“Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America”, by Jeffrey Robinson, presents the systemic problem, with some confrontation
Emily and Sarah Kunstler direct “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America”, where attorney Jeffery Robinson lectures in a theater and interviews people and presents other materials to document the case that systemic racism is still much more significant in harming opportunities for people of color than most white people in the United States realize – that is, despite having had a black president, for example.
At the beginning he mentions the trope, “I have never owned slaves and nothing myself to create slavery or benefit from it”, a point that Mitch McConnell often states (“there is not a person alive today who….”) . He then reemphasizes that it important for everyone to know the full history of slavery. It’s what people have to do about it individually (anti-racism) that he never quite gets around to covering.
He starts out by interviewing a guy with a confederate flag near a beach in Queens. He trips the guy up with the idea that he could still own someone as property and still consider the person “family” (but that may be patriarchism carried to extreme, which sometimes seems the case in the Bible to some people.)
Pretty soon he is showing us how many of the provisions in the original IS constitution were tied to preserving slavery. Even the conservative Prager U has admitted that they may have been necessary as a compromise (the 3/5 rule) to have a union at all. He talks about Article 1 Section 9, which forbids Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. He says that even an amendment could not change this (not sure that is correct, but indeed the 1791 Bill of Rights says nothing about slavery or involuntary servitude – and I have often wondered about applying the idea to military conscription). The idea of an expiration date on “protection” of an unsustainable and morally “questionable” (even by the standards of the time) practice is itself an interesting way to rationalize continuing to do what you “want” to do.
These arrangements have given smaller states, especially less densely populated, more power in presidential elections through the Electoral College, and through the Senate, an arrangement he says favors white supremacist motives.
He aptly criticizes Donald Trump’s mention of Andrew Jackson, and then moves on to the continual bed faith in treatment of blacks from reconstruction on. The tipping point came after the 1963 civil rights rally with MLK’s “I have a dream” speech, and the passing of civil rights and voting rights laws in 1965 – on April 4, 1968, when MLK was shot in Memphis (while I was in Army Basic, and that was a big deal). But Martin Luther King had intended to give another big speech warning about the backslide risk. Robinson maintains that it was the election of Richard Nixon with the “war on drugs” which was engineered to hold back blacks (heroine) and gender and other non-conformists (pot), with mass incarceration (often with wrongful convictions, as other films like “Just Mercy” have shown). The Libertarian Party (especially in many speeches by Harry Browne in the 1990s) blamed most of the country’s ills on the “war on drugs” indeed. (Remember Nancy Reagan and her “Just say no” campaign?)
Robinson, along the way, gives a lot of old history, like how NYC itself wanted to secede and become a separate sovereign state for financial reasons (early in the 19th Century), and later about the racism of Woodrow Wilson, who, by the way, imprisoned civilians who dared criticize the draft (and who “let” the 1918 pandemic happen?)
Ever since, we have had bad faith exercises in many states to suppress people of color, especially most of all with gerrymandering, restrictive voting laws, and real estate redlining. When Robinson’s family tried to buy a house in a white area of Memphis, a white person bought it for the family so they could get it.
Robinson spends some space covering the 1921 Tulsa massacre of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood section, which today is largely vacant cemeteries, cut off by a new interstate. He shows footage of rented WWI planes spraying flammables on the black homes. The incident was started after a small accident in an elevator was misinterpreted. There have been several other documentaries about this event (NPR reviews, May 31, 2021). These include: “Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre” (on The History Channel, May 30, 2021), “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street” (CNN and HBO Max, May 31, 2021), and “Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten” (PBS, May 31. 2021).
In the end, he enthusiastically supports Black Lives Matter, whatever the group’s connection to Marxism and questions now about its funding vehicles.
As to what private citizens (especially whites) must do: many white persons (myself) rarely encounter the situations (most of all police profiling – and the film xRays all the major incidents, including George Floyd). The calls for anti-racism as “required” activism are met only when people are socialized into groups, which American hyperindividualism resists.
Name: “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America”
Director, writer: Emily and Sarah Kunstler, Jeffery Robinson
Released: 2022
Format: 1.85:1
When and how viewed: Cinema Arts, Fairfax Va, 2022/2/7 noon small audience
Length: 117
Rating: PG-13
Companies: Off Center Media, Sony Pictures Classics
Link: official
Stars: *****
(Posted on Monday, February 7, 2022 at 6 PM EST by John W Boushka)
Posted on February 7, 2022
Categories: Movies, police profiling, privilege, race, segregation, slavery, voting rights
Tags: redlining, Sony Pictures Classics