![\"Roots\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/roots.jpg\")
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Critics would say it\u2019s fitting: a misrepresented miniseries remake partially inspired by a Machiavellian movement.<\/a>The latter is Black Lives Matter, which caught fire (aside from setting fires) despite police shootings of black suspects being down 75 percent<\/a> over the last few decades and the fact that whites are more likely to be shot by police. The remake is Roots<\/em>, an African slave story that lives on four decades after the original despite having been proven to be, as journalist Stanley Crouch put it<\/a>, \u201cone of the biggest con jobs in U.S. literary history.\u201d<\/p>\n I was 11 when the original Roots<\/em> aired in 1977, and it was quite the event. Based on a 1976 Alex Haley book by the same name, it\u2019s still the most watched miniseries of all time; fully half of all U.S. homes \u2014 approximately 100 million people \u2014 viewed its final episode. As for cultural impact, the\u00a0Hollywood Reporter<\/em> tells us<\/a>, \u201cHundreds of colleges planned courses on\u00a0Roots<\/em>, and more than two dozen U.S. cities held \u2018Roots<\/em>\u00a0weeks,\u2019 according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, part of Roots\u2019<\/em> appeal was that it\u2019s supposedly the true story of author Alex Haley\u2019s ancestors \u2014 it traced his \u201croots.\u201d<\/p>\n