This is old news to anyone who read the book, or watched the original programs (like I did)
Old indeed. Roots was published in its final book form in 1976, but some material had been published earlier than that (e.g., a condensed excerpt in Reader's Digest in 1974). And it immediately became apparent that Haley's story did not withstand close scrutiny. By the time Roots was published, Haley's African genealogy had already been refuted. By the time the miniseries aired, Haley's representation of antebellum American history had already been discredited. And within ten years of the book's publication, Haley was exposed as a plagiarist, and his American genealogy and his depiction of African history had been debunked.
The final nails in Haley's coffin came shortly after his death (if you'll forgive the weird pun), in 1993 when Philip Nobile published a criticism of Roots which incorporated new information from Haley's private papers (not available for public reading until after Haley's death). Before that time, it was just barely possible for a person with a full knowledge of the facts to believe that Haley had honestly pursued his research, committed errors, and come up with incorrect results ... although to believe that, one had to assume that Haley had been staggeringly incompetent. But Nobile's expose, which called upon those papers as well as other evidence, left no doubt that Haley had knowingly and deliberately fabricated Kunta Kinte out of thin air.
So yes, it's “old news.” But “to anyone who read the book, or watched the original programs”? No.
Professional historians and genealogists recognized flaws in Roots immediately. But for a fair minded and educated layperson, there's nothing in either the book or the 1977 miniseries which establishes or even strongly implies that Haley's purported genealogy or the history he presents is fictional. When I first read Roots, believing at that time that Haley was honest, Kunta Kinte was real, et cetera, I did notice some odd things. The link between Toby and Kunta Kinte immediately struck me as exceptionally tenuous, and I was troubled by the extreme lack of footnotes, documented sources, and other such hard citations I expected. But because the major US media had consistently asserted that Haley's story was real, I assumed that it was indeed real and so further assumed that it had been examined and verified by experts, that substantial other supporting evidence existed, and that Haley had omitted that evidence from Roots for the sake of not cluttering up the story but could produce it if anyone asked. And judging from the general public reaction, it seems many others extended those same assumptions and continue to do so today.
Every few years, Roots resurfaces, and I find myself back in discussions like this. I must say ... and I only have my own personal experience to call upon, not any hard facts or figures ... that your statement that this is "old news to anyone who read the book, or watched the original programs" is simply wrong. Yes, more and more people are aware of these things now than in earlier years. But what I am struck by each time is how many people are completely unaware that there's anything at all amiss about Roots ... and of those who are aware that it's inaccurate, how many are unaware that Haley was a liar but instead believe he was an honest guy who screwed up ... and how many know about the fabricated genealogy but not the plagiarism, or know about the plagiarism but not the bad history, or know about the bad history but believe the genealogy to be true. And a casual look around these discussion boards alone shows that many still fall into these categories; as well as the all too predictable knee-jerk charges of racism against those who dare to criticize Saint Alex and his holy writ.
The story he wrote about his own family was fake, but the background and history he set it against was very real (and there's more than enough documentation to back that up.)
The history presented in Roots is real only to a superficial level.
Haley depicts 18th century Juffure as an small, idyllic Eden, where people live happily except for those unfortunates who are captured by White slavers. In truth, Juffure at that time was a major trading post with a large population, and was the center of power through which Ndanco Sono, the king of Nomi, tightly controlled all traffic on the Gambia River, including the slave trade, a practice which the British, French, and Africans pursued to mutual advantage. There were frictions between these groups from time to time, but nobody really wanted to screw up a partnership which was profitable for all concerned. The British officials on nearby James Island inspected each British slave ship to verify that each slave had been properly purchased, and had not been stolen in the manner Haley describes. They had very good reason to do this. Sono had considerable men, guns, and ammo at his disposal, and the British ... strangers in a strange land, surrounded and outnumbered by the locals ... would have faced harsh reprisals had their traders stolen slaves.
Haley's depiction of history on the other side of the Atlantic also fails. Specific, factual errors which Haley commits include but are not limited to depictions of wire fencing nearly a century before its actual use; okra being consumed in a time and place when it was little known; anachronisms in dialogue (e.g., "cracker" and "redneck" as pejorative terms); and large fields of cotton in late 18th century northern Virginia.
These and other errors may seem like nitpicking, but they're indicative of a larger problem on two levels. First, the number of such errors in Roots is simply too numerous to be forgivable. A few such errors can be brushed off as the occasional mistakes which are bound to creep into any large project which imperfect humans attempt. But Roots has so many such errors of fact that one must conclude that the guy who wrote it simply didn't know what the hell he was talking about when it came to Southern history.
Second, they're "hard" examples of a not so subtle error present in Roots (and to be fair, quite a few other depictions of antebellum slavery). Haley assumes that what was true at one time and place was true at all times and places within the pre-Civil War American South. But this is simply not true at all.
In late 18th century America, cotton was an afterthought. By 1860, it was America's main business. The nation produced two-thirds of the planet's cotton crop, and cotton accounted for a little over half of all US exports. And it wasn't just the plantations of the South which depended on cotton; it was also the Northern banking and textile industries, as well as a large portion of the economy of Great Britain, at that time the most powerful nation in the world and the US's most important trading partner.
In short, when people spoke of "King Cotton," they weren't kidding. This point cannot be overstated. By the mid-nineteenth century, it wasn't just the case that cotton was an important part of the American economy. In many ways, it was the American economy; and slavery was as integral a part of cotton production as welding would be to Detroit auto manufacturing in a later era.
So what does this have to do with Roots? Simple. In 1767, that boom I described hadn't happened yet. At that time, the prevailing belief, in both the North and the South, was that slavery was a very flawed practice which even on its best days caused at least as many problems as it solved, and that it was inevitable that it would naturally die out if natural market forces, et cetera, were given time and allowed to run their course. In the middle nineteenth century, only an imbecile could have held this belief.
Now, with that change in attitude, wouldn't there also be changes in beliefs about things like allowing slaves to learn to read and write? Private emancipation of slaves? The rights of free blacks? And yet Haley's depiction of northern Virginia in the late 18th century … the setting for Kunta Kinte, the major character in the book … owes more to the 1850s Deep South than to the circa Revolutionary era mid-Atlantic region; a grave error in both time and place.
Also, history owes a duty to real persons, especially those who are no longer around to defend themselves. If a writer of a historical novel wishes to invent fictional characters and give them attributes illustrative of the era and society depicted, fine. But Dr. William Waller, Missy Anne, and Tom Lea were very real persons, flesh and blood beings who had hopes, dreams, successes, failures, strengths, and flaws, just like you and me; and who got far shabbier treatment at Haley's hands than they deserved.
(Sadly, I'm sure many reading that last paragraph think, “Well, they were White, so screw 'em.” Such is the state of race relations in America today.)
In short, what can we learn as real history from Roots? The United States of America has been around for quite a while; not as long as other nations like China and France, but more than just a few years. At one time, there was slavery in the USA. And slavery was wrong, and sometimes brutal.
Well, duh.
[Haley] deserved to get busted and called out for what he did.
He paid a price. Having to cough up $650,000 to settle the Courlander plagiarism suit … about two million dollars in today's money … was no mere slap on the wrist. And he lost other opportunities as well. For example, in later life he tried to get a position at UT-Knoxville, and the faculty there, much to their credit, told him, “thanks for stopping by, but we don't want a proven plagiarist among our ranks; don't let the doorknob hit you on the way out.”
But “called out”? A fair accounting of his sins, presented in a forum which would bring them to the attention not just of a small portion of the population, but also to Joe and Jane Sixpack? … which would only be appropriate, since the mainstream major media lauded him to the general public as a hero for so long.
When has that ever happened?
Alex Haley invented his genealogy (the parts that mattered for marketing purposes, anyway), and claimed it was true. He stole from at least one other author, and possibly others. (Had Margaret Walker received the same support from her publisher as Courlander did, we might also be talking about another large settlement paid for stolen material from Jubilee.) He consistently played the race card against his critics, asserting that even questioning Roots was equivalent to claiming that Anne Frank's diary was a hoax; that calling attention to his misdeeds was knowingly helping the KKK; et cetera. Not content with his initial transgressions, he piled lie upon further lie, claiming to be the foremost living expert on African-American genealogy until Kunta Kinte was so discredited that not even Haley's dog believed he was real; then claiming he had never stated that Kunta Kinte was real in the first place. He accepted all sorts of honors, both high and low … in addition to the Pulitzer Prize and other such honors, how many “Alex Haley Avenues” are there in cities and towns across America today? ... and accepted them all knowing full well that he hadn't earned them. He perpetrated his fraud not on a topic of marginal importance ... say, if he had claimed that his grandmother was the real inventor of “s'mores” … but instead on the gravest social problem our nation has ever faced, one which arouses such high emotions in many that they cannot even discuss it without approaching apoplexy. And although he made tacit admissions here and there that Roots was a fraud, it was only when he was forced to do so because it had become impossible to claim otherwise.
And he never, never repented for his misdeeds. Not really.
Has he been called out? No. Quite the opposite. The chattering classes have extended every imaginable generosity to Alex Haley all along.
Within higher academia, where I've got some experience from both sides of the lectern, it's long been an open secret that Haley was a fraud. But it was also long understood that this was something to be acknowledged only in the safety of post-graduate seminar rooms, and that to mention it where ordinary people might become aware of it … oh, no! Wouldn't be “polite,” shall we say. (Some of the most cowardly people imaginable can be found in university faculties.)
When Roots was published, reviews of it largely assessed it as amateurish. Rightly so; taken apart from the context of its “importance” and claims of truth, Roots as pure storytelling is mediocre. Yet the reviewers nearly unanimously opined that Roots was a flawed work, but the flaws were far more than outweighed by the truth of its genealogy. And this “but” narrative has defined “correct” opinion and acceptable discussion about Roots ever since.
First it was, “Roots as a work of fiction is weak, but the genealogy is true.”
Then, “Haley plagiarized, but so many people love it and the genealogy is true.”
Then, “the genealogy is wrong, but Haley probably made a good try at it and so many people love Roots.”
Then, “err, turns out Haley lied, but Roots is an important work that tells 'larger truths.'”
And lately, “all right, Haley plagiarized and lied, and Kunta Kinte and Kizzy are ghosts, but everyone already knows that anyway.” (If everyone already knows that, why the reluctance of the mainstream media to even hint at those things.)
Yes, there's plenty of academic work demolishing Haley, available if one knows how to look, cares to track it down, and is willing to travel to the nearest large university library and/or pay for reprints. And some elements of the media have done work critical of Haley; but that work has been confined to second tier entities like the Village Voice and New York Post.
But when has a large media entity, with an audience both large in number and including the general public … something like CNN, PBS, Time magazine, NBC, et cetera … ever presented America with a fair, fully informed assessment of Alex Haley? Oh, they'll mention him, all right … but they either ignore the unpleasant facts about him, or indulge in chicanery like quoting claims of his veracity without explaining that those claims have been disproved. But when have they ever simply told the whole truth?
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Mehki_Girl
8 years ago
An entire dissertation on a BOOK. The brutality of slavery never happened. After all wouldn't someone treat their property well? Blah, blah, blah.
The gyrations performed by whites to absolve America of its very nasty 400 history of human ownership and brutality and Jim Crow is unbelievable. We're not even talking about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of native Americans.
Every time a movie about slavery comes out, white go nuts and start posting long diatribes and revisionist versions of slavery. I've never seen such scholarly work.
Sorry, just doesn't work.
Everyone knows what America did.
http://www.auplod.com/u/dalpuo430da.png
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(='.'=)
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BullSchmidt
8 years ago
And the fools have begun to check in. This will be like shooting fish in a barrel ...
The brutality of slavery never happened. After all wouldn't someone treat their property well? Blah, blah, blah.
Why are you saying this in a reply to me? I never said those things. I never said anything close to those things. Pity you can't get your facts straight.
The gyrations performed by whites [...] Every time a movie about slavery comes out, white go nuts
What makes you think I'm White? Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I've never said one way or the other on these boards, precisely because of crap like your post, and I'm not telling now.
If you find my statements convincing, yield to them; if not, refute them. But if your intention is to spew the drivel characteristic of a typical, identity politics driven "racial dialogue" ... that is, a grunting match between troglodytes of various skin hues ... I won't dignify that tripe by pretending it's anything other than what it is.
Hey, wanna learn something? Take a look at this column criticizing Haley. It's written by a guy who says all the same things I say about Alex Haley, and has been saying them for a long time. In particular, look at the writer's picture at the top of the page. I suspect that his skin color will shock and horrify you:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/crouch011802.asp
I've never seen such scholarly work.
I guess you've never heard of any of these people, then. Elizabeth Mills, past president of the American Society of Genealogists, debunked Haley's American genealogy. Don Wright, an Africanist at the State University of NY at Cortland, debunked Haley's African genealogy and his misrepresentations about griots and lineage records. For antebellum history in general and Haley's errors specifically, look at Gary Mills at the University of Alabama at Gadsden, Johns Hopkins professor Willie Lee Rose, and historian Bruce Catton. Journalists Mark Ottaway and Philip Nobile did excellent work on the Gambian end of Haley's fraud and the fabrication of Kunta Kinte. The events of the Courlander plagiarism lawsuit, and presiding judge Robert Ward's actions, are public record. That should get you started ...
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