What are you learning from ROOTS? What did you already know? What do you think viewers SHOULD know? I’d really like answers to this!!
I have learned that song has always been an instrument of rebellion, from singing in a native tongue to communicate, to using the appearance of obedience and even (celebration? I don’t know the word I want but it’s something that whites would interpret that way) in English to give one another support and pass messages.
The true craft and intelligence involved in survival is a lesson that everyone could take, I think. But it proves what I’ve always known – that being a slave or being slave-descended is a testament to surviving the extremes that many others have not encountered. For those of us who don’t live in that descent or space, it is a challenge to understand but a necessity to respect and support.
Another thing that is played out before my eyes in ROOTS is the constant watchfulness, the endurance necessary to get through a day, and the PTSD that is now understood to be generational as a result of this constant vigilance against violence.
I was just witness to a White Supremacist rampage in a black genetic genealogy group. This supremacist claimed to be due reparations because his European ancestors were forced into military servitude. He said it was the same thing as African-Americans deserving reparations. In so doing, he mocked the African-American experience. This is an apples-and-oranges comparison. All forced duties and enslavements are bad things, for certain, but the experience of Black America is unlike anything else.
I watch this show, ROOTS, seemingly just a TV show, and I learn at greater depths the generational trauma still suffered by black America exists in the DNA, and that this has already been proven scientifically. I can understand it at a distance though I have not experienced it genealogically.
ROOTS episodes 1 and 2 are available online and on Roku; the remaining two episodes are showing on Lifetime, A&E and The History Channel.
All of these things are valuable learning experiences. What do you say?
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