OK bare with me, I saw this pop up on facebook and it seems to be getting a bit of heat.

https://www.facebook.com/corrine.bra...48831561915870

Its a video of a scene of Eva in Audrey's salon saying the lines that "I got more Roots than Kunta Kinte'', if no one knows who that is then have look at this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots_(1977_miniseries)

Anyway some of the opinion is this casual racism, culturally inappropriate and totally unacceptable and some are even saying there gonna complain to ofcom etc.

Is this out of order or just a crude joke that wasn't in anyway racist and been blown out of portion?

Thoughts?

Sighs.....

Corrie - Are theses lines racist? No, and anyone who sees 'racist' in that needs to get a grip.

Not remotely racist and certainly not crude. 'Roots' was simply the title of the epic 700 page+ novel (and tv series) about the slave, Kunta Kinte.

Some people can see racism in anything. They tend to actually be the most racist.

Check out there shares people are not happy about it, but does beg the question are we getting too PC.

I don't see it as racist either but then I'm white and this sort of line wouldn't affect me, but to a black person it could be highly insensitive.

I was surprised but not offended. The African Slave Trade however is as unfunny as the Holocaust. I suggest new joke writers.....

Making a cultural reference to a TV show is not racist surely?

I'm surprised that Eva has even heard of Roots though.

There was a remake shown on tv only a few weeks ago.

No its not

No, it's not racist - especially since Eva said herself she didn't even know who/what Kunte Kinte was but it was something her Mum used to say.

It was only ever a pun. The tv show Roots was about a slave ensuring that he and his descendants never forgot their true names and heritages and would relay it verbally to each new generation, despite it being very dangerous when Slaves.

It was a very popular and critically acclaimed mini series in the late 70s/early 80s and everybody knew who Kunte Kinte (Toby as his owners remaned him) was. It wouldn't have been a racist thing to say back then, just a pun of hair roots and ancestral roots.

The same remains today.

I'd be interested to know whether these offended people have evar actually watched 'Roots' or whether they looked it up and got offended simply because he was black.

She hadn't.

She said that she didn't know what it meant, just that it was something her Mum used to say. Which makes sense as Stella would have been a teenager when it was first shown.

Well I think how it was made is possibly the issue, she said she never knew who he was.

I watched roots when I was 14 at school so know the story.

https://www.facebook.com/CoronationS...posts_to_page/ folk are even complaining on the facebook page.

Maybe a overreaction but then with everything going on lately this could be just another thing to be seen as a slur against black people history.

I wouldn't say it was taking the mickey out of slavery or even being racist, it was a pun about the name of the to show rather than making out that slavery was okay.

I would say it was more insensitive than racist however and I can understand why some people have reacted that way. I do wonder why they thought they were justified in including that line.

Yes this!!

IDK if I find that racist. There was one line a while back that Katy said to Steph, it was something like "I like when you go all ghetto" now that was racist.

I think the thing is that 'Roots' the series was so successful that a lot of jokes did spring up at the time. For example, i remember a Family Ties joke from the mid 80s when one of Alex's friends discovered he was adopted and said he was going to have to go t Africa to find his roots and Alex having to explain that not eveybody's ancestry would lead back there and his wouldn't - the joke being that Skippy was White.

Insensitive and bad taste perhaps but i think it more just showed what a cultural impact the show had.

I don't really see it as any different to somebody that has never seen Doctor Who, or even knows what it is referring to their handbag as a 'Tardis' meaning that it holds more than you think as that is how their Mum used to refer to a seemingly small bag that you could fit a lot into.

It was just somebody repeating a joke which started as a pop culture reference without understanding it.

It wasn't actually taking the mickey out of Slavery and that joke never was, just the title of the show.

If anything, what is perhaps sad, is that after a generation people don't know what it was so the messages about what a dreadful thing slavery, plus the persecution of Black people even after it was abolition in America was, might have been lost. After all, History's main purpose is to teach the Future what mistakes and horrors not to repeat and arguably, that series educated more people than History lessons at School.

Haha you know when she said that I never even thought about it being Stella she was talking about!!

Such a memorable character!!

Roots was an education, an eye opener. It was mesmerising. I remember buying the book and it's sequel...I even named one of my goats Kizzy. I suppose that would be called racist today. It wasn't...it was a tribute.

This is Eva we're talking about though!! She was probably taught it at school but there's very little between those ears to stop it going in one & straight out the other!!

Why would you automatically assume that the word ghetto is referring to black people though?

Well it might be a cultural difference, if you made a statement like that here in the US it would be assumed that you were talking about black people. The same applies to the word thug, I noticed from watching the UK soaps and being on here when you all use thug it is referring to someone who is a criminal but here in the US it refers usually to a black male who dresses and acts a certain way...they assume that guys who dress and act that way are involved in crime and what not.

It wasn't a joke, racist, crude or otherwise. It was a play on the name of a famous TV series that Eva's mum had watched.

'Inappropriate' is such a mealy-mouthed word.

People who see racism everywhere might only be happy if no-one said anything, apart from them.

Technically a ghetto can refer to any minority group living in one area, in fact the word originates from the Italian, going back 500 years when Jewish people in Venice were segregated and made to live in one small area of the city, the Venetian Ghetto.

But you're right, traditionally in the UK we would generally be referring to areas populated mostly by black people. I also remember the great Elvis song from around 1969, "In the Ghetto". Elvis may have been white but I'm pretty sure the song is about a black woman and her baby.

How interesting. I would never have drawn a colour reference from that word. Or if I had it would be the sort of archetypal 1970s football skin-head, football-hooligan image - who I would have imagined to be white.

As for ghetto, If I hear that word I connect it with Judaism; medieval and 1930s. Again black and ghetto don't go hand in hand in my mind.