Reactions to “The Root,” v. 2

For Errol Louis, a columnist for the Daily News, The Root may offer a response to mainstream media coverage of race and class issues that is “dominated by an episodic, disconnected parade of stereotypes,” but can only “succeed if Dr. Gates doesn’t let his writers get too flip, snarky and self-referential, which is a common discursive style in university circles and among bloggers, but fatally off-putting almost everywhere else.”

Gayle Pemberton, Chair of the African American Studies Program at Wesleyan (CT) University, doesn’t want anything to do with genealogical mapping: “We can’t undo the middle passage… My learning what part of Africa my ancestors came from carries no meaning for me, personally.”