A Quote by David Olusoga

I finally got to watch 'Roots' in my mid-teens, on a video rental. Slowly and meticulously Roots fed its black characters through the mincing machine of American slavery. People with names, hopes and family connections were destroyed and dehumanised before my eyes.

David Olusoga

Quote Topics

American American Slavery Before Black Characters Connections Destroyed Eyes Family Family Connections Fed Finally Got Hopes Machine Mid Names People Roots Slavery Slowly Teens Through Video Watch Were

Quote Author

David Olusoga
British - Historian

I joke to people in the press that I realize I'm not black, I'm actually white. But I've got these roots in black American music. I love it.

Glenn Hughes

Being an American is a state of mind, and to be in a family is to feel the power of belonging, the power of your roots. Family is a tree, the strength of a tree, the roots, the leaves, the past and the present, the future, the fruits, the seeds.

Esai Morales

My mother is black, from Grenada, so my blackness was always there, but It wasn't until I started hanging with the upperclassmen black actors at my high school that I really got my roots in being a black American, which is a distinctly different identity and experience.

Amanda Seales

I remember 'Roots' growing up and the cultural impact it had on the country. Watching 'Roots' was not the cool remove of reading about slavery in a book or hearing about it in class. It became something that swept people along.

John Ridley

The fans in Canada have been there since day one. They're the originals. When people say that's your roots, that's literally my roots. I've just cut this tree off and replanted it somewhere else and it started growing. But the roots are there.

Russell Peters

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.

Willie Dixon

If people perceive 'Roots' to be a black history show, nobody is going to watch it.

David L. Wolper

My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.

Alex Haley

We have chaos reigning in the Middle East. There is a great deal of instability. In the past, people would have turned to their church, and some still do. Counterintuitively, people are now turning into themselves to find their roots. The way you do that is through your family tree. "Where did I come from?" There is an urge to preserve the names of the people who produced you.

Henry Louis Gates

All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.

Alan Lightman

Zwarte Piet, or 'Black Pete,' is a relic from slavery. It is something that should have long been eliminated, and it's very insulting to black Dutch people. It's shocking to me that it still exists, but I think it's about the lack of knowledge and education regarding the roots of the character in the slave trade.

Roger Ross Williams

Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch 'American Idol' and video their children's concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.

Jodi Picoult

It's really cheesy, but basically, 'Roots' got me to find out my own roots.

Malachi Kirby

There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.