Celeb Roots is good TV

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates is doing amazing work with his genetic and ancestral research. I watched his African American Lives show on PBS (part 2) and I was so moved, again! The level of detail he gets down to with the research, even though it has long been attempted by others, just hasn't been seen before on such a public stage, not to this degree. He's helping PBS viewers, non-blacks and blacks alike, fill in the gaps to answer basic questions about info we take for granted, like who we and our neighbors are, why our families live in the places they do, and what connections we have to the greatest American stories ever told (and never told).

Chris Rock found out he's descended from a Civil War hero, Don Cheadle learned that his ancestors we're actually slaves of Native Americans, but one of the surprising stories told in the program involved a woman named Bliss Boyard who is by all appearances a white person but talked about her father who, as a young man, chose to pass as white. He went on to marry as white and raised his kids white but all the while he'd been a very light skinned black person.

I recognized the true story because it was retold in a 2003 movie starring Anthony Hopkins, playing the light skinned black man! You would never have know it from the way it was marketed and it was a surprise to me while watching it (I remember that I was on a date when I saw it, I was just looking for anything to qualify as a dinner and a movie type film, and it turned out to be profound and an instant favorite). It was called The Human Stain and you oughtta rent it.