Snoop Dogg’s Old Nemesis and Alex Haley’s Pardon (op-ed)
Rap icon Snoop Dogg suggested a boycott of The History Channel’s remake of Alex Haley’s Roots. Apparently, he’s tired of slave narratives and wants more material showing successful blacks in present day America. (Like The Cosby Show?)
Ironically, Snoop sounded like his old nemesis, C. Delores
Tucker, chair of the National Congress of Black Women. She was tired of how blacks were portrayed too, but she was fed up with the misogynistic music made by Snoop Dogg and his cohorts at Death Row Records.
There’s no moral equivalence between the two, but Snoop unknowingly channeled the spirit of Tucker’s concern.
In the early 1990’s, after The Cosby Show’s final season, C. Delores Tucker picketed stores that sold “gangsta rap” and she demanded congressional hearings.
(Rappers retaliated in their songs and called her every demeaning word she protested.)
Then Tucker bought stock in Time Warner.
In 1995 she appeared at a shareholders meeting and demanded the executives to read aloud some of the lyrics of the songs they distributed. After they refused Tucker demanded to know, “How long will Time Warner put profit before principle?” (Not long after the incident, Time Warner sold its interest in Interscope and their rap subsidiary was Death Row Records.)
Now profit motive aside can the same concern about principle be applied to The History Channel?
Immediately following Snoops comments a TV news anchor attacked Snoop for his drug habit and stated: Slavery is real, Americans want to deny what took place, and black folks are survivors since the first slave touched down in Jamestown, Virginia 1619.
However, the “epic response” by the anchor to school the addict was inaccurate, and The History Channel is supposed to correct these Anglo-centric assumptions.
In 1526, Spain attempted a colony in what is now South Carolina. The Spaniards brought over 100 African slaves. These were the first “black folk to touch down” on what is now the United States. The colony was unsuccessful, one account said it failed due to disease and another account reported a slave rebellion, either way the Africans that escaped became Americans, 90 years before Jamestown.
But The History Channel aired, what the New York Times called, Roots: Remade for the Black Lives Matter Era. Now, the re-runs of The Cosby Show have been removed from the air because of criminal accusations against Bill Cosby, but as far as History is concerned why isn’t the same standard apply to Alex Haley?
It’s a known fact Haley plagiarized Roots from a novel called The African by Harold Courlander. Expert testimony at the trial stated, “The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. Roots takes phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot … Such things are the life of a novel and when they appear in Roots they are the life of someone else’s novel.”
The Cosby show is innocent of Bill Cosby’s actions. Roots is Alex Haley’s crime, but Alex Haley is pardoned by popular demand to reinforce the roots of racism Cosby’s sitcom creatively chose not to address.
Remember The Cosby Show was criticized for presenting a successful black family, critics believed the successful image misled whites to think that racism and poverty were no longer problems in America, and that message, no matter how subtle, had to be discouraged by any means necessary.
And in some bizarre Faustian reversal, Snoop called for the remaking of The Cosby Show’s success, but Snoop was told to fund it himself in defense of plagiarism that repeats itself instead of history.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 6/8/15
Ironically, Snoop sounded like his old nemesis, C. Delores
Tucker, chair of the National Congress of Black Women. She was tired of how blacks were portrayed too, but she was fed up with the misogynistic music made by Snoop Dogg and his cohorts at Death Row Records.
There’s no moral equivalence between the two, but Snoop unknowingly channeled the spirit of Tucker’s concern.
In the early 1990’s, after The Cosby Show’s final season, C. Delores Tucker picketed stores that sold “gangsta rap” and she demanded congressional hearings.
(Rappers retaliated in their songs and called her every demeaning word she protested.)
Then Tucker bought stock in Time Warner.
In 1995 she appeared at a shareholders meeting and demanded the executives to read aloud some of the lyrics of the songs they distributed. After they refused Tucker demanded to know, “How long will Time Warner put profit before principle?” (Not long after the incident, Time Warner sold its interest in Interscope and their rap subsidiary was Death Row Records.)
Now profit motive aside can the same concern about principle be applied to The History Channel?
Immediately following Snoops comments a TV news anchor attacked Snoop for his drug habit and stated: Slavery is real, Americans want to deny what took place, and black folks are survivors since the first slave touched down in Jamestown, Virginia 1619.
However, the “epic response” by the anchor to school the addict was inaccurate, and The History Channel is supposed to correct these Anglo-centric assumptions.
In 1526, Spain attempted a colony in what is now South Carolina. The Spaniards brought over 100 African slaves. These were the first “black folk to touch down” on what is now the United States. The colony was unsuccessful, one account said it failed due to disease and another account reported a slave rebellion, either way the Africans that escaped became Americans, 90 years before Jamestown.
But The History Channel aired, what the New York Times called, Roots: Remade for the Black Lives Matter Era. Now, the re-runs of The Cosby Show have been removed from the air because of criminal accusations against Bill Cosby, but as far as History is concerned why isn’t the same standard apply to Alex Haley?
It’s a known fact Haley plagiarized Roots from a novel called The African by Harold Courlander. Expert testimony at the trial stated, “The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. Roots takes phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot … Such things are the life of a novel and when they appear in Roots they are the life of someone else’s novel.”
The Cosby show is innocent of Bill Cosby’s actions. Roots is Alex Haley’s crime, but Alex Haley is pardoned by popular demand to reinforce the roots of racism Cosby’s sitcom creatively chose not to address.
Remember The Cosby Show was criticized for presenting a successful black family, critics believed the successful image misled whites to think that racism and poverty were no longer problems in America, and that message, no matter how subtle, had to be discouraged by any means necessary.
And in some bizarre Faustian reversal, Snoop called for the remaking of The Cosby Show’s success, but Snoop was told to fund it himself in defense of plagiarism that repeats itself instead of history.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 6/8/15
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