The factually challenged (and largely plagiarized) 1977 TV miniseries Roots had an undeniable influence on how millions of Americans, black and white, view the era of slavery. A standout moment in this well-made piece of historical hooey occurs shortly after Kunta Kinte, the proud African (is there any other kind?), is brought to America and sold into slavery. Kinte is strung up and whipped within an inch of his life by a cruel overseer who is determined to force the kidnapped Mandinka to adopt his “slave name,” Toby. Again and again, the whip cracks, flaying the young warrior’s back. “Toby! Your name is Toby!” After what seems like an eternity of abuse, Kinte finally gives in. “Toby,” he whispers in defeat. “My name is Toby.” He’s cut down and left in the care of wise house negro Fiddler, who cradles the boy, promising him that even though everything seems bleak now, another day, a better day—the day of the black man—will come.
PBS called this scene a “transcendent moment” on American television, and I agree. This was not a scene aimed at the whites who were watching the program in record numbers, but at blacks. This was a promise for the future. Fiddler was speaking to black America: Just bide your time, endure the hardships, and soon enough, “white power” will come to an end and the black man will finally have his day.
Fiddler can be excused his limited worldview. After all, at the time that scene was set, the U.S. didn’t even have a southern border with Mexico yet. In fact, the screenwriters of the miniseries can themselves be excused for seeing the future in the limited color spectrum of black and white. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s, I can attest to the fact that no one gave Hispanics (or “Latinos,” “Chicanos,” etc.) much thought. It was a black-and-white world, even here in the Southwest. Perhaps the best example I can provide of the sheer lack of thought given to Hispanics is the movie Blade Runner. In Ridley Scott’s 1982 “visionary masterpiece,” the L.A. of 2019 is envisioned as a city in which the only large minority group is Asian. In what Brian Locke in the Arizona Quarterly described as an “emphatically Asian Los Angeles,” Chinese and Japanese folks inhabit the L.A. ghettos, slums, restaurant kitchens, and bazaars, with nary a Spanish speaker in sight. Even the character played by Edward James Olmos, the film’s sole actor of Mexican descent, speaks a gutter version of Japanese.
That’s what people in 1982 thought L.A. would be like in 2019. Seriously. Few people back then watched Blade Runner and thought, “But where are the Mexicans? Where’s the Spanish?” South-of-the-border immigration was not yet a major national issue.
How times have changed.
