Check It Out:
Roots
June 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
The remake of the Roots mini-series, which recently aired on the History Channel and A&E, is an important and dramatic portrayal of the towering crime that was the international slave trade and the slave system in the United States. This new version of Roots is compelling and should be watched—both by people who saw the original and by those in the newer generations who never had the opportunity to see it. The new series can still be viewed on On Demand and online at http://roots.history.com/. Definitely check it out.
This Roots is an updating of the original television series aired in1977, adapted from Alex Haley’s book of the same name. When the original Roots was aired, it was an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. It brought to light for the first time for many people, of all nationalities, some of the hidden truth about this ugly legacy of U.S. history and the resistance waged by the slaves.
There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:1
Starting with the capture of a young man, Kunta Kinte, from West Africa, the series follows his family and descendants through many generations of slavery.
While in the recent period, more books, films and TV shows have been coming out on this subject, still today too many people are woefully ignorant about this terrible crime and its aftermath. Two hundred and fifty years of the enslavement of an entire people is the foundation that the wealth and power of the U.S. was built on, and its reverberations continue to shape everything about the racist and oppressive system we live under today. Roots is a definite must-see.
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