Films tackle racism white supremecy

The documentaries Black Sheep and A Night at the Garden both tackle racism and white supremacy.  
Black Sheep is a first-person profile of a black youth relating how he survived his family’s move from London to the countryside by changing to “fit in” with his violently racist neighbors. The interviews with the main subject are mesmerizing and harrowing, but its power is undercut by the unnecessary incorporation of reenactment sequences. They feel as though the filmmakers had no better idea as to how to make the story feel cinematic enough.  
A Night at the Garden is composed entirely of archival footage, presenting a brief glimpse of an American Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden in 1939 (20,000 people were in attendance). While a longer look at the night in question could have been far more edifying, the brief running time is part of the point. Made by Field of Vision, it’s intended as a pointed, punchy reminder of how antisemitism and fascism are not recent developments in American populist movements.
READ
Author, Small Press Publisher, Mosaic Artist, Curator, Blog Experiments

Comments

Post a Comment

Indian Slavery

White Fragility

think

absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption

Little Man Little Man

Popular posts from this blog

What is “blackbirding”?

Image
Elles Houwelingon, January 21, 2019, New Historian



Everyone has heard shocking stories about the transatlantic slave trade, but this was hardly the only type of slavery in which Europeans were engaged. The Pacific slave trade involved the forceful enslavement of Pacific islanders from the mid 19thcentury to the 20thcentury. This particular type of slavery is often referred to as “blackbirding”.

The primary focus of “blackbirding” was to supply cheap labor to sugar-cane plantations on Pacific plantations, particularly in Queensland, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands. This was mainly achieved through trickery and kidnapping. They were frequently deceived about the length of time for which they were “contracted” and the nature of their “contract”. If all this failed, the islanders were simply loaded onto slave ships at gunpoint.

The captured islanders were collectively known as Kanakas, which means Person or Man in Hawaiian. These workers were essentially treated a…
Read more

Andrew Jackson Was A Real-Life Horror Movie Monster

Image
The truth about Jackson’s savagery was just as disturbing as the fake news. After a particularly bloody battle in 1814, Andrew Jackson’s men counted the dead Indians by cutting off their noses. They collected 557 noses.

and... (this comment)

Jackson ran an ad in the Nashville Gazette, in October, 1804, for the capture of a runaway slave, which stated that in addition to the reward, he would pay an extra $10 per 100 lashes (up to 300), to anyone who willing to inflict them upon his miscreant property. He was known to hold a vengeful lifetime grudge against anyone whom he felt had slighted him, regardless of how minor the supposed offense. His betrayal the Choctow tribe, whom he persuaded to become American allies over the British during the war of 1812, culminated in the “Indian Removal Act” (Trail of Tears), of which he took personal responsiblity to see implemented, resulted in the death of thousands of men, women and children. It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White…
Read more