In the last ten years there has been a sizable chunk of documentaries made that detail racism in America. Some of them are very specific and deal with just one of the many topics, and some of them try to tackle them all.
One of the biggest ones in this decade was 13th, because it was a documentary that tried to tackle it all. From the onset of slavery, to civil rights, to the prison systems and police forces that have inherent racism today and are still being used as big tools to oppressive people of color. It was for free and on Netflix, so a lot of people saw it and it maybe started to open some eyes.
Honestly, I feel like one of the reasons there have been so many of these documentaries is due to those people who hear aspects of them and then shut their eyes, cover their ears, and just say things like “Slavery is over!” and random MLK quotes to act like everything is fine. The more they hear the message that everything is not fine, the better chance of something slipping through, I guess. And honestly, a lot of these documentaries haven’t been great, if you have seen a lot of them. They may say the same information you already have heard, without that much new to add. But theoretically, if you are the type of person to seek out dozens of documentaries on the topic, then maybe the next newest one isn’t to get your attention and is aiming for those who keep ignoring it all.
That brings us to Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. From the title alone, you can tell it is one of the documentaries trying to tell the whole story, its many branches, and how it affects us all today and where we are at in dealing with it. I was worried it would tell me everything I already knew. I was surprised to find it giving me the information in a new way.
That’s right. With some smiles!
In reality, this documentary is also sort of a lecture talk. Jeffery Robinson, star of this documentary, does lecture tours to talk about Racism in America. And this documentary uses a lot of his footage on the stage, talking about certain issues, spliced with his voice over of other graphics, and interbedded with relevant and theoretically random interviews/scenes. For example, one smaller scene with him arguing with someone (white) holding a Confederate flag (you probably would have assume White), about what the Civil war was about, and mostly owning him in that regard.
Let’s face it, if this documentary was just an hour or hour and a half long talk with him on stage talking to a live audience, that would not be great. There are some stand up specials that can break the mold and be worth it (looking at you Nanette) but I am glad it had a variety of uses of media to get its message across. It helped keep the overall message going, and me in engaged in the talk, without drifting off or getting bored.
And this documentary has a big goal ahead of it. It is going to THEATERS. I honestly don’t know if any other documentary about racism in America made it to theaters across the nation (obviously NY/LA are different). There have been some conservative documentaries, mainly from Dinesh D’Souza, that have badly talked about race, so it is good to see one go on a large scale to attack those messages.
I hope it is reached. I know it already had the (unfortunately) regular racism fueled “1 rating bombs” on IMDB early on, which happens already to a lot of black film, and definitely documentaries about black life. Although it is hard to imagine anyone every changing their mind at this point in the country, I like to have some hope that somewhere, maybe, there is a chance.