[Netflix documentary Stamped from the Beginning takes Ibram X
Kendi’s best-selling book and explores the question ‘what’s
wrong with Black people?’ tracing racism throughout American
history. ]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING” THIS FILM IS NEEDED NOW MORE THAN
EVER’: EXPLORING THE ROOTS OF US RACISM  
[[link removed]]


 

David Smith
November 20, 2023
The Guardian
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Netflix documentary 'Stamped from the Beginning' takes Ibram X
Kendi’s best-selling book and explores the question ‘what’s
wrong with Black people?’ tracing racism throughout American
history. _

Ibram X Kendi: ‘Americans say that this is the land of equality
whereas racist ideas about hierarchy are persistent.’ , Photograph:
Netflix

 

For 18 white men deemed “the most respectable characters in
Boston”, it defied credulity. How could Phillis Wheatley
[[link removed]],
an African-born Black teenager sold into slavery, have produced such
refined, exquisite poetry? The sceptics set about interrogating her to
determine whether she was the true author. She passed the test and her
book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in
1773 with the assistance of wealthy abolitionists.

STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING REVIEW – TRACING RACISM THROUGHOUT
AMERICAN HISTORY
[[link removed]]

Wheatley’s divine spark destroyed a myth of Black inferiority that
generations of white people had painstakingly constructed to justify
slave labour. Two and a half centuries later, Amanda Gorman, a
22-year-old African American woman, became the youngest poet to read
at a presidential inauguration. Yet the Black Lives Matter movement is
already facing new backlash
[[link removed]].

It’s a familiar rhyme in Stamped from the Beginning
[[link removed]],
a Netflix documentary by Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams,
based on Ibram X Kendi’s bestselling book of the same name and aimed
at a global audience. The film opens and closes with the question:
“What’s wrong with Black people?”

In between, it explores how anti-Black racist ideas were created,
spread and deeply rooted in American society, often via popular
culture, making a case that the history of racism is the history of
power. It uses a vivid animation process that blends live action with
the art of the era along with music composed by Nate Wonder and Roman
GianArthur, brothers and longtime collaborators
[[link removed]] with
Janelle Monáe.

When it comes to talking heads, the usual suspects are out. Apart from
Kendi himself, Stamped from the Beginning has an all-female line-up of
Black academics and activists including Angela Davis
[[link removed]],
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Jennifer
Morgan and Stephanie Jones-Rogers.

As comedian Trevor Noah put in his parting shot from Comedy
Central’s The Daily Show last year: “If you truly want to learn
about America, talk to Black women.”

Williams [[link removed]], whose credits include The
1619 Project, High on the Hog, Music by Prudence, Life, Animated,
Cassandro and Love to Love You, Donna Summer, recalls via Zoom: “It
was a very deliberate choice because when I got handed a list of
academics and experts and historians, there were all the usual names
on there that you always see

“But I noticed the pattern that a lot of the work around racism was
being done by Black women at Howard and Harvard and Princeton and Yale
so I had the idea why don’t we only use Black women to tell this
story? Black women were always the forefront of the resistance
movement and, in my eyes, never get their due.”

He adds: “There was resistance to that and I held steady because to
me it makes a huge statement in the film. Not only do we feature the
stories of Black women like Phillis Wheatley and Harriet Jacobs
and Ida B Wells
[[link removed]] but
it’s Black women who have been on the front lines fighting this
war.”

The women featured in the film speak with a bracing candour unlikely
to be found on PBS or the BBC. One describes Thomas Jefferson, the
third US president who enslaved more than 600 people during his
lifetime, as “full of shit”.

Williams explains: “To all the women participants, I said I don’t
want to hear your academic speak, I don’t want you to talk the
talking points, I want you to talk about this from a very personal
perspective, I want you to talk about how it makes you feel
emotionally, how this work you’re doing, how this history affects
you as a person. They all were very frank and honest. There were
tears. There was a lot of emotion and that was important to me._”_

Stamped from the Beginning emphasizes the centrality of rape and
sexual violence in the experience of enslaved women. Kendi weighs in:
“People are familiar with enslaved women being raped but I don’t
think people are familiar with the extent of sexual violence.
As Stephanie Jones-Rogers
[[link removed]]stated, the
violence of slavery was a sexual one – you can’t separate sexual
violence from the violence of slavery.

“We tried to show that the way that enslavers sought to justify
their pervasive sexual violence was through the idea of Black people
being hypersexual. That’s where the myth of Black hypersexuality
comes in to cover up who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

“Even as Black women were the victims of sexual violence, to present
it as if they were coming on to their rapist. That was a pivotal
section in the film and certainly that is still resonant today as
Black women continue to be hypersexualized and even Black men are
hypersexualised.”

It is just one example of how racist narratives and tropes were
constructed to justify and rationalise the status quo. Kendi
continues: “Because of these racist ideas, we’re constantly
covering up or excusing or justifying violence or policies or power
structures. Once you see through these ideas, once you unlearn these
racist ideas, then that allows you to see the violence and see the
racist policies and see the structures and systems and conditions that
are actually harming Black people._”_

Wheatley, who spent most of her life enslaved and in service to John
and Susanna Wheatley of Boston, represented an anomaly
[[link removed]] in
the matrix of white supremacy. She learned to read and write and, by
14, had begun to write poetry that would soon be published and
circulated among the elites in America and Britain. Her gift shook the
moral universe of the white ruling class.

Kendi elaborates: “Phillis Wheatley came of age and was writing
poetry in the 1760s and the 1770s, when even people like Thomas
Jefferson were writing that Black people’s intelligence was not
anything more than elementary. It was widely believed that Black
people could only essentially be labourers to justify enslavement.

“Here came along this Black girl and ultimately this Black woman who
was not only writing poetry but some of the finest poetry of her day
[[link removed]] in
the middle of the American Revolution. What I think people are going
to see from from Phillis Wheatley is that she was the founding mother
of this nation because she was truly fighting for equality.”

The founding fathers, however, emerge less creditably. Jefferson
believed that Black people were racially inferior and “as incapable
as children”. Yet he fathered at least six children with Sally
Hemings, an enslaved woman, during a relationship spanning nearly four
decades. Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence with its
words “all men are created equal”, embodies the contradictions of
America [[link removed]].

Kendi adds: “With Thomas Jefferson, we tried to show his internal
paradox. On the one hand, writing a declaration of independence and
ushering in this projected American creed of freedom and marriage
equality while enslaving over 600 people over the course of his
lifetime.

“Even more specifically in the film we show on the one hand he was
speaking out against interracial sex but then engaging in it himself
privately. That contradiction and the paradox and saying one thing and
doing another in many ways is at the heart of the United States,
particularly around the issue of racist ideas, because on the one
hand, Americans say that this is the land of equality whereas racist
ideas about hierarchy are persistent._”_

Stamped From the Beginning was National Book Award winner in 2016. His
follow-up, How to Be an Antiracist
[[link removed]],
became a best seller in 2019 and catapulted him to celebrity the
following year when the police murder of George Floyd
[[link removed]],
an African American man in Minneapolis, sparked mass protests. For one
long, hot summer there was a whiff of revolution in the air as
politicians, corporate leaders, educators and entertainers promised to
embrace the principles of antiracism.

But the world became consumed by distractions old and new. The Black
Lives Matter signs that graced many gardens were gradually replaced by
Ukrainian flags. The US Congress failed to reach a bipartisan
agreement on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Police shot and
killed at least 1,096 people – a record – last year, according
to a count by the Washington Post
[[link removed]].

And as Stamped from the Beginning chronicles, progress is usually met
with a ferocious backlash. Republican politicians have moved to ban
school teachers from emphasising the role of systemic racism in
shaping the nation; Florida even decided to teach that some Black
people benefited from slavery
[[link removed]] because
it taught them useful skills. A whitewashing of history is under way.

Williams comments: “The racial reckoning in America, sadly, is over.
People have forgotten about this moment; they’ve definitely
forgotten about George Floyd. Even the media, all this stuff that they
commissioned in the wake of George Floyd, they’re not interested in
commissioning that stuff anymore, which is why Stamped is so important
because they are still killing Black people and there is still police
violence against Black people.

“More than ever the country is divided and this film is needed now
more than ever in this very tumultuous and difficult time in America.
We’re out here doing the work and informing people. Luckily we have
a platform like Netflix
[[link removed]] because Dr Kendi is
probably one of the most banned, if not the most banned, author in
America but you can’t ban Netflix. Netflix is in every home so
it’s going to get to the people and hopefully spark conversation
that is so sorely needed, especially now in this country.”

Kendi chimes in: “In 2020 about a thousand Americans were being
killed by the police. A thousand Americans continue to be killed by
the police each year. So still about three Americans a day were killed
by the police and those Americans are disproportionately Black, brown
and indigenous and so I think the truth is many people in 2020 were
demonstrating and trying to build momentum to eliminate police
violence, to completely reimagine how to make our community safe.

“But, unfortunately, instead of people recognising police violence
as something that was dangerous, people have instead looked at those
of us who are identifying the problem of police violence as the real
danger.

“The irony is that similarly, as we showed in the film, after the
civil war, when when Black people started creating HBCUs [Historically
black colleges and universities
[[link removed]]]
and making a life for themselves and building their homes and building
their organisations and demonstrating that they in no way were
inferior, they faced not only a backlash but their efforts to own
businesses, their efforts to wield political power was seen as a
problem, just as similar efforts today have been problematised and
demonised.”

Kendi himself has not been immune in his role as a public influencer.
The right accused him
[[link removed]] and
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist who oversaw the 1619 Project, of
indoctrinating children with divisive ideas. The Center for Antiracist
Research, set up by Boston University
[[link removed]] in
the aftermath of Floyd’s death, has been forced to scale back under
Kendi’s leadership.

More than half of the center’s 36 employees are being laid off, the
New York Times reported
[[link removed]] in
September, while its budget is being cut in half. The paper noted that
funding for racial justice causes dwindled as Floyd’s murder faded
from the headlines – but also that the university is conducting an
inquiry into complaints from staff members, including with regard to
the center’s management culture (a recent investigation
[[link removed]] concluded
that Kendi’s center did manage funds properly despite earlier
accusations).

Kendi says now: “To me the story was that in the last three years,
not only have those opportunities for these types of projects
dwindled, not only have those of us who are engaging in anti-racist
work been attacked, not only have our books been banned, but
organisations aren’t being nearly at the level they were in 2020.

“There’s been a massive decline which has led to many
organisations having to pivot and downsize and restructure like ours
has. It’s part of a larger trend that we’re hoping this film will
ultimately reverse so people can yet again realise what the real
problem is, which is not Black people.”

Williams, who has served on the board of governors for the Academy of
Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, sees that same trend infecting his
own professional world. He says: “Hollywood, like the rest of
America, had a brief moment where they wanted to explore and have a
racial reckoning and now they’ve forgotten about it.

“They’ve abandoned that and so abandoned Black Americans not only
in that they’re not greenlighting and commissioning work like this
but they’ve also let go of all their diversity hires
[[link removed]] that
they hired around George Floyd.”

In such a climate, Williams contends, films such as Stamped from the
Beginning can open the industry’s eyes to the harm it is causing.
“I hope they’re open to watching the film. I hope the executives
in Hollywood, the people who make the decisions, watch Stamped from
the beginning and it makes them think about the decisions they make
going forward. There is a resistance movement in Hollywood as well as
in the rest of America and we will fight on.”

“There’s been a massive decline which has led to many
organisations having to pivot and downsize and restructure like ours
has. It’s part of a larger trend that we’re hoping this film will
ultimately reverse so people can yet again realise what the real
problem is, which is not Black people.”

Williams, who has served on the board of governors for the Academy of
Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, sees that same trend infecting his
own professional world. He says: “Hollywood, like the rest of
America, had a brief moment where they wanted to explore and have a
racial reckoning and now they’ve forgotten about it.“They’ve
abandoned that and so abandoned Black Americans not only in that
they’re not greenlighting and commissioning work like this but
they’ve also let go of all their diversity hires
[[link removed]] hat
they hired around George Floyd.”

“They’ve abandoned that and so abandoned Black Americans not only
in that they’re not greenlighting and commissioning work like this
but they’ve also let go of all their diversity hires
[[link removed]] that
they hired around George Floyd.”

In such a climate, Williams contends, films such as Stamped from the
Beginning can open the industry’s eyes to the harm it is causing.
“I hope they’re open to watching the film. I hope the executives
in Hollywood, the people who make the decisions, watch Stamped from
the beginning and it makes them think about the decisions they make
going forward. There is a resistance movement in Hollywood as well as
in the rest of America and we will fight on.”

*
'STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING' IS NOW AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX

_[DAVID SMITH is the Guardian's Washington DC bureau chief.
Click here
[[link removed]] for David's
public key. Twitter @smithinamerica
[[link removed]] ]_

* Film
[[link removed]]
* Documentary Film
[[link removed]]
* 'Stamped from the Beginning
[[link removed]]
* Ibram X Kendi
[[link removed]]
* Roger Ross Williams
[[link removed]]
* Racism
[[link removed]]
* white supremacy
[[link removed]]
* history of racism
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]