On PBS for Black History Month: American Denial

Posted on February 19, 2015 at 3:31 pm

Next Monday, PBS’ Independent Lens series will show “American Denial,” a documentary about where racism comes from and why it is so difficult to overcome.

Follow the story of Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal, whose landmark 1944 study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, probed deep into the United States’ racial psyche. The film weaves a narrative that exposes some of the potential underlying causes of racial biases still rooted in America’s systems and institutions today.

An intellectual social visionary who later won a Nobel Prize in economics, Myrdal first visited the Jim Crow South at the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation in 1938, where he was “shocked to the core by all the evils saw.” With a team of scholars that included black political scientist Ralph Bunche, Myrdal wrote his massive 1,500-page investigation of race, now considered a classic.

An American Dilemma challenged the veracity of the American creed of equality, justice, and liberty for all. It argued that critically implicit in that creed — which Myrdal called America’s “state religion” — was a more shameful conflict: white Americans explained away the lack of opportunity for blacks by labeling them inferior. Myrdal argued that this view justified practices and policies that openly undermined and oppressed the lives of black citizens. Seventy years later, are we still a society living in this state of denial, in an era marked by the election of the nation’s first black president?

American Denial sheds light on the unconscious political and moral world of modern Americans, using archival footage, newsreels, nightly news reports, and rare southern home movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s, as well as research footage, websites, and YouTube films showing psychological testing of racial attitudes. Exploring “stop-and-frisk” practices, the incarceration crisis, and racially-patterned poverty, the film features a wide array of historians, psychologists, and sociologists who offer expert insight and share their own personal, unsettling stories. The result is a unique and provocative film that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what we really believe.

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Race and Diversity Television

Actors Of Color Discuss Racial Stereotypes In Hollywood

Posted on December 19, 2014 at 8:00 am

Film Courage produced this excellent and very compelling film with actors of color talking about the challenges they face in Hollywood. If we did a better job of representing diversity in film, we would not just tell better stories and tell stories better, we would make better progress toward understanding, respect, and justice for all.

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Actors Race and Diversity

Lowe’s Public Relations Mess over “All-American Muslim”

Posted on December 12, 2011 at 11:31 am

“All-American Muslim” is a TLC reality show about five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan. According to TLC, “Each episode offers an intimate look at the customs and celebrations, misconceptions and conflicts these families face outside and within their own community.” The hardware and home improvement chain Lowe’s, one of the advertisers originally supporting the show, has cancelled its commercials because after the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program is “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.” They are urging all advertisers to drop their affiliation with the series.

My friend Christian Toto thoughtfully reviewed “All-American Muslim” for the conservative website Big Hollywood and did not find what the FFA charged:

At times, the show feels like an extended public relations video for hardworking Muslims to show their fellow citizens they have nothing to fear. But “All-American Muslim” is honest enough about some less flattering components of the Islamic faith to keep our respect. And watching an Irish-Catholic family merge peacefully with a Muslim clan reminds us our differences truly can make us stronger – no more how treacly that might sound.

What’s more, “Muslim” makes the case that American culture can have a positive effect on a religion which has festered in some repressive societies. The families of “All-American Muslim” have incorporated the best of their own religion with their American roots.

In responding to the shrill attack from a small group of activists to try to avoid controversy, Lowe’s has only made it worse. A state senator from California has called for them to apologize for what he calls “naked religious bigotry.” Music executive, social activist, founder of a center for inter-racial and interfaith harmony (and brother of a pastor) Russell Simmons has said, “this is the kind of hate that tears this country apart.”

Lowe’s response: “Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lightning rod for many of those views,” the statement said. “As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.”

As a Muslim poster wrote on Facebook, even Muslims who did not care for the show will watch it now. In attempting to silence the program, the FFA has only generated more interest and support for it. In attempting to appease one group of extremists, Lowe’s has infuriated a broader group and found itself better known at this moment for the controversy than for its products and services. A shame that all of this was generated from a television program intended to promote tolerance and understanding.

An Unusual Role for a Black Man in 1940

Posted on October 8, 2010 at 3:02 pm

I love catching up with old films on Turner Classic Movies, so when I saw one called “Third Finger Left Hand” starring two of my favorites, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, released in 1940, I set my DVR. It turned out to be a delightful romantic comedy characteristic of the era. Loy plays a very successful woman executive who made up a fake husband to avoid distracting questions about her romantic life. She tells everyone he is traveling in South America. Douglas finds out what she has done and pretends to be the husband, back from his travels. The expected complications ensue.
But what is not expected is a scene near the end as Loy, Douglas, and the lawyer who hopes to marry Loy are on a train where what at first appear to be typical black porter is waiting on them. And then it turns out that Sam (played by Ernest Whitman) is not a typical porter; he has a law degree, and he knows more about the law than the lawyer he is waiting on. For 1940, in an era where movies often cut out the scenes featuring African-American performers for distribution in the South, this was remarkably progressive. Even though there was never a suggestion that perhaps Sam might want to leave his job as a porter and go to work in the firm of the white lawyer he outsmarted.
Whitman didn’t make many other films. In those he was listed in the final credits as “Nubian Slave” or “Black Man on Train” or not listed at all. In “Gone With the Wind,” he is listed on the Internet Movie Database as “Carpetbagger’s friend (uncredited). In this movie, even with a significant speaking part, he was not listed in the credits at all, which says more about the racial attitudes at the time than the character he played. In the 1930’s and 40’s, black characters were often the ones in the movie who told the truth or otherwise explained what was going on. This was not a political statement; it was a narrative convenience to put the writer’s voice in a marginalized character who could freely be ignored by the white characters. In a sense, Sam is such a narrative convenience; he shows up to help bring the couple together. But still, Sam and the man who portrayed him, Ernest Whitman, deserve some credit for a brief movie moment where a black man got to show a little bit of what he was capable of.

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Great Movie Moments Neglected gem

Ebert on O’Hehir’s ‘Conspiracy Theory’ About the Christian Director of ‘Secretariat’

Posted on October 8, 2010 at 7:36 am

Roger Ebert has a superb rebuttal to Andrew O’Hehir’s review of “Secretariat” in Salon. Ebert is careful to say that he respects O’Hehir but that this review goes far beyond the usual disagreements about taste and aesthetics. O’Hehir read into the film a political and religious agenda that cannot be supported, simply because the director is a Christian.

Andrew O’Hehir of Salon is a critic I admire, but he has nevertheless written a review of “Secretariat” so bizarre I cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. I don’t find anywhere in “Secretariat” the ideology he discovers there. In its reasoning, his review resembles a fevered conspiracy theory.

O’Hehir criticizes the film for omitting other events of the era though an important plot element concerns the main character’s support for her daughter’s protest of the Vietnam War and a theme of the film is her struggle against the sexism of the time. He actually calls the film “a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl” and brings in references not just to Nazis but to the Klu Klux Klan and to the Tea Party and Glenn Beck.
It’s bad enough to criticize a movie for failing to address every single issue of its era (even if that were possible in a two-hour time slot, it would bury the narrative). It is preposterous to criticize the movie for giving an “evil” name to the rival horse when that was the actual horse’s name. It is offensive to attribute malevolent intentions to a film because the director is Christian. And it is even more offensive to claim that values like dedication and the pursuit of excellence are exclusive to any one religion or political party.
Ebert writes:

O’Hehir mentions that Randall Wallace, who directed the film, “is one of mainstream Hollywood’s few prominent Christians, and has spoken openly about his faith and his desire to make movies that appeal to ‘people with middle-American values’.” To which I respond: I am a person with middle-American values, and the film appealed to me. This news just in: There are probably more liberals with middle-American values than conservatives, especially if your idea of middle-American values overlaps with the Beatitudes, as mine does.

NOTE: O’Hehir has responded to Ebert, saying that “my review of the film was willfully hyperbolic, even outrageous, in hopes of getting people to look at a formulaic Disney sports movie through fresh eyes.” Because there is no easy way to link to his response directly and I believe he makes some good points, I am going to include the full text of his post and Ebert’s reply here:

(more…)

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Critics