Will you watch The Book of Negroes?

#BookofNegroes Will you be watching?

BET (Black Entertainment Television) will be airing a mini-series that starts Monday, February 16, 2015; The Book of Negroes It is based on the book by the same name. Well, unless you're American like I am... then the book is titled, Someone Knows My Name

Let that sink in for a moment. American racial history is so complicated that a book that sells around the world (and was written) with one title, was not sold here under the same title out of fear of offending people. *shakes head* Probably happens a lot though. So tragic and yet so understandable.

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The Book of Negroes the mini-series, airs on BET next week and I am completely too thrilled about that.

One, if you know me... you already know that I love seeing stories about black history (including, if not especially) about slavery. Two, I love to see great black actors working on quality projects. And three, I am really enjoying the expansion that I see happening with BET's programming. I feel like the network is finally stepping up and into the lane of providing quality programming that serves the black community and the world in a good way. We know that salaciousness sells... but we need more than the snacks of raunch and ratchet to fill us up.

The mini-series has already been shown in Canada (the author of the book is Canadian) and the reviews are awesome. I really can't wait to watch it. I've been waiting for months to see this.

2014 was such a tense and frustrating year. 2015 is starting out more calmly but there is a lot of anger in the world and people are not letting it go. One thing I was rather surprised to learn was how much of our history people don't know. Especially young people. We taught them that they had rights to be treated fairly as human beings, we've taught them that "bad things happened" but we did not tell them enough details about what happened, how things unfolded and how black people have responded over the centuries. Too many people have this erroneous belief that slaves never fought back, just accepted bad treatment and were, for lack of a more gracious term, pretty much too soft and/or dumb since they accepted slavery for so long.

Someone Knows My Name - The Book of Negroes | My Fabulous Boobies

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As I watch young people continuing to riot in the streets around the country, protesting police brutality, mourning slain black people... I see the slow recognitions that many are having. We all got really comfortable and we failed to teach them. They are now starting to see that what we're going through today is unfortunately too similar to what we have gone through in the past. I hope that more stories like The Book of Negroes and even 12 Years a Slave emerge to a new audience and bring to the forefront the long overdue conversation about race, racism and slavery in America and across the diaspora.

BET did not ask me to promote this mini-series and I'm not being paid to do this. As it is Black History Month, this will be a good movie to watch next week. Hopefully some great conversations and more interest in black history will spark from this.