Culture Thursday: Finding Your Roots
With 10 seasons and 106 episodes under its belt, it's safe to say that PBS' remarkable Finding Your Roots series has already made an indelible mark on our culture.
Hosted by the great Henry Louis Gates Jr., the series dives into the ancestry of celebrities, going back generations to fill in missing gaps and leading to startling discoveries. It's an emotional rollercoaster for the celebrities involved as Gates and his team's findings all too often bring to light new information that can be inspiring, rewarding, and heartbreaking all at once. It tugs at the heartstrings seeing celebrities learn, in real-time, the oftentimes secret histories of their ancestors. For every celebrity who finds they're related to an 18th-century American hero, there exists a separate celebrity who finds out their family wealth came, in part, from the sale and trafficking of human slaves. The range of genuine celebrity emotions from elation to despair makes for compelling viewing and makes Finding Your Roots unlike anything else on television.
We don't choose our parents. We don't choose our ancestors. But we do choose to seek knowledge and how we respond to receiving that knowledge. For the celebrities who participate in an episode with Gates, they are given an opportunity based on the information provided. Many are humbled by their experience. Some are mortified. And others still find hope and inspiration in the resilience of those who overcame astronomical odds simply to survive. While we don't expect these celebrities to drop what they're doing and go start a nonprofit charity, we do see them react in real time as real human beings. Gates is able to humanize many of our most famous stars, something that many interviewers have tried to do but with little success. A little humility goes a long way and Gates captures that through his detailed genealogy of the celebrities who participate.
We are all products of our history. Oftentimes, it is a history of which we are unaware. The history might not always be pleasant. But it brought us to this very moment. What Finding Your Roots does so well is remind us of this. That we are not the worst of our ancestors. We also are not necessarily the best. What we are is part of a tapestry, spanning back generations. How will our descendants look back upon us? What will be our legacy? Will they be proud to learn of who we were and what we did? These are just some of the questions that viewers think about after each episode. While our own stories are still being written, these questions should be our guiding light. Because while our grandchildren's grandchildren might not end up being celebrities, we still can give them the opportunity to learn about us and our good deeds. We all have the chance to be a stout, steadfast branch in our family tree.
That in itself is worth celebrating.
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