The bond of family runs deep in the African-American community.

Forty years and a remake have not depreciated that lesson from “Roots,” the television miniseries now playing on cable’s A&E, History and Lifetime channels.

No matter whether LeVar Burton or Malachi Kirby is playing Kunta Kinte, the Mandinka warrior whose life and family are traced in the video version of Alex Haley’s novel by the same name, we believe the story reinforces to our community the importance and power of family.

One of the emotional tragedies of slavery was the separation of families by slave owners who viewed people of color simply as commodities. “You are like the pigs and horses and no more,” the overseer of the Waller plantation in Virginia reminds Kunta Kinte.

The series shows the maneuvers and suffering the enslaved went through to keep their families together. That also was highlighted so well at the end of the Civil War by the scores of advertisements posted by newly freed people trying to locate and reunite with loved ones torn apart by human bondage.

Given such history, we are troubled by today’s statistics showing that only 36.6 percent of African-American children live with two parents. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures from 2009, traditional family ties within our community are staggeringly low when compared with figures showing 67.4 percent of Hispanic children and 74.7 percent of white children live with both parents.

While slavery has been abolished by the U.S. Constitution, large segments of the African-American community remain enslaved by drugs, poverty, incarceration and other factors that tear families apart.

We admit, too, to feeling discouraged on a recent late-night television dating show where a young African-American man from Norfolk disclosed he’d impregnated nine women. (“That doesn’t mean I have nine children,” he told the host.)

A small glimmer of hope arose last year in a fatherhood study released by the Centers for Disease Control about how involved men are with their children, including how often each week they see their children, eat with them, bathe them, read to them, help with homework or carry them to activities. It surveyed men who lived with their children as well as those who did not live with their families.

Surprisingly, it showed that African-American men living apart from their children are more involved with their children than their white or Latino counterparts.

Does that speak, to a degree, on the value African-Americans put on family? Does it debunk the myth of the absent African-American father?

We reserve judgment. The studies are available via the internet for perusal.

What we believe, what we have observed and what other studies show is the lesson “Roots” gives us — that having a family and knowing the strength, fearlessness and resiliency of our ancestors engenders those qualities in us.

Every family needs a Mandinka warrior, no matter his or her name.