WHO WE ARE: A CHRONICLE OF RACISM IN AMERICA
STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 | REGULAR ADMISSION PRICES
PASSES ARE ACCEPTED FOR THESE SCREENINGS
Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd, Tucson 85716
All visitors to The Loft Cinema will need to show proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID test for all screenings and events at the theatre. The Loft Cinema requires ALL customers, employees, and volunteers, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks while visiting its campus. Masks may be removed while seated and actively eating or drinking.
To view all of our Covid Safety Protocols visit: loftcinema.org/covid
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Special opening night community dialogue on Friday, February 25th at 6:00pm, co-presented by Visceral Change and The Loft Cinema! Immediately following the film, join panelists Dr. Sherard A. Robbins, Founder/ Chief Executive Officer of Visceral Change, Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, Founder/Director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace and Social Justice, and Jamie Utt-Schumacher, Founder/Director of Education at CivilSchools: Building Bullying-Free Culture, for an in-person discussion of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. Film at 6:00pm; Post-Film Discussion at 8:00pm. Regular admission prices.
“Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, in Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, criminal defense/civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America. Winner of the Documentary Spotlight Audience Award at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival. (Dir. by Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler, 2021, USA, 117 mins., rated PG-13)”
https://loftcinema.org/film/who-we-are/
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I am shocked that this lie is being perpetrated about “racism in America” No racism didn’t begin with the importation of people from African kingdoms. It began in 1492 with the genocide and enslavement of indigenous peoples, first in the Americas and then what became the United States. When are people going to stop blackwashing and whitewashing our history? This country was founded on racism, genocide, religious bigotry and slavery of Native Americans. Native American slaves were shipped off to southern plantations, the UK, the Bahamas, Jamaica, etc. I met a descents of my ancestor in Bermuda. Americans are more comfortable focusing on the Black experience but not face the horrors committed again Native Americans and our true history. The Indian Slave Law in CA wasn’t eliminated until after the Emancipation Proclamation, but don’t talk about that. Shameful.
You’re right, Catherine.
Colonization of the Americas by Europeans resulted in the deaths of 90 percent of the pre-Columbian population of indigenous people. The ones who survived were not treated well by the colonizers especially in North America. The Spanish conquerors in Central and South America seemed more into mining gold and silver to send back to Spain and forcing indigenous people to become Catholics. Here in the US we preferred that all indigenous people live on reservations. The history of the Europeans colonizing the “New World” is a shameful history, to be sure.
I think that the Black experience receives more attention because Black people were never hidden away on reservations in the US. They were in ghettos and housing projects and redlined areas but they were always visible and intermingling with white people in various ways. And because they had at least some limited access to education and other resources they were able to develop brilliant leadership for the Civil Rights Movement. And that changed everything. It’s worth noting that the CRM was led by Black people with a relatively small amount of white support and a great deal of pushback from whites and law enforcement throughout the civil rights era (1954 – 1968).
Learning about the Black experience in the US is a relatively new thing for a lot of white people. As more opportunities open up for Black filmmakers and documentarians, the more this material becomes available and the more we learn. It is always better and more interesting when people tell their own stories.
Catherine, there is another fundamental difference between the Black experience in the US and that of Native Americans. Black people fought for inclusion in white society and not because they were especially enamored of white people. The leaders of the CRM understood that whites were the dominant race and would be for a long time. Blacks needed economic equality, voting rights, and equality before the law, but even more importantly they needed power. Without inclusion in the dominant society there would be no power sharing.
So, I don’t think that Americans are “more comfortable” with the Black experience than with Native Americans but our lives are just more intertwined. And I agree that Americans do not want to face the horrors committed against Native Americans.