Marcus Trufant: Snoop Dogg isn’t wrong on ‘Roots’ remake criticism

KIRO Radio’s John Curley remembers watching “Roots” with his family. It was must-see TV, even if it left Curley with a few misgivings.

“As a bunch of white folks sitting around up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania … we tuned in every Sunday to see what was happening in the life of Kunta Kinte,” he said. “You sit there and are kind of like, ‘I feel a bit guilty about this but, hey, can’t wait to see what happens next Sunday.’”

Former Seahawks’ Pro Bowler, and Barbershop co-host Marcus Trufant told Curley to imagine watching the show from the another perspective.

“As a white family, you said you were feeling a little guilty, but think how you feel as a black man when you’re watching that,” he said. “There’s anger; there’s all kinds of stuff that comes up.”

History, A&E and Lifetime channels aired the first episode of a remake to the 1977 “Roots” TV mini-series on Memorial Day. The debut received some criticism, most specifically from rapper and actor Snoop Dogg. In an expletive-filled Instagram post, he said:

I don’t understand America, they just want to keep showing the abuse we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but guess what, we’re taking the same abuse. Think about that part. When are y’all going to make a [expletive] series about the success that black folks are having. The only success we have is ‘Roots’ and ’12 Years a Slave.’

Trufant said that he understands Snoop’s ill-feelings about the subject and the emotions it brings about, but that history can’t be forgotten.

“I feel Snoop, but at the same time it can be looked at as teaching the young kids who don’t know or understand, or who have never seen ‘Roots’ or who don’t really know about the slavery part of it,” he said. “It could be the first part of the teaching. I’m not saying you get all of your information from TV, but they are not doing it so much in school. I think you’ve got to keep showing this stuff. You don’t want people to forget or take it lightly.”

Trufant’s Barbershop co-host Terry Hollimon agrees with Snoop that Hollywood seems to perpetuate the idea that black people’s history starts with slavery. He agrees that black people are still too often pigeonholed.

“We keep perpetuating the same images rather than something different,” he said. “We look at movies and television and we’re either on a slave movie, a pimp movie or a gangster movie. You never see the black guy as the superhero, or as the Jason Bourne character who saves the day, or James Bond, or doctor or the guy who is on ’50 Shades of Gray.’ You never see that character. All we see is the slave or the pimp.”

It’s not about denying the past, Hollimon says, but he wonders if it must consistently be rehashed.

“Can you imagine any race or group of people where the only image they have of themselves historically is so negative?” he asked. “That you were just the most downtrodden, dirty, bottom-of-my-shoe people. That that’s the image I portray of you every time I get a chance to.”

Follow @http://twitter.com/Mynorthwest