Racial injustice has been a hot-button issue in both fiction and nonfiction films since…well, since film began. With the death of George Floyd, racial tension spilled out into violence and protest across America. Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America discusses not only the current racial climate but the events leading up to it. It would make a fine addition to Black History Month programming and film collections with a focus on race and American history.
The film’s mouthpiece is Former ACLU Deputy Legal Director and Harvard-educated lawyer Jeffrey Robinson. You see how, at eleven years old, Robinson attended hearings for those arrested in the Memphis Sanitation Worker Strike, which inspired him to become an attorney. After years as a lawyer, Robinson turned his focus on the issue of white supremacy and black oppression and was disgusted by what he saw as he shared his findings across the country.
The film cuts from a Juneteenth performance of Robinson’s findings to archival footage of the imprints of racism in society. You see also Robinson meeting with historical figures, those who lived through some of the most tumultuous times in America’s history. The film doesn’t shy away from hard emotions, as you go to Alabama to the site of a 1947 lynching or to a hanging tree in Charleston, South Carolina. The film demands attention, as Robinson himself asks the viewer to place themselves in history. Are any of us complicit? Can we be doing more? Robinson combines a magnificent pathos with fiery rage and compassion and demands that we reckon with our past and help create a more tenable future. Recommended for political science, history, African-American studies, and sociology students.