We’ve all played the game gossip on a rainy afternoon, after graham crackers and milk or the promise of snacks if we are “good.” It’s always amazing, no matter how carefully articulated the message, by the time it circles the room, the words are distorted or changed when it arrives back home. No one intentionally sabotaged the message as it travels a circuitous route—time and distance – receptive censors, translation, recipient attitude and aptitude . . . just change things. To expect otherwise is not practical or realistic.
When Alex Haley decided to follow the message passed down through the generations, a scrap, a partial memory he’d inherited from the ancestors from Africa through slavery into emancipation —he didn’t know where the journey would take him; however, he was willing to get in the car— black life is a faith model. Buckled into a passenger seat, Haley joined the ancestors crowded inside. He knew intuitively the GPS handling the controls had a sense of its purpose and his. Though he was not driving the vehicle nor anyone else he could see, it seemed as if someone was in control and Haley trusted the process. Because that is what Roots is, a dig in the biggest archeological project one can imagine —he was taking a chance that what he found loved black Americans back.
And his black Africa did.
This reciprocity is what made Roots, the series so popular. Not only had Kunta Kinte’s family back home in the small Mandinka village of Juffure, in the Gambia not forgotten him, the love and the loss were equally shared. Whether Haley’s relatives are those people who claimed him when he returned, is beside the point—to be a Diaspora citizen is to live a metaphor. We can never really return home—that home has evaporated. The years away have changed us, changed the descendants of ancestors walking with us as though in a dream. Though there are aspects of our collective selves that remain, what we kept or saved is not easily recognizable. We’ve been in the “Bush of Ghosts” a bit too long, to hear Amos Tutuola, Nigerian author, tell it. In a world of flash drives, people don’t always take the time to really see what is there in front of them. Black Americans traveling in Africa are often called in indigenous tongues: “black-white people.”
We have been away for a long time, so of course relationships take time to rebuild.
Haley was doing ancestral digging in records and files before 23&Me, Ancestry.com and all the other sites which help a person find the way home via DNA. It is certainly possible now to do a better search, and document sites both intellectual and scientific. The value of Roots lies in its acknowledgement publically in a national forum that black people here and elsewhere in the West have a legacy beyond slavery. Slavery is not our heritage, it is a moment or a stop along a greater tapestry black lives span.
This was good for the collective black ego and black consciousness in a place where blackness was criminalized—it was the ‘70s and there was a war against black people—black bodies never really stopped swinging, the poplar tree one of the only types that grew tall in tight spots. It is swaying to dominant narratives.
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Haley says: “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness. ”
“My fondest hope is that ‘Roots’ may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.”
I remember not liking Roots: An American Family Saga (1976) as much as the series (1977), because it was so wordy. I just wanted to start the story. The first section addresses Haley’s processes and gives background on the research.[1] He wanted to share with other black people how he found his roots, so each of us could find ours too. Knowing his people, the people who were there before there was a here, gave Haley a different perspective on his role and place in America. He had a place he could go, people who loved him. He had options and these options, freed him.
We all need options, especially our children. To know one’s roots means that a person can plant herself somewhere else, just as our ancestors did here. Having roots connects us to a larger tapestry that is Pan African. As Pan Africans, that is, rooted in multiple cultures, we have the unique opportunity to act as conveners of the collaboration that is black life within the Diaspora. There is a lot of overlap. Before Alex Haley’s Roots, African ancestry was a concept I spoke of without knowing how to prove it. The Oakland International Film Festival in collaboration with the City of Oakland, might not televise the forum April 8 at the Scottish Rite Center, 6:30 p.m.; however, we have to get the word out to everyone to excavate their landscapes. Weed and prune. Digging a space big enough to hold a people who are tunneling through confusion and miseducation, fake news and dubious facts, for the answer to the questions: Who am I? Where do I belong?
Knowing one’s roots is the first step towards freedom.
[1] We later learn that some of the research was no original, that Haley plagiarized another scholar. He resolved this in a court settlement. Nonetheless, Haley is not the first scholar to make mistakes in documenting his sources. It is not always intentional and meant to deceive. I am going to give Haley the benefit of the doubt and say that he was eager to share what he learned about ancestral roots and the importance of looking beyond the stories floating to the top of the brew about black people. The cauldron often scalds the cook—Haley was burnt often, but he never stopped stirring. Our ancestors resisted capture, suffered and did not resign themselves ever to being enslaved, even if they lost their toes and could no longer physically run. They ran in their souls.