PBS: AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2

I watched the first version of this Henry Louis Gates PBS special, with its second series installment airing Wednesday (2/6 & 2/13, PBS, 9PM EST), and found it very worthwhile. Not only did the first (and now second) showing utilize my cousin Fatimah Collier Jackson as an anthro-biologist researcher, but more importantly it made a case why evolutionary biology is so important in our lives.

The study of DNA, and its growing ability to reveal the past, is critical to our base knowledge of the factors influencing the how and why of African-Americans in this country. Yes, the slave trade was the vehicle, but in itself it tells us nothing about the ‘set up’ to those events, and how that influence is still with us.

Evolutionary biology and its high-order subset, social evolution, is the arena where we get to ask questions about why things are really the way they are. Why we feel and behave the way we do, to our benefit and detriment. In this arena, the simple answer, that everything is the white man’s fault, is no longer sufficient, or even digestible.

At one point in the current show, entertainer Chris Rock states that he would have expected more of himself had he known more about his African beginnings. I dare say that black people in general, would have higher requirements of themselves if they were more knowing. Most importantly, blacks might understand that much of the character that influences their lives reaches farther back than segregation, or slavery, or even colonial exploitation, but rather has to do with how branches of humankind have evolved physically and socially over the last ten thousand years, beginning in Africa.

I encourage everyone to watch the four-part series (aired in two groups), which attempts to help us reach back into our past, so that we can better navigate our future.

James C. Collier

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