Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

Perhaps it was because they had been born in this place rather than in Africa, because the only home they had ever known were the toubob’s huts of logs glued together with mud and swine bristles. These black ones had never known what it meant to sweat under the sun not for toubob masters but for themselves and their own people. But no matter how long he stayed among them, Kunta vowed never to become like them, and each night his mind would go exploring again into ways to escape from this despised land.

Ignorant as they were, some of the things they did were purely African, and he could tell that they were totally unaware of it themselves. For one thing, he had heard all his life the very same sounds of exclamation, accompanied by the very same hand gestures and facial expressions. And the way these blacks moved their bodies was also identical. No less so was the way these blacks laughed when they were among themselves—with their whole bodies, just like the people of Juffure.

“Niggers here say Massa William a good master, an’ I seen worse. But ain’t none of ’em no good. Dey all lives off us niggers. Niggers is the biggest thing dey got.”

But he wondered if some of these blacks, like pets, would be able to survive, as he could, unless they were taken care of.

He wondered if she also knew how strange and sad he found it to hear her talking—as so many others did—about “usn’s,” and acting as if she owned the plantation she lived on instead of the other way around.

The white children seemed to love nothing more than playing “massa” and pretending to beat the black ones, or playing “hosses” by climbing onto their backs and making them scramble about on all fours.

took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn’t live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it’s possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother’s milk made possible the life of privilege they led.

“Scairt!” declared’ the fiddler one night. “Dat’s how come white folks so busy countin’ everybody in dat census! Dey scairt dey’s done brung mo’ niggers ’mongst ’em dan dey is white folks!” declared the fiddler.

But sometimes, while he drove along, he couldn’t help asking himself why it was that his countrymen didn’t simply kill every toubob who set foot on African soil. He was never able to give himself an answer that he was able to accept.

“Dey even gits buried in de white folks’ graveyards, wid flat rocks to mark where dey is.” What a heartwarming—if somewhat belated—reward for a lifetime of toil, thought Kunta bitterly.

It seriously bothered him that Irene seemed actually to adore if not worship the whites who owned her; it strongly suggested that they would never see eye to eye on a vital matter.