(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Woke black actor LeVar Burton found out on air Tuesday that he is the descendant of a white man who fought in the Confederate army, Fox News reported.
Burton—famous for portraying Geordi La Forge on the series Star Trek: The Next Generation and hosting the children’s show Reading Rainbow—learned of his “racist” past live on PBS’s Finding Your Roots.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., a historian and the host of the show, revealed to the black actor that he was descended from a white man named James Henry Dixon via his great-grandmother, Mary Sills.
“Were you expecting that? Did you have any idea you had a white, direct ancestor?” Gates asked.
“No! No, I had no idea,” Burton replied. “So Granny was half-White! Wow.”
Later on, Gates noted that Dixon, born in North Carolina in 1847, served as a reserve in the Confederate army as a teenager.
“Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I did not see this coming,” the defender of cancel culture lamented as he discovered his white heritage.
The news is made all the more ironic given Burton’s famous role in the 1977 miniseries, Roots, about a slave in the American South.
Upon being shown a photo of his great-great-grandfather, Burton said he would have “fought” Gates, the show’s host, if he had been told he had white ancestors without having been shown evidence.
The actor then got emotional, talking about the “conflict roiling inside of me” and the “pathway opening up.”
The longtime activist also said he would use his newfound heritage to engage in race politics.
“I’ve been looking for an entry point to talk to White America,” he said. “Here it is.”
Some on Twitter pointed out that the conflicted Burton should have to pay reparations to himself, being a descendant of both slaveholder and enslaved.
“How much does he owe himself in reparations?” mused anti-woke Dilbert creator Scott Adams.
How much does he owe himself in reparations? https://t.co/u2Z7cnD2Tl
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 21, 2024
