Just published in The Independent, which describes itself as "obsessed with independent film since 1978," a substantial interview with Jeremy Dean, producer and director of Dare Not Walk Alone.
Thanks to Adrienne in DC for pointing out the following commentary written shortly after Barrack Obama's victory. Posted by Hamilton Nolan, it uses the Monson pool incident as a sort of benchmark of where race relations were at in America 44 years before the historic 2008 presidential race. Nolan's observations are worth pondering:
"The more relevant question may not be "What does Obama mean for Black America?" It may be, instead, "What does Black America mean any more?" And if every non-black person goes out and has a conversation about that question with somebody who might actually know the answer, we'll all have made some good old-fashioned racial progress." Hamilton Nolan, Gawker.comWe couldn't agree more. Encouraging inter-racial dialog has always been one of the main goals of Dare Not Walk Alone and I see it happening after each screening I attend. As Nolan notes "with every year that passes, and every successive generation that's born, our country becomes less white, more diverse." It's up to each of us to decide what that means for us, hopefully after considering a diversity of input.
Jeremy just got back from events at Mercyhurst College and Notre Dame University. Both went really well. There were over 200 students at one of the screenings. He did several classroom visits and conducted Question & Answer sessions after each screening, receiving a lot of thanks and encouragement.
(If you would like to book the film on your campus or want to get in touch with Jeremy for an interview please email speaker@dnwa.info.)
There's no doubt that the topic of race in American politics is a hot one right now, on news networks as well as on campuses, even as the two presidential campaigns steer clear of the subject (which we totally get, I mean neither Obama or McCain want to bring this up, at least not directly).
But if we have learned anything from the four years we have spent working on the Dare Not Walk Alone project it is that what people say in public and what they think in private can be very different when the topic is race. And don't you get this feeling that many Americans are holding their breath over this election? They are just hoping that race does not play a role in the outcome. We want to believe we are past that. But we're just not sure.
We know a lot of Obama supporters are worried that the Bradley-effect may still be very real. ("Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in the polls--the Bradley effect refers a voter tendency to tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate but on election day they vote for his/her white opponent."--Wikipedia)
Pundits and so-called experts appearing all over TV this weekend kept saying the Bradley effect is a thing of the past. But they obviously haven't spent much time living and working in North Florida, where you will find a lot of white people are still angry over the forced desgregation of their once "separate but equal" communities.
We think the reason Jeremy is earning the respect of students at these campus events is that he is an expert. If you spend five years of your life making a documentary about racial issues in American society you've defiintely earned that title. We think folks like CNN, CBS, NBC and BBC America should be talking to Jeremy, not political pundits. And they should be showing clips from Dare Not Walk Alone, where you can almost feel the hatred of white Americans back in 1964, Americans who actively opposed equal rights, with bats and chains and boots. (Those civil rights marches weren't awareness building exercises like a rally for the environment--there was, as Commissioner Errol Jones so wryly points out "opposition.")
And 1964 was not that long ago when you think that some of the white kids attacking blacks on the beaches of Florida back then are just turning 60 this year. As Jeremy's brilliant interview with James Brock in the film makes clear, many of those people are not apologetic for the role they played. But very few of them are as honest with the public as Mr. Brock was with Jeremy in that interview.
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A timely article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times highlights the class/race issue through a discussion of Obama's thoughts on affirmative action. We can frame the issue as a question that may be more challenging than it first appears: Would it be appropriate for Senator Obama's daughters to benefit from affirmative action?
The question can also be framed like this: At what point do inequalities in society become more about class than race? And this question was poignantly raised several years ago during the making of Dare Not Walk Alone. The question naturally arises when the film surveys the current living conditions of some African Americans in a town where one of the great battles of the civil rights movement was fought and supposedly won. And the issue was addressed directly by Dr. Todd Boyd, Professor of Critical Studies at USC, speaking in the film:
"In this generation you have a lot of African Americans who have come up economically. A lot of black people have been assimilated in the society at large. A lot of other people have not. I think the point is, at a certain time it becomes as much about class as it does about race. Now you can’t divorce the fact that being poor and black is worse than being just poor but the poverty component of it is real."
In other words, over the last fifty years the lines have been redrawn. Almost without exception, to be black in 1958 was to be poor. There were also poor white folk in 1958, but being white did not equal being poor. In 2008, to be black is not to be automatically poor. But to be black still means finding yourself subject to institutionalized racism, and probably more so if you are poor and black than if you are black and affluent (although driving an expensive car while being black still seems to be regarded, at least in some parts of the country, as grounds for suspicion).
These words of Dr. Boyd can create something of an acid test of attitudes: being poor and black is worse than being just poor. Some people will balk at that statement. Of course, we think it's hard to watch Dare Not Walk Alone or spend time with black friends and then disagree with it. But the challenge facing Barack Obama, or anyone who wants to tackle the social and economic ills and inequalities of our time, is to walk that delicate path to the common ground where can work on solutions together, poor and affluent, black and white, male and female, and whatever other distinction you want to draw. For as Dr. King said, 40 years ago:
"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people who feel that they have no stake in it, who feel they have nothing to lose."
As reported by the New York Times today, the Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized for critical and crude comments he made about Senator Barack Obama. While regrettable in a number of ways, this incident sheds welcome light on an issue that needs to be discussed more openly, the question of responsibility for the current state of affairs in poor black communities. One is reminded that the director's original tag line for Dare Not Walk Alone was "The War of Responsibility." Watching the movie certainly puts sentiments like Rev. Jackson's in context.
Now Senator Obama is inclined to say that absentee fathers are, at least in part, to blame for some of the problems afflicting black Americans, for example: “We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.” Rev. Jackson thinks this is “talking down to black people.” Rev. Jackson says other issues should be highlighted, including unemployment, the mortgage crisis and the number of blacks in prison. In other words, past actions by white are also to blame.
According to a statement by Rev. Jackson reported in the Times: “My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility.”
Surely both men are right. There is definitely a woeful lack of good choices in some communities. And bad choices by white politicians have not helped. It has to be very discouraging to grow up in a neighborhood that has no sewer system and then watch your county commissioners divert federal funds intended for sewer improvements into a wealthy and predominantly white sub-division. Or attend a school that has far less resources than the white school on the other side of town.
But the fact is, some people succeed despite such things, and maybe some of them are able to do so because they have fathers who stuck by them and encouraged them. And while some fathers shirk their responsibilities for purely selfish reasons, others find themselves ill-equipped to cope with their responsibilities. As the Times points out, the way you see this issue is partly determined by your age. Here's what Rev. Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, who serves as a national co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign, had to say: “Reverend Jackson is my dad, and I’ll always love him...[but]...I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”
Back in 2003-2004, when Dare Not Walk Alone was conceived, it was almost impossible to think that America could have a public debate on this topic. That is one reason so few people were prepared to back the film. Which proves things can change a lot in four years.
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As the dialog about race in America spreads from the campaign trail to the Sunday talk shows, from blogs to bars and coffee shops, there is one movie ideally placed to serve as the centerpiece of that dialog: Dare Not Walk Alone.
This is a documentary that doesn't shy away from hard-to-watch images of past intolerance or present inequality, yet manages to find signs of hope in both the past and present.
Hailed by critics as "brave filmmaking" and "a triumph of outrage and empathy" it opens next week in Los Angeles. (For show times and all the other info click here.) If enough people go see this movie in the first week it can secure openings in other cities across America and thus serve as tool by which to tear down the walls of suspicion and discomfort that too often separate Americans along racial lines.
At the beginning of the film we hear Dr. King, speaking in 1964, make what must have sounded at the time like a huge leap of faith: "I believe that the negroes of St. Augustine and their allies in the white community are determined to march the streets of the city until the walls of segregation come crumbling down."
Yet those brave souls, marching in a county where the KKK enjoyed open support, did indeed bring down the walls of segregation. Their determination to meet violence with non-violence, blacks arm-in-arm with whites, eventually forced the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, as the film documents, stark inequities remain, in the very place where people fought for equality forty years ago.
As one Orange County blogger pointed out, Dare Not Walk Alone is the film to see if you want to understand Where the Anger Comes From. It is also a film for those who want to understand how equality and justice can be best served by coming together and seeing eye-to-eye.
(And if enough people turn out to see the film in LA, the rest of America will get a chance to see it too.)
When Senator Barack Obama gave his recent speech titled "A More Perfect Union" he referred to the gap "between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time." Anyone who has seen Dare Not Walk Alone will know what that gap looks like and that it still exists today.
Here's a link to the text and video of the speech and here's the passage that describes what Dare Not Walk Alone has so effectively documented:
"...words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."Those words capture the spirit of the struggles that played out on the streets of St. Augustine in 1964, where ordinary people, black and white, Christian and Jewish--and doubtless other faiths and philosophies as well--put their lives on the line to pass legislation that would finally dismantle the Jim Crow laws and move America closer to "a more perfect Union."
Could America use some perspective on the heated exchanges that followed former first lady Hillary Clinton's LBJ/MLK remarks on the presidential campaign trail last week? Probably.
A good step forward would be to watch Dare Not Walk Alone, the civil rights documentary that shows what really went down on America's streets to force LBJ to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here's what Mrs. Clinton said:
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”Some African-American residents of St. Johns County, Florida, might disagree that it took a president to get it done. They marched for months, were harassed and beaten back for months, and in some cases spent months in jail, to make the point that a civil rights act, languishing in congress, was truly needed.
"Foreign policy and everything could go to hell over this."Those remarks, from White House tapes, never got much air play. The swimming pool incident was widely-reported, but the events leading up to it were not. And the media has never revisited the scene of these events in any depth. We made Dare Not Walk Alone to change that.
We would like to applaud the students of Carnegie Mellon University, and students around the country, for making their voices heard on the issue of racism. Those of us who marched against racism in the sixties have long wondered what it would take to get students back on the streets in the peaceful pursuit of greater social justice. The case of the Jena 6 may be the answer. What do you think?
We thought DNWA supporters might interested in these reflections on race in a discussion hosted at washingtonpost.com.
...Dr. Cornel West, renowned scholar and professor of religion at Princeton University, was online to discuss his upcoming socially conscious recording project, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," (Hidden Beach Forum) which explores the issues of race, the use of the "N-word" in popular culture and hip-hop and the current state of the world...
There are some interesting questions, and answers that reflect on the issues raised by Dare Not Walk Alone. Consider:
"The race problem in America has always been, in part, a class problem and it remains both a matter of economic deprivation and color prejudice."
