Posted on 08/28/2013 7:13:14 AM PDT by IChing
Plagiarism dispute and other criticism[edit source | editbeta]Genealogists have since disputed Haley’s research and conclusions. In addition, Harold Courlander, in 1978, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging that Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had copied 81 passages from his novel, The African.[13] Courlander’s pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement law suit claimed: “Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without the African.... Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character.”[14]
In his expert witness report submitted to the federal court in support of Courlander’s claim, professor of English Michael Wood of Columbia University, claimed:
The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive ... Roots ... plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified, but always it seems, to be consulted ... Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and plot. Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave’s thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else’s novel.[15]
After a five-week trial in the federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case with a financial settlement and a statement that “Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book Roots.”[16]
During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated: “Copying there is, period.”[17] In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward said that Haley had “perpetrated a hoax on the public”.[18]
Throughout the trial, Alex Haley maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, a minority studies teacher at Skidmore College, Joseph Bruchac III, came forward and swore in an affidavit that he had discussed The African with Haley in 1970 or 1971 and had, in fact, given his own personal copy of The African to Haley. This event took place a good number of years before Roots was published.[19]
In addition to the charges of plagiarism, the accuracy of those aspects of Roots which Haley claimed to be true has also been challenged.[20] Although Haley acknowledged the novel was primarily a work of fiction, he did claim that he had identified his actual ancestor in the person of Kunta Kinte, an African taken from the village of Jufureh in what is now the Gambia. According to Haley, Kunta Kinte was sold into slavery, where he was given the name Toby, and, while in the service of a slavemaster named John Waller, went on to have a daughter named Kizzy, Haley’s great-great-great grandmother. Haley also claimed to have identified the specific slave ship and the actual voyage on which Kunta Kinte was transported from Africa to North America in 1767.
Historical marker in front of Alex Haley’s boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee (2007)However, genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills and historian Gary B. Mills, both specialists in African-American research, revisited Haley’s research and concluded that those claims of Haley’s were false.[21][22] According to the Millses, the slave named Toby who was owned by John Waller could be definitively shown to have been in North America as early as 1762. They also reported, among other findings, that Toby died years prior to the supposed date of birth of his daughter Kizzy. There have also been suggestions that Kebba Kanji Fofana, the amateur griot in Jufureh, who, during Haley’s visit there, confirmed the tale of the disappearance of Kunta Kinte, had been coached to relate such a story.[23][24][25]
To date, Haley’s work remains a notable exclusion from the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, despite Haley’s status as history’s best-selling African-American author. Harvard University professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the anthology’s general editors, has denied that the controversies surrounding Haley’s works are the reason for this exclusion. Nonetheless, Dr. Gates has acknowledged the doubts surrounding Haley’s claims about Roots, saying, “Most of us feel it’s highly unlikely that Alex actually found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship.”[26]
I heard Charles Murray on a show a while ago promoting a new book. In the book, Murray tried hard to look, not at skin color, but at income and marriage rates. His conclusion was that we don't have a problem of inequity in this country. We have a "marriage gap". Those who were married and stayed married, no matter what their skin color, did a lot better than those who did not marry.
Marriage is important. For many reasons. This is why the left is so intent on destroying it.
Come to think of it, this also reminds me of the Arab/Israeli conflict.
There is at this point absolutely nothing the Israelis can do to bring about peace. Conflict will continue until the Arabs have a change of heart, or until one side or the other, or possibly both, are exterminated.
It takes two to tango, or to make peace.
What was the line in Independent Day?......”What can we do for peace? ....Die....”.
Another question is “What can Blacks do to improve race relations in America?”
We could give them reparations...I can give them my house and car...Or, I can do nothing...
I’ll pick the latter...
Exactly.
What is so irritating about this is low-information Blacks are in revenge mode for “slavery” when, in fact, they’ve traded one master for another - throwing all of our freedoms out of the window.
My reply to folks that complain about being held back by “the man” is the following:
1. Do you receive any benefits from a government agency that you didn’t earn?
Answer: Yes.
2. Then you are a government slave. Rid your self of the government’s influence and your will be a free man.
When affirmative action is brought up by those who believe in it as a means to right perceived past wrongs, I tell them: “Affirmative actions is just some white guys saying that non-white guys just aren’t good enough, smart enough, or determined enough to make it on their own.” “If this is what you believe, that non-whites just can’t cut it, then by all means, push for affirmative action.”
Most of the time I just get a brain implosion, but every once in a while, I see the light turn on and watch their expressions change from sudden understanding to resentment at having been conned for so long.
Is your name Barrack?
Blacks are by far the most religious and have the highest church attendance of any race.
Reverend Wright, Reverend Jackson, Reverend Sharpton, etc
I'm a lesbian black disabled left-handed gay illegal-alien communist transgendered atheist union-member latino HIV-positive pregnant pagan anarchist cross-dresser.Pregnant?! It looks like someone hit Laz. :D
I am going to draw a cartoon of mo ham med and put it into a jar of bacon grease. See if the Smithsonian will accept it as art.
I LOVE it!!!!!!!!!!!!
Guessing you realize NSA has now erased all records of your life and existence since you rang their “innocent” bell in so many categories.
Apologies to any left handed pubs out there.
I also joined the Air Force at 17.
Could we have something in common?
The supposedly oppressed have followed the supposed oppressors to new neighborhoods when they did what the ‘oppressed’ act like they want the ‘oppressors’ to do: ‘just die or go away, but leave your cargo’.
What can whites do to improve racial relations? So far as some blacks are concerned, nothing. Try to be nice to everyone and smile a lot, but have a plan to stomp the daylights out of anyone that would oppress you.
I go to work day after day, year after year to pay for their bastards... What more can I do?
DOUBLE TAP.-.-.-.-.-.-.-Or Triple.
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