Screen | Affleck, PBS disingenuous

Will America ever get a handle on its race problem?

Considering the monumental wrong of slavery, how long our ancestors allowed it to exist in our country, and then the 100 additional years it took them to finally arrive at the Civil Rights Act, it should come as no surprise that we're still grappling with this issue.

The struggle is made even more challenging whenever we attempt to whitewash America's past or pretend the less savory aspects of our history never happened. It's made harder still when the likes of Ben Affleck get involved.

It appears Sony, sent reeling late last year when its computers were hacked by North Korea or China or someone, isn't past this public relations debacle just yet. Now it's spread to PBS and the actor Afleck, courtesy of Wikileaks, which recently published an email conversation between Sony's Michael Lynton and Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African American scholar who hosted the PBS program "Finding Your Roots," about the genealogies of famous Americans.

One of them was Affleck, who asked that the show's producers avoid mentioning that at least one of his ancestors owned slaves.

"Finding Your Roots," which I screened a few months back, is a thoughtful take on how tracking down our ancestors can turn into a valuable history lesson. Like many PBS productions, it walks a narrow line between entertainment and journalism.

Considering what we know about it now, it definitely isn't journalism.

"One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors – the fact that he owned slaves," Gates wrote Lynton in an email. "We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?"

Gates, a producer of "Finding Your Roots," should have known better. Lynton's response to Gates is even more troubling: "I would take it out if no one knows, but if it gets out that you are editing the material based on this kind of sensitivity then it gets tricky."

Well, it got out.

PBS, which should have been in the loop on this discussion, claims it was not, and says it is now conducting a review to see how this happened, although that seems fairly clear. It hasn't apologized for the omission so much as apologized for getting caught allowing the omission to occur.

The network's ombudsman, at least, took PBS to task in a recent column.

"PBS, in my view, deserves all the articles and TV reports that have PBS in the headline," Michael Getler wrote. "PBS invests a huge amount of responsibility, and faith, in those who produce programs for it. They need producers to bring to their attention critical issues, especially ones that may reflect poorly on what people expect of PBS or might damage their credibility."

I'm impressed that PBS has an ombudsman, but if "Finding Your Roots" is representative of the network's credibility, it's sunk to the level of the Discovery Channel.

Not to be outdone, Affleck has also jumped on the damage-control train.

"I didn't want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves. I was embarrassed. The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth," the actor/director wrote on his Facebook page.

"This is the collaborative creative process," he continued, trying to put a spin on the whitewash he instigated. "While I don't like that the guy is an ancestor, I am happy that aspect of our country's history is being talked about."

Well, no, you're not. Like PBS, you're unhappy that you got caught.

Full disclosure: I spent a full year researching my family tree about 10 years ago. I was amazed by how much I learned, and was not ashamed that one of my ancestors, John Chew of Virginia, was in 1644 sent by his father to travel to New England to retrieve two runaway slaves.

They were never found. Instead, Chew found Ann Gates. They married, and later helped establish a settlement on Long Island that is now Hempstead.

Acknowledging an ancestor who owned slaves is not a racist gesture. Sweeping the fact under the rug isn't either, but it's a highly disingenuous act that prevents us from moving forward.

thill3@nncogannett.com

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Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ