Tag: black lives matter

10 Movies to Watch to Educate Yourself on Racism

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Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer, protests have erupted worldwide calling for an end to racism and police brutality. While the issue is centuries old, many people are only beginning to understand how hard it is to be black in today’s world, which is why it is paramount to educate oneself and be a better ally to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. A great way to do this is through movies.

Movies offer a wide range of perspectives on how black Americans and the black community worldwide have contended with white authority. They also depict the daily struggles, micro-aggressions, and stark examples of racism that black people face simply because of the color of their skin.

In the following selection, we have rounded up a few of our favorite films about race for you to watch and better equip yourself for the conversations ahead.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

Let’s start big. This movie is the Oscar-winner for Best Picture in 2014.

The film shows that the black American experience is rooted in slavery. It is based on the real-life memoir of Solomon Northup, a black man who was born free but then kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Soleil O (1973)

This is the debut film of Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo. 

The movie intersecting immigration and racism was shot over the course of four years and follows a black immigrant in Paris in his quest to find a job and settle down. This proves to be very difficult as the man is confronted with outright racism and has no one to turn to.

La Haine (1995)

This 1995 French black-and-white drama film was written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz.

The film is about three young friends and their daily struggles living in the suburbs of Paris, echoing issues still facing migrants in France.

One line spoken in the movie stands out in particular and gives the film all its current relevance: “La haine attire la haine!” or “hatred breeds hatred.” 

13th (2016)

Ava DuVernay’s documentary, “13th,” is a must-watch for anybody who wants to learn about systemic racism in the US.

The film takes a deep look into the disproportionate number of black Americans behind bars, calling it “a modern-day version of slavery.” It also aims to debunk the myth of the inherent black criminality through interviews with formerly incarcerated men and women, politicians, historians, and activists.

The Hate U Give (2018)

This movie is based on Angie Thomas’ 2017 eponymous novel. It tells the story of a black girl going to a white private school across town. Through her experience, the movie takes on themes of racism, police brutality, and black identity.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

This classic tale is adapted from Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.

Set in the summer of 1932, the movie follows the story of Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who represents a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is considered to be one of the first major productions to tackle racist oppression directly. Just like the novel, the movie was a big success and won three Academy Awards.

Dear White People (2014)

“Dear White People” is a series rather than a movie, but the satirical comedy offers a valuable insight into what it means to be black in a white world.

The series follows the journey of four black students at a white elite university in the US.

The series includes open and sometimes confrontational discussions of race. It also tackles gender and class and does a wonderful job exposing the many subtleties in racism.

I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

“I Am Not Your Negro” explores celebrated author James Baldwin’s life, legacy, and activism.

Through personal letters and an unfinished manuscript from Baldwin himself, this documentary tackles race, black identity, oppression, and police brutality.

The film connects Baldwin’s thoughts to the modern day and highlights the uncanny similarity between the events that punctuated Baldwin’s life during the Civil Rights era (1958-68) and events still happening in contemporary America.

Get Out (2017)

Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning feature debut turns modern race relations into a psychological thriller.

The film is about a black man going to visit his white girlfriend’s rich parents only to discover their horrifying secret of luring black people into rich white homes to essentially become enslaved.

Both clever and political, original and creepy, the film takes racism head-on with a stark political awareness. A must-watch!

When They See Us (2019)

Another series rather than a movie, “When They See Us” is worth mentioning because it tells the true story of the Central Park Five, a group of five young black men wrongly convicted of the violent rape of a white woman in 1990.

Created by esteemed director Ava Duvernay, the series recounts the story from the perspectives of the five boys and highlights the effects that the wrongful convictions had on them and their families.

 

Read also: Blackface Puts Arab Celebrities in Line of Fire Amid Anti-Racism Protests

Black Lives Also Matter at Europe’s Borders

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Racists in Europe must have breathed a sigh of relief over the weekend. Thousands rallied across the continent in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and against police brutality, but few even mentioned that the EU is showing a similar disdain and disregard for Black lives at its borders.

In the US, the legacy of slavery is obvious and noticeable on a daily basis, as the victims of American slavery are part of the country’s society. In Europe, the victims of centuries of oppression and slavery are hidden away, kept from even entering the world’s most prosperous region and claiming even a fragment of the results of their ancestors’ labor.

When European empires stretched across the globe, as recently as 70 years ago, colonizers constantly reminded their subjects of their “mother country” in Europe. Now that these countries no longer profit from them, the descendants of the colonized, often separated by only a single generation, are considered unwelcome foreigners, with no right to enter the continent that their ancestors’ suffering helped build.

In a case of incredible projection, Europeans who once invaded countries to extract resources now accuse poor migrants of trying to “profit from and exploit” Europe’s welfare system that their ancestors helped build as much as Europeans did.

Europeans remain shocked and incredulous in the face of US racism but remain blind to their own similar or often even worse treatment of those that do not have the right immigration papers.

Anti-racism protests

European leaders were quick to express their condemnation of the brutal murder of George Floyd and some even highlighted similar forms of racism in Europe. The continent’s continued complicity in the daily deaths and suffering of its own colonial victims did not receive any attention.

Just in the one week since the anti-racism protests spread across the EU, dozens of Black people experienced their own silent and unreported “I can’t breathe” moment as they drowned in the Mediterranean.

Many have commented on the apparent lack of accountability for police violence in the US, but if George Floyd had been a drowning migrant, those who called for the officer to stop could have been prosecuted, as saving a migrant’s life during sea crossings is a crime in several EU countries. All sense of human decency appears to have been abandoned in the concerted effort to ensure Europe’s wealth is never shared with its colonial victims that helped create that wealth.

Countries such as Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy that have extracted untold amounts of wealth from their colonial subjects now accuse the descendants of their victims of exploiting them, with no apparent sense of shame whatsoever. “Let them die because this is a good deterrence,” is how a UN rapporteur described the European strategy.

FRONTEX

In order to avoid a confrontation with Europe’s colonial past, the EU has set up a paramilitary force in control of concentration camps, advanced military hardware, mobilized a $350 million budget, and granted an unspoken license to kill. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency is Europe’s version of a militarized police force, conveniently hidden from citizens’ view and used to commit daily human rights violations.

Black migrants in Europe are not even considered worthy of human rights, if they are not lucky enough to already be in possession of a European passport. Those unfortunate people in dangerously overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean are all structurally denied their human right of asylum (Article 33 of the Geneva Convention on Refugees.)

They are similarly denied the human right to not experience inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) and the right to leave any country (Article 13.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

By keeping migrants away from European shores, the EU is ensuring it does not have to recognize the rights of those attempting the dangerous journey and instead putting that responsibility on regimes it knows will not uphold them.

Europeans have some of the most powerful passports on earth and can travel virtually unimpeded, but apparently see no moral problem in the fact that others are barred from entering their territory.

Deal with the devil

Increased scrutiny of FRONTEX has not changed Europe’s ways, instead it has changed its methods to avoid responsibility. Europe has made deals with oppressive regimes in Turkey and Libya that exchange large amounts of euros to move the structural and continuing death toll of Black people away from European coasts and towards those of North Africa.

The move has led to Libyan coast guard and European ships forcing migrants back to African shores, Libyan concentration camps full of migrants, and a reemergence of slave auctions in Libya.

But another devil with whom European politicians are making a deal is the anti-immigration voting bloc that they aim to appease. Politicians employ many of the brutal strategies to keep former colonial subjects out because of fear of losing support from Europe’s anti-immigrant voters. Far from a fringe group, they constitute enough political power to make even left-wing politicians approach the topic with caution.

Many on Europe’s right claim the continent is doing enough to help Africa through development aid. But the decreasing development budgets of EU countries stand in stark contrast with the net outflow of over $16.3 trillion of wealth extracted from developing countries to developed ones since 1980.

American law enforcement disgracefully kills an average of 1,000 Black people every year, while the EU’s tally in 2019 was 1,283. Its immigration policies killed 2,299 in 2018. The number of recorded deaths has gone down only because rescue ships are no longer searching for migrants and therefore not recording the death toll.

Since 2014, ships have found at least 19,164 migrants dead in the Mediterranean, all simply human beings trying to exercise their human right to claim asylum in Europe.

While Europeans protests in solidarity with America’s anti-racist movements, perhaps they should take a deep look at their own structural and continuing murder of their former colonial subjects in an effort to keep “them” away from Europe’s shores.

Europe needs to stop wagging its finger at others and perhaps take a deeper look into the structural racism and xenophobia that keeps Europe rich at the cost of Black lives, which, unlike those in the US, are lost far away from cameras and moral outrage.

EU Human Rights Court Rules in Favor of BDS Movement

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France has violated the freedom of expression of activists of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS) that aims to protest Israeli apartheid. The ruling is significant as the EU is seeing increasing repression of pro-Palestinian activism, which Israeli lobbyists paint as antisemitic.

French courts had earlier convicted the protesters of “incitement to economic discrimination” after a group of eleven protesters held a demonstration at a supermarket in the small town of Illzach in 2009.

The protesters had handed out leaflets calling for a boycott of Israeli products which French courts, including its top court, upheld as a crime and sentenced each member to pay a €1,000 fine.

Court ruling

The European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) then took the case as “Baldassi and Others v. France,” named after Jean-Michel Baldassi, the leader of the small group of protesters.

On Thursday, June 11, the EHCR unanimously found (PDF) that “incitement to differential treatment is not necessarily the same as incitement to discrimination” and that French courts had violated the protesters’ right of freedom of expression established in article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

After eleven years of ongoing court cases, the EHCR ruled that France must pay each protester €380 to compensate for loss of income due to the court cases, €7,000 for non-quantifiable damages, and €20,000 jointly to cover costs and expenses inflicted on the protesters in their eleven-year legal battle.

BDS response

Rita Ahmad of the Palestinian-led BDS movement said about the ruling: “This is a major legal blow to Israel’s apartheid regime and its anti-BDS lawfare. At Israel’s behest, European governments, especially in France and Germany, have fostered an ominous environment of bullying and repression to silence Palestine solidarity activists.”

Ahmad highlighted the link between Black Lives Matter protests in the US and the BDS movement’s anti-colonial position, saying “at a time when European citizens, inspired by the Black Lives Matter uprising in the US, are challenging the ugly legacy of European colonialism, France, Germany and other EU countries must end their racist repression of human rights defenders campaigning for Palestinian human rights and for an end to Israeli apartheid.”

Ahmad also emphasized the role of European silence on Israeli human rights and international law violations. “Europe is deeply complicit in Israel’s occupation, siege of Gaza and slow ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians.” She promised further activism in Europe, saying that “for as long as this complicity continues, BDS campaigns will too.”

A House Divided, COVID-19, and Protests Exacerbate US Polarization

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The United States seems more polarized today than it has for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic and brutal killing of George Floyd at the hands of police officers and its aftermath are exacerbating existing tensions between liberals and conservatives.

The two sides seem to have a completely different notion of what America should look like and whether or not systemic prejudices are oppressing millions of Americans.

A House Divided

In June 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a US Senate hopeful, delivered a powerful speech before an audience of Republican delegates (who possessed political views now associated with America’s Democratic Party). The speech addressed a fundamental contradiction in the United States.

While the nascent republic took pride in its war of independence from England and championing the ideals of freedom in its famous Declaration of Independence, it continued to enslave millions of people. Voices denouncing slavery, including that of Lincoln, were rising. It was only a matter of time before those who wanted to abolish slavery and those who were ready to die to preserve it would come to a lethal confrontation.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” said Lincoln. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

Lincoln would be forever remembered as one of the greatest presidents (if not the greatest) of the United States. He was the man credited with the emancipation of approximately four million slaves. He also succeeded in preserving the country though leading Union forces through a bloody civil war. Slave states fought ferociously for secession because their economy, based largely on growing cotton, depended on slavery.

Today, it is astonishingly striking how relevant Lincoln’s speech is, as well as the context in which it was delivered.

The legacy of slavery continues to oppress Black Americans

The killing of George Floyd is a manifestation of the struggles people of African descent continue to face in America. While slavery was abolished in the second half of the 19th century, complete equality between the descendants of those slaves and others who have joined America’s Black community, and their white counterparts, has not yet been achieved.

The gap between white and Black Americans is wide in terms of wealth, income, and access to quality education and healthcare. An article published by CNN on June 3 reported the median net worth of the US’ white households is $171,000, almost 10 times that of Black households ($17,600).

While African Americans fall behind in those metrics, they are much more likely to be incarcerated or die during an encounter with the police.

African Americans, according to Pew Research Center, represented 33% of the country’s adult prison population in 2018 while they make up only 12% of the general US population. In comparison, whites accounted for 30% of adult inmates while they represent the majority racial group within the US population, at 63%.

Fact and friction: Questioning white guilt and systemic bias 

The country is incredibly polarized around key issues such as race inequality, treatment of and opportunities for minority groups, immigration, and response to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the divide is a friction over the existence of a problem—systemic racial oppression—in the first place, its scope, and the best way to address it.

Many liberals and progressives see that racial inequality is the legacy of discriminatory policies that, although many have been abolished, continue to ensure people of color are excluded from opportunities that would help them escape poverty and achieve a quality of life similar to that of their white counterparts.

They recognize that white privilege exists, and that people who do not face this type of discrimination should show sympathy with those who get pulled over by the police, roughed up even if they committed no crime, or even shot dead because of the color of their skin and an engrained assumption that they might be armed or dangerous.

Social conservatives on the other hand, in majority white Republicans and mostly concentrated in southern and midwest states as well as rural areas, often believe the system does not discriminate against Black people.

Blaming those who suffer from prejudice

They think white Americans are suffering from “white guilt,” that feeling of shame for all the pain and crimes that people of European descent inflicted on black slaves, their descendants, and other people of color in the past—and the ongoing legacy of such actions, which continues to create difficulties for Americans of color today. Many social conservatives feel this white guilt is unjustified, while liberals may claim it is justified but unproductive.

On the extreme side of the conservative spectrum are those who genuinely believe that white people are under attack in America and that liberals want to “replace” them with other racial groups. They claim a racial superiority akin to that assumed by the Nazis and American slave masters.

Though many conservatives might not say this openly so as not to be labeled “racist,” they would blame Black Americans for their low economic status by insinuating they have a propensity for being “lazy.”

In 2014, former House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan created controversy with his remarks on “inner city” poverty, which he attributed to a lack of appreciation for the “value of work.”

“Inner city” is a term used to designate the overcrowded, poor neighborhoods in a large city. As Black people and other racial minorities largely inhabit these areas, many came to the conclusion that Ryan was making a racist statement.

Disproportionate pandemic consequences

While some politicians, media, and health professionals repeatedly say that COVID-19 does not discriminate—a statement supported by the fact that people from all ages and walks of life, including rich people and statesmen, contracted the virus—it has been widely reported Black people and other minorities have been hit the hardest in majority-white countries such as the US.

Media reports and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in May confirmed that “the new coronavirus is disproportionately striking minority populations — particularly urban blacks and Navajo Indians living on their reservation.”

“Blacks make up 33% of COVID-19 hospitalizations” in New York State while they only account for 18% of the population, reported U.S. News & World Report.

Seventy percent of COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana occurred in the Black community, which only makes up one-third of the state’s population.

In Illinois and Michigan Black people respectively make up 15% and 14% of the population, yet 43% and 40% of those who died in these states were African Americans.

While academic experts pointed to social and economic disparities as a reason why members of certain racial groups are more vulnerable to the disease, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar chose to blame individuals’ unhealthy lifestyles.

Diverting responsibility

U.S. News & World Report cited a recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine which listed a number of factors that can contribute to a higher risk of contracting the virus, including “living in crowded, multigenerational homes, working in a service industry in a job that cannot be done remotely and needing to use public transportation to get to work.”

For Azar, the focus was mainly on the fact that Black people are more likely to suffer from pre-existing health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus, like asthma, heart disease, and cancer. When taken alone, this reality does not give the full picture on why African Americans are bearing the brunt of the country’s COVID-19 infections. Azar’s choice of words could not be more controversial.

“Unfortunately the American population is very diverse … It is a population with significant unhealthy comorbidities that do make many individuals in our communities, in particular African American, minority communities, particularly at risk,” said Azar during an interview with CNN.

It is not clear why the diversity of the US society, something which has been hailed as a positive example, is something to be described as “unfortunate,” unless Azar wished the US was more racially monolithic, meaning more white.

Again, according to Azar and people who follow such a line of logic, the system is not to blame for the sufferings of the Black community in the US. As a result, they would continue to oppose any proposals of public policies that seek to address the social and economic grievances of people of color in America.

While the death of George Floyd and ensuing mass protests imposed for the first time accountability for police officers in their crimes against Black people, the route to achieving economic and social equality in the US is still a long and bumpy road.

 

Read also: US Burns With Anti-Racism Rage One Week After George Floyd’s Murder

US Burns With Anti-Racism Rage One Week After George Floyd’s Murder

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George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in Minneapolis, Minnesota after a white police officer jammed a knee into his throat for seven painful minutes during an arrest for a non-violent crime on May 25. The video documenting the incident, when Floyd repeatedly told officers “I can’t breathe,” triggered a wave of outrage that has transformed into protests across the United States and in major cities around the world. 

Protestors chanting “I can’t breathe” and “George Floyd, say his name” filled the streets of Minneapolis, New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, and 135 other cities around the US. Protests in cities like Phoenix and Albuquerque remained peaceful, while others turned violent, resulting in vandalism, burnt-out buildings, looting, and a heavy-handed police response.

Amid the anger and violence, the message from protesters has been clear: Black lives matter, and systemic racism and injustice must end. The protestors’ messages have spilled onto social media, which has been filled with calls for white people not to be silent, to recognize their privilege, respect black culture and experiences, and move from being passively non-racist to vocally anti-racist. 

Mahira Louis, a 15-year-old protestor from Boston, summed up protestors’ sentiments.  

“They keep killing our people. I’m so sick and tired of it,” Louis told the Associated Press News (AP News).  

“I hate to see my city like this but at the end we need justice,” said Jahvon Craven, an 18-year-old protestor from Minneapolis. 

Trump retreats 

On Sunday evening, as a protest in Washington, D.C. encroached on the White House, Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump into a secure bunker. Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker as protesters in adjacent Lafayette Park chanted “George Floyd” and peppered the presidential mansion with rocks as police and the National Guard held them back.  

The response from US law enforcement and government has been mixed, with some lawmakers praised for their efforts to calm tensions and others including President Donald Trump accused of inflaming them further. Trump’s advisers counseled him against giving an Oval Office address to try and quell the country’s anger, according to reports from White House insiders, but he has continued to tweet about the unfolding situation. 

Police response criticized

Dozens of cities have rolled out night-time curfews, including Minneapolis, where the National Guard and military police are enforcing restrictions. Utopian scenes played out on Sunday evening as military hummers rolled through the suburban streets of Minneapolis and military police viciously ordered citizens to get inside their houses ahead of the 8 p.m. curfew.  

A number of violent police responses to the protests sparked by the police brutality that killed George Floyd have also drawn criticism. In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms fired two officers and placed others on desk duty for using excessive force after video emerged of officers circling a car on Saturday and stun-gunning the occupants.  

The mayor and “mother to four black children” launched a passionate plea for calm in Atlanta on Friday and has since called on Trump to “just stop talking.”  

“He speaks and he makes it worse. There are times when you should just be quiet and I wish that he would just be quiet. Or if he can’t be silent, if there is somebody of good sense and good conscience in the White House, put him in front of a teleprompter and pray he reads it and at least says the right things, because he is making it worse,” she told CNN on Sunday night.   

Pepper spray from police hit black lawmakers Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, 70, and Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin at the end of a rally in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday. “Too much force is not the answer to this,” Beatty said in a Twitter video posted after the incident.  

The police response comes as no surprise to people like the Director of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Christ White. “What’s happening, it’s the way American society has always been,” White said.

Police have arrested over 4,100 people to date in connection with the George Floyd protests. Police have repeatedly used pepper spray, batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and driven their vehicles at demonstrators to disperse and control crowds.  

Read also: US Meets Protests Over Police Brutality With Increasing State Violence 

 

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