By ROGER CATLIN, Courant.com
{Excerpted}
When he employed DNA testing to find the roots of prominent African Americans for a new genealogy show on PBS for Black History Month, Henry Louis Gates Jr. couldn’t resist looking into his own family’s past.
What he found surprised him: The W.E.B. Du Bois professor of humanities and chair of the African and African American Studies Department at Harvard University was half white.
“Oh, man. It was the long dark night of the soul,” Gates says about the discovery, joking: “what about my reparation check? I have to give away half of my reparation check? All that affirmative-action money - I have to give it back. It’s terrible. It’s very embarrassing to me.”
Gates, who hosts and produced “African American Lives,” a four-hour, two-part series that begins Wednesday on PBS, says he knew his family had some white blood in it. But by administering one of the scientific tests in the program, he found that his father is 67 percent white and that he’s 50 percent white.
“What does that mean? Does that make me less black? I had to ask all those questions,” Gates says. “And, no, I mean, I’m very secure in my African American identity. It just means that African Americans and European Americans have been inextricably intertwined on the most intimate level from day one in this country.”(more…)
The vine was tied into before and right after the slaves were freed. But historically or prehistorically we all come from one original seed so I think we are all mixed nowadays. I.E. I have borwn skin and predominantly sandy colored hair.
for years it was 1% black all black . after roots when many whites found they were mix race ,roots died. not only because of the knowledge of this
but because of the means ….rapes, love affairs,mandingos..hush -hush!
Did “Roots” die because of whites?
This is what it appears you are saying here:
Roots (a show written and produced by a black man) lost it popularity amongst Americans (blacks included) because whites lost interest in OUR history.
Please tell me this is not what you are saying.
I enjoyed this telecast simply because I have a love for history…OUR history and it whet my appetite to climb a little higher in my own family tree.