Myisha Nawar
Forty years after the original literally gripped half the entire nation, a violence enhanced, more accurate remark has entered Hollywood, gambling on happening stars including Forest Whitaker and Anna Paquin and the unresolved emotional center of America’s toughest conversation: “He was calling me a n__er, but at the end of the scene he was in tears.”
In early 1977, as ABC was preparing to broadcast Roots, network chief Fred Silverman was affirmative that it would flop and jammed it onto the schedule over eight consecutive nights at the end of January. That way, it would be safely off the air before the critical February sweeps period began. Silverman, obviously, was wrong. More than half of the U.S. population watched at least some part of the miniseries.
“Many black people don’t know the details of some of this history because we don’t teach it in general,” says Carter. “We know that there was slavery, but the particulars of the brutality of American slavery — the destruction of family, the dehumanization, things that have continued to affect us — we just don’t even talk about it.”
This can be viewed as the pioneer to change. Grouped together-social media, the exposure of police brutality, overwhelming incarceration rates among minorities and Hollywood being on board for projects like Roots- society can bypass racial injustice. Hopefully very soon.