Now, if anyone knows me, I’m the kind of person admits when they are wrong. No matter how embarrassing it is or how prideful I might have been, I’m man enough to admit when I was wrong … and boy, was I wrong about the "Roots" remake. Months ago, when I heard they were making another miniseries of "Roots," I’ll admit I didn’t really care much about it. The reason why I didn’t care so much for it was because I felt like it was just another way for Hollywood to remind black people that we were victims for over 400 years. But after watching this new reboot, I hate to say it but I think that showing "Roots" was an essential thing to show for this generation.

Let me just start off by saying the acting for this miniseries was just amazing! The lead actors that were my favorite were the actors that played Kunta Kinta and Chicken George. It was something about their characters that made me keep watching the show and made me want to learn more about their origin. Another actor I thought did an amazing job was the actor that played Master Lee. The actor that played him was so good that I thought this dude was really an evil slave master. It was also interesting to see the relationship between him and his son, Chicken George. It was just crazy to me how Chicken George was his own son yet he still treated him like he was just another slave.

Now, even though I thought this was a great remake of the "Roots" series from the '70s, there are a lot of people that said they didn’t like it so much. The reason behind not liking it was because they said it wasn’t accurate enough for them. I’m going to be honest with you — I really wasn’t expecting this show to be 100 percent accurate. I mean, come on, let’s be real. Slavery was such a broad field in our history that it’s almost impossible to get every single aspect in a four-episode miniseries. But I was proud of the fact that they got at least 90 percent of the elements correct. While watching this, the parts I wanted them to touch on were how slaves were sold off like pieces of property, how slaves were killed if they tried to run away, how slaves were killed if they were caught reading, how black women were raped by their slave masters and how some of the slaves were offspring of their white masters. They got every single one of these aspects down pat. In my opinion, it was just important to me to see them get most of it accurate so that people of this generation understood the harsh reality of what slavery was.

I know there will be people that might say, “I still don’t see why Hollywood has to make another thing on slavery. I’m tired of seeing this crap.” For those people, I would tell them that I absolutely agree. I personally would rather see more movies on how our people were kings and queens and how we shaped America’s culture rather us just being victims to racist white people. But the sad truth is that slavery is a big part of black history. I’m not saying it is the only history that defines us as a race but I do think it’s an essential part of history that our younger generation needs to know. I’m not even talking about black kids either. I want kids of all colors to know about slavery so that way when they see racism happening today, they can go back understand how the effect of slavery still plays a big part on the black race’s mentality and is something we still struggle to get over today. Peace.