of that upper class among Blacks and can be traced through Haley’s family history to slavery. His forebears, working in the homes of the slave masters, labored apart from the millions of slaves who picked the cotton and tobacco and were the backbone of the liberation struggle.
Haley’s family history starts in Africa with Kunte Kinte, whose resistance to slavery could find no path to victory at the time. Kinte, Haley’s great-great-great-grandfather, married a “big-house” cook. Through her influence with the “Massa,” Kunta Kinte becomes a driver for the slave owners. Their daughter Kizzy becomes the “pet” for the master’s niece.
Kunta Kinte resents this, but thinks to himself that Kizzy’s “being a toubob’s (white’s) pet was better than having to spend her life in the. fields.” Bell, his wife, tells her daughter as she neared the age of seven, “Field hand young’uns be already out dere workin’ every day ... so you going start being some use to me in the big house.”
Kizzy, sold for forging a pass to help a young boyfriend escape, is raped by her second master. Her son, Chicken George, becomes a cock fighter and goes to England where he earns enough money to buy land in Tennessee when he returns. George’s son Tom becomes a blacksmith and also doesn’t have to work in the fields.
After slavery, Tom’s daughter Cynthia marries Will Palmer, who becomes the owner of the town lumber mill. They certainly don’t have to pick tobacco. Will’s and Cynthia’s daughter Bertha marries Simon Haley, who becomes an agricultural professor. Bertha’s son Alex, the author, is the third generation of his family to get a college education. He had a 20-year career in the Coast Guard, was a presidential appointee to the Bicentennial Commission and is now the president of the Kinte Foundation and the Kinte Corporation., while earning millions of dollars from his writings and lectures.
All this is not to say that Haley’s family was not forced to contend with national oppression. All Black people in the U.S., past and present, must do that to one degree or another. However, it is also clear that Haley’s story is not the story of the Black masses, the “field Negroes” or the Black workers, and his outlook shows it.
Haley portrays the masses of Black slaves as the objects of history rather than the makers of it. His hatred of slavery is combined with a “humanistic” view of the slave master. From life in Africa to the Black Belt South, the extreme hardships and sun-up until sun-down toil is covered up. The role of the masses, both Black and poor white, in liberating themselves is missing.
The tens of thousands of Blacks who fought in the Civil War with guns in hand turned the tide of battle away from the Confederacy. “Roots,” however, portrays liberation as the result of Lincoln’s decree. The slaves receive a telegram saying that the war is over and freedom has come.
The Reconstruction Period, when the Black majority in the plantation South held political power, has mysteriously disappeared in the TV series. Suddenly the Civil War ends and Haley’s family gets land, declaring “We’re free at last.”
This is not the real history of the more than 20 million Afro-Americans in the U.S. today. Mostly impoverished farmers and workers, Black people were forced from the land into the urban ghettoes. The end of slavery and the smashing of Black Reconstruction without the transfer of land from the plantation owners to the masses meant only a continuation of severe national oppression.
In the same way that armed slaves and poor whites were disarmed after the Civil War, Haley’s liberalism serves to disarm the struggle for Black liberation, the struggle for political power and the working class movement against imperialism. Blurring the economic and social causes of slavery, “Roots” gives no clue that it is the capitalist system that stands behind Black oppression today. It is the liberalism of Jimmy Carter rather than the revolutionary stand of Nat Turner, Malcolm X or W.E.B. DuBois that is shown in “Roots.”
In The Call’s series of articles in future issues we will go deeper into “Roots” and its liberal view of Black oppression. We will examine some of the rich history of Black liberation and class struggle which Haley omitted and compare ABC’s presentation of the question with that of some of the foremost writers of Black history, such as DuBois, Harry Haywood, William Z. Foster and others. We will also examine the Black liberation movement today and its tasks, as well as the view that Haley puts forth for the present period.
The fact that 130 million people viewed “Roots” and are discussing it daily presents us with a chance to show the other side, the revolutionary side, of the question. It is a side that runs completely counter to Haley’s pacifism and assimilationism and one that instead poses socialism and self-determination as the road to Black liberation.