The Adoption, TV, Slavery Triad

 It's becoming harder and harder to watch TV. 

There are the adoption plots: Derek McDreamy Shepherd & Meredith Grey on Grey's Anatomy;  Quinn and Puck on Glee; Cameron and Mitchell are working on their second same sex adoption on Modern Family; Julia on Parenthood befriends a pregnant co-worker and asks for her baby...just to name a few of the most popular.

None of these plots show adoption from the adoptee's point of view and only one is trying to show it from the mother's perspective, as a well-thought out, intelligent decsion: Susan's daughter, on Desperate Housewives, is pregnant and wants to have her baby adopted despite Susan's protestations.  The daughter is confident she has thought it out well, despite Susan suggesting she might want to wait and actually meet her child first. But she doesn't want to be a single parent like her mother was.

And then there are the actresses who in real life have adopted (Mariska Hagitay of Law & Order SVU) or are trying to (Jillian Michaels of Biggest Loser).

So, just as I was considering murdering my TV, I caught a segment on Rock Center - especially aired for black History month - called Priscilla's Roots about a man who descended from a family of slave owners who kept the most accurate account so the sale of their slaves. Seems most destroyed their records during or after the Civil War.

So this man decided to trace the history of one female slave named Priscilla who was kidnapped from Sierra leone at 10 years of age. he found all of Pricilla's descendants and one of them went back to Sierra Leone.

This is the only case of a slave who has been able to trace her roots, because having been bought like property, they had no birth certificates, no records of any kind.  Birth certificates are only for human beings, not property, although of course pedigree dogs and other animals have lineage that is traceable...just not adopted persons in most of the USA, Inc....land of the un-free.

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet lack of liberty,

I sing of your plight;

Land where parental rights,

Are shattered day and night,

Too many mothers plight,

Can this be right?

 

My native country, thee,

Land where nothing is free,

Where once was fame;

Now abounds corporate greed,

While 99% are in need,

And the poor used to breed;

I'm filled with shame.