>Comments on Africans in Amercia by Professor Pat Manning >These comments were posted to the Slavery Listserv. Thought it deserved a >wider distribution! > >I watched the first episode, knowing that it would make me sad. I was sad >because of the story it told, but far more sad because I knew of the story >that the creators decided not to tell. I admire commentators Margaret >Washington, Thomas J. Davis, and Peter Wood, and I think the things they >said were true. I have great respect for the production skills and >marketing sense of Orlando Bagwell, and I think that the presentation was >quite beutiful. > >But it is a story told in national isolation. It presents an elegant >message of uplift for African-Americans and reconciliation for Americans of >all races, but it does so in a fashion that is nonetheless narrow, >traditional, and old-fashioned. It presents the story of the evolution of >slavery and racism as if it all evolved on the shores of the Chesapeake. >Such a view could be affirmed in the time of Winthrop Jordan's *White Over >Black*, but can hardly be sustained after the last few decades of Atlantic >scholarship. > >Africa provides no more than the place from which people were siezed. To >tell the story of the Stono Rebellion just as it was recounted thirty years >ago, and to neglect John Thornton's well-known researches on the Angolan >origins of the uprising and its tactics, is to miss one of many >opportunities to tell the story of America as part of the world. And >Equiano, for all his eloquence, was his the only black voice from the 18th >century? > >The point is not just that "Africans in America" misses recent scholarship, >but it misses what is going on today. America of today is caught up in >global economic and cultural ties, in migratory streams going in all >directions, and in political conflict on every continent. But this opening >episode offers virtually no links to the background for today's global >reality. That adds an ironic twist to the statement made in a trailer by a >young artist that the series is "new history." > >This major statement on multiculturalism makes it appear that nothing has >been learned about the global context of U.S. history in the thirty years >since the first mini-series, "Roots," dominated TV screens for a week. >Really, it makes me want to view the two series together and see how they >compare. > >The reason I knew in advance that I would be sad is that, at the beginning >of the 1990s, I had the opportunity to read the initial few versions of >scripts for the first two episodes. The earliest scripts were clumsy >clippings from writings of the 1960s, but in the revisions the writers >developed what I found to be some excellent, though concise, ways to convey >the variety of African societies, their changes, and the continuing role of >African connections in American life. I really thought the scriptwriters >were doing better Atlantic history than the historians. But time passed, >and those scripts were dropped. > >So I think there is little to be gained in pointing out the errors and >omissions in the series as it was broadcast. The creators knew what they >were leaving out. I think the question is, "Why?" > >I don't know many of the details of how the early episodes got narrowed >down. I know that, as early as 1992, WGBH had film crews virtually ready >to depart for shooting in Africa. But funds were lacking. Writing and >production slowed. There were changes in the leadership of the project -- >changes influenced by the sharp cutbacks in amounts of public funding >available in the late Bush years, and perhaps other types of changes. By >about 1995 Orlando Bagwell assumed leadership, the project got a new lease >on life, funds were somehow acquired, and the result is what you have seen. > >Production of this series unfolded in the U.S. The same country in which >news media decline to present the foreign news they have because domestic >news sells better. There, I think is the problem -- deciding what will >sell. > >I'm sad to see the narrowness of that opening episode, but I don't think >the responsibility for its exceptionalism can be laid at the doors of those >I have named above, neither commentators nor creative directors. Nor was >it some all-powerful Rupert Murdoch who denied funding for one set of >scripts and called forth another. It was peer review bodies, in the NEH, >the MacArthur Foundation and other such groups, and their communication >with PBS and its affiliates, that somehow mediated the narrowing and >nationalization of the wonderful opportunity that this series presented. > >"Africans in America" was broadcast with the truncated vision of a national >approach to history, in an era when understanding global connections, past >and present, is of the greatest importance. In particular, it again cuts >Americans off from Africa, and it promotes a national reconciliation that >has no passport. I wish we could better understand the pressures which >have caused this complicated twist in the message. >------------------------------------------------------------------------- >- African Ancestored Genealogy Discussion >- To unsubscribe, email: Majordomo@MsState.Edu >- In body of message: unsubscribe afrigeneas >- >- Afrigeneas archives: http://www.msstate.edu/listarchives/afrigeneas/ >------------------------------------------------------------------------- >