Last night I went to see “Origin” now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. for at least another week.
It is a disturbing film about social inequality of African American slaves, Nazi German’s mass extermination of Jews during the Holocaust, and the enduring caste system of Untouchables in India. The film depicts the life of New York Times best selling author Isabel Wilkerson, a Black American journalist who writes about these inequalities in her 2020 book “Caste: The Origins of our Discontent”.
More about the book here: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Wikipedia
The film is powerful and gripping, and follows Wilkerson’s personal suffering of loss of loved ones, as she researches her book. She struggles with understanding the killing of Black Trayvon Martin in Florida by a Hispanic man, and segregation in the Deep South & ongoing racism in America. She travels to Germany and India to understand their so-called caste beliefs. The film also shows Nazis discussing the American Jim Crow laws and how to utilize them in Germany against the Jewish population.
“Origin” shows how an Untouchable/Dalit B.R. Ambedkar raised in India became educated with two doctorates to rise above his caste. But that caste system and prejudice against Dalits persists.
As a descendant of impoverished/indentured servant Japanese immigrants who traveled by boat to the Kingdom Hawaii, I could identify with the subjugation of native/ethnic peoples. My family experienced how Colonial white people wanted to utilize cheap, immigrant labor, and also keep them in in a lower social class. But education is the key to moving out of any social class in America, as my dentist father with his D.D.S. did. But institutional racism has prevented that for Black Americans for generations.
Former CD 8 Congressman Ron Barber and his wife Nancy were at last night’s film showing.
Link to Loft website: Origin – The Loft Cinema, written/directed by Ava DuVernay, with description: “Origin explores the mystery of history, the wonders of romance and a fight for our future.”
It is indeed a film about the horrors of world history, human resilience and perhaps how humans can undo some of this social control and hatred to create a better world.
“She struggles with understanding the killing of Black Trayvon Martin in Florida by a Hispanic man, and segregation in the Deep South & ongoing racism in America.”
I think it was a thrill kill for George Zimmerman.
When I lived In the South (Jax, Florida) it was always black and white. Segregation applied to Black people. I went to school with Hispanic kids, Syrian kids and they were white. No one thought otherwise. No one talked about “people of color” or ethnic identities, all of that is relatively recent in the Deep South.
Thanks for your comment Liza. Growing up in Hawaii, the white plantation foremen/luna sent their kids to private schools, so not to public schools with the rest of us. It was also a class distinction, as Asian people with $ were allowed to send their kids to those private schools as well. Remember that even Black kids like Obama could go to a private school like Punahou HS in Honolulu, on scholarship.
We only lived once in the South (Charlottesville, VA) which had recently integrated, but people still used the N word, and stared at me and my white husband. Often I didn’t get served or greeted in stores. At that time there were still equestrian statues of Southern generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
As an older person, when I think about these things that I’ve seen and heard, it is even more
incomprehensible than ever.
Racism in all its manifestations leaves permanent scars on both the victims and the witnesses, especially children. I wish more people understood that.