I've been re-reading Roots the novel on and off over the past few months. The African involvement in the slave trade was downplayed and it was portrayed as being racially based when the majority of the slaves were prisoners of war, criminals or people who were already slaves and sold by their masters, and certain aspects of traditional African society are misrepresented (Kunta thinks of himself as being from 'the Gambia' and other modern African countries are mentioned by name even though every African country, including Ethiopia and Liberia, is the product of 19th century colonialism, he is aware of and takes pride in other Black civilizations like ancient Ghana and Great Zimbabwe even though this kind of pan-Africanist mentality was probably foreign to most 18th century Mandinkas, ). Apparently, a lot of it was was plagiarized from The African and even many of the aspects claimed by Haley to be true are inaccurate. It's still a good book and one of my favorite 'movies'. Besides that, in terms of the the story itself, I don't see what makes it 'inauthentic'. The violence and brutality of the Middle Passage and slavery is downplayed by the mini-series.
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