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As soon as the last episode of Roots ended, widespread debate began on its long-term effects. Would Roots turn out to be chiefly a stimulant for TV executives and black genealogists? Or did its huge audience mean that the series might be every bit as significant in its own way as the civil rights marches of the '60s? A few people insisted that Roots' impact would be transitory. Said black New York Representative Charles Rangel: "It helps people identify and gets conversations started, but I can't see any lasting effect." Black Literature Professor Leon Forrest at Northwestern University believes that if the show had been televised during the ferment of the '60s, it might have served as a catalyst. "But we are now in a period of some apathy and inwardness."
Yet there are those who argue that the supercharged atmosphere of the '60s would have been precisely the wrong moment for Roots. Says Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan: "Everything converged—the right time, the right story and the right form. The country, I feel, was ready for it. At some other time I don't feel it would have had that kind of widespread acceptance and attention—specifically in the '60s. Then it might have spawned resentments and apprehensions the country couldn't have taken. But with things quiet, and with race relations moving along at a rate that's acceptable to most Americans, we were ready to take in the full story of who we are and how we got that way."
Abroad consensus seemed to be emerging that Roots would spur black identity, and hence black pride, and eventually pay important dividends. Said Columbia Sociologist Francis lanni: "The civil rights movement seemed to be stopping for a breather. This may be a significant turning point." Said Anthony Browne, an assistant vice chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley: "Roots sensitized a lot of people to the black situation."
There can be little doubt of that. But some difficult questions arise: Sensitized in what way? How long do white Americans need to feel guilty about the evils committed by their ancestors? Is there a statute of limitations on guilt? There can be no precise answer to those questions, but it may be well to remember that it was after all whites who ended slavery —belatedly—in a terrible war. Besides, the millions of Americans descended from post-Civil War immigrants can scarcely be charged with the sins of other people's fathers. There is some danger that breast-beating about the past may turn into a kind of escapism, distracting attention from the evils of the present. Only if Roots turns the anger at yesterday's slavery into anger at today's ghettos will it really matter.
In Washington, members of the congressional Black Caucus seem to have no idea, yet, how to make use of this anger, of the energy unleashed by Roots. "We've been given a piece of literature that takes the civil rights struggle to a higher level," said black Congressman John Conyers. "It doesn't cure unemployment or take people out of the ghetto. But it's a democratic statement as eloquent as any that's ever been devised, and we've been talking about what can be done with it."