{"id":1309,"date":"2015-06-05T18:45:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T22:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2015-06-05T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T22:45:56","slug":"roots-remake-history-channel-to-remake-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/06\/roots-remake-history-channel-to-remake-a-lie.html","title":{"rendered":"“Roots” Remake: History Channel to Remake a Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1976, Alex Haley authored the nearly 1,000 page, Roots: The Saga of An American Family. <\/em>The following year, ABC aired a mini-series that was based upon it. Both book and television show proved to be tremendous successes. Now, the History Channel has officially announced that it will remake Roots.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s only problem: Roots <\/em>is a fake and Haley is a fraud\u2014and a fraud on multiple levels.<\/p>\n

Investigative journalist Philip Nobile refers to Haley as a \u201cliterary rogue,\u201d an \u201cimpostor\u201d whose \u201cprose was so inept that he required ghosts [ghost writers] throughout his career.\u201d Upon reading Haley\u2019s posthumously released private papers and interviewing one of his original editors for Roots<\/em>, Nobile was able to determine that the latter\u2019s real author was Murray Fisher, Haley\u2019s editor from his time at Playboy.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Fisher was also white.<\/p>\n

But matters get worse.<\/p>\n

Not only was Roots <\/em>ghost-written. It was plagiarized.<\/em><\/p>\n

You probably aren\u2019t familiar with the name of Harry Courlander. In 1978, one year after 130 million viewers tuned into Roots, <\/em>Haley agreed to pay Courlander $650,000 (2 million dollars in today\u2019s terms) as part of an out of court settlement.<\/p>\n

Courlander\u2014a white man\u2014had sued Haley for having plagiarized his 1967 work, The African. <\/em>Haley conceded that at least 81 passages were lifted practically verbatim from the latter, and the judge presiding over the case agreed with Courlander\u2019s pre-trial memorandum remark that Haley \u201ccopied [from The African<\/em>] language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character.\u201d<\/p>\n

So too did Columbia University English professor, Michael Wood. In his Expert Witness Report, Wood insisted that the \u201cevidence of copying from The African <\/em>in both the novel and television dramatization of Roots <\/em>is clear and irrefutable,\u201d \u201csignificant and extensive [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Robert J. Ward concluded: \u201cCopying there was, period.\u201d\u00a0 Years later, Ward came forth in an interview with the BBC and admitted that Haley \u201chad perpetrated a hoax on the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although during the trial Haley swore that he personally had never read The African, <\/em>that \u201cthe life\u201d of Courlander\u2019s book had found its way into Roots <\/em>courtesy of careless research assistants who failed to document their material, a \u201cminorities\u2019 studies\u201d professor, Joseph Brucac from Skidmore College, signed a sworn affidavit in which he noted that he and Haley had indeed discussed The African <\/em>at least five years prior to the publication of Roots. <\/em>In fact, Brucac even lent Haley his own copy of it.<\/p>\n

However, for as bad as plagiarism is, Roots <\/em>was cooked in another respect:<\/p>\n

It is a lie.<\/p>\n

Professional genealogists Gary B. and Elizabeth Shown Mills have noted that not only is there zero formal documentation to corroborate \u201cthe oral tradition\u201d regarding Haley\u2019s family history; what evidence there is\u2014\u201cplantation records, wills, census records\u201d\u2014<\/em>actually repudiates <\/em>this tradition.\u00a0 The evidence \u201ccontradict[s] <\/em>each and every pre-Civil War statement of Afro-American lineage in Roots<\/em>\u201d (emphases original)!<\/p>\n

Haley claims that his great-great-great-great grandfather, Kunta Kinte, was brought to America and renamed \u201cToby\u201d by his new master. But upon canvassing all <\/em>of the evidence, the Mills issue a decisive verdict:<\/p>\n

\u201cToby Waller was not Kunta Kinte.\u201d<\/p>\n

The insuperable problem is that \u201cthis Waller slave Toby appeared in six separate documents of record over a period of four years <\/em>preceding the arrival of the Lord Ligonier,<\/em>\u201d the ship that supposedly brought Kunta Kinte to America (emphasis original).<\/p>\n

The Mills conclude that it is \u201cinarguable\u201d that \u201cthe 182 pages and thirty-nine chapters in which the Virginia lives of Haley\u2019s \u2018ancestors\u2019 are chronicled have no basis in fact.\u00a0 Neither of the two relationships that are crucial to his pedigree (the identity of Kizzy as daughter of Kinte alias Toby, and the relationship of Bell as wife of Kinte and mother of Kizzy) can be established by even the weakest genealogical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haley\u2019s account of his post-<\/em>Civil War ancestry fares no better than that of his antebellum<\/em> genealogy. As the Mills say, \u201cnot only the authenticity of Roots\u2019 <\/em>evidence is called into question by the total<\/em> absence of documentation for any alleged event, individual, or relationship, but doubt also falls upon the very essence of family life portrayed in Roots<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

There is one final point.\u00a0 Roots <\/em>climaxes with Haley discovering the village from which his ancestor, Kunta Kinte, was supposed to have been captured.\u00a0 A griot from the village of Juffure\u2014\u201cFofana\u201d\u2014confirmed the account of Kinte\u2019s abduction that Haley had grown up (allegedly) hearing about from his aunts.<\/p>\n

Professor Donald R. Wright, \u201ca specialist in African pre-history with extensive experience in the collection of Gambian oral traditions,\u201d visited Juffure twice.\u00a0 What he discovered was that Fofana was a con artist.<\/p>\n

Fofana \u201cshowed no inclination to recite long (or short) genealogies of any families.\u201d\u00a0 When it came to Kunta Kinte, though, \u201che was eager\u2026to speak [.]\u201d\u00a0 Kinte, Wright continues, \u201cwas the only individual about whom Fofana provided any specific information.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a reason for this.\u00a0 In advance of his exchange with Fofana, Haley relayed to Gambian officials the account of Kunta Kinte\u2019s capture that had supposedly been transmitted to him by his relatives.\u00a0 He told them as well that it was confirmation of this account that he sought.\u00a0 Seeing the potentially boundless profits to be reaped from tourism and the like, the officials insured that Haley would hear what he wanted to hear.<\/p>\n

The second time Professor Wright visited Juffure he did not seek out Fofana by name.\u00a0 Rather, he sought out \u201cthe person best versed in the history of the village and its families.\u201d Wright was taken to listen to four people.<\/p>\n

Fofana\u2019s name was never even mentioned.<\/p>\n

Black commentator Stanley Crouch describes Haley as a \u201cruthless hustler\u201d and \u201cone of the biggest damn liars this country has ever seen.\u201d\u00a0 Haley, Crouch states, is like Tawana Brawley, the young black woman who infamously lied about being raped and humiliated by a white police officer.\u00a0 Like the lie concocted by Brawley and abetted by the likes of Al Sharpton, Haley\u2019s story is also a \u201choax\u201d that beautifully illustrates \u201chow history and tragic fact can be pillaged by an individual willing to exploit whatever the na\u00efve might consider sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding Roots\u2019 <\/em>depiction of slavery, <\/em>the black scholar Thomas Sowell remarks that it consists of \u201csome crucially false pictures of what had actually happened\u2014false pictures that continue to dominate thinking today.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, West Africa, from which Kunta Kinte was supposed to have been taken, had been \u201ca center of slave trading before the first white man arrived there [.]\u201d Moreover, \u201cslavery continues in parts of it to this very moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sowell also notes that \u201cAfricans sold vast numbers of other Africans to Europeans.\u00a0 But they hardly let Europeans go running around in their territory, catching people willy-nilly,\u201d as depicted by Haley in Roots. <\/em><\/p>\n

Even Haley\u2019s friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. stated that if we are going to \u201cspeak candidly,\u201d we have to concede that \u201cit\u2019s highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village from whence his ancestors sprang.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Gates, the editor of the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature<\/em>, chose to omit <\/em>references to Haley tells it all.<\/p>\n

The black leftist scholar, John Henrik Clarke, confessed to having \u201ccried real tears\u201d when he discovered that \u201cHaley was less than authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The History Channel\u2019s rendition of Roots <\/em>should be subtitled: \u201cRemake of a Fake.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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