The Living Consequences

Racialicious has an insightful post, originally written at What Tami Said, arguing that the superficiality of the debate about race in our society is encouraged by the way the media approaches race.

However, the root cause turns out to be not the media itself, but the public consuming the media. For the post explains that most Americans are passive consumers of information with remarkably short attention spans, and as a result, the media tends to present news and debate in limited and formulaic ways that appeal to most consumers.

Yesterday, we held a screening of Traces of the Trade in Providence for Rhode Island educators.

The screening, sponsored by the Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and hosted by Rhode Island College, was intended to solicit feedback on the uses of the film in the classroom context.

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I went yesterday to a talk given by Randall Robinson at Harvard Law School, based on his latest book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.

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The local Rhode Island screenings of Traces are generating a fair amount of attention in the state.

Tuesday’s screening in Bristol has resulted in two stories, one in the Providence Journal (“Bristol’s Ties to Slavery Featured“) and another in a local paper, “Slavery Documentary Draws a Packed House.” This is precisely what we were hoping for, as the R.I. screenings are intended to raise the visibility of the film in the state, while the Bristol screening was particularly aimed at giving the residents of Bristol a chance to become familiar with the documentary and to offer their feedback.

And the Phoenix has a story this week, “Buried History: Filmmaker Sparks Fresh Dialogue About RI’s Slave-Trading Past,” focused on last week’s screening in Providence at the Black Repertory Company. (Disclaimer: I was interviewed for the story.)

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Yesterday, we held the Bristol, R.I. premiere of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, at the Roger Williams University School of Law.

This screening was intended to introduce the film to interested residents of Bristol, where the D’Wolf family was based and where many of the U.S. scenes were filmed. It was also an opportunity to thank some of the Bristol residents who assisted with filming, and to let them share their reactions and concerns.

The screening drew about 330 people, far more than the appellate courtroom designated for the screening could hold. To the credit of the law school and its staff, we were quickly given a large lecture hall for a second, simultaneous screening, which was also quickly filled to capacity.

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Paul Davis, a reporter for the Providence Journal, attended the screening of Traces of the Trade on Tuesday at the Providence Black Repertory Company.

This morning, he has an article in the Journal, headlined “Shaking the Family Tree: Filmmaker Explores Her Family’s Role in the Slave Trade,” and describing the film and its context in detail, as well as responses to it at the screening.

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I went with my cousin Katrina Browne to Providence this evening, for a local screening of her film, Traces of the Trade. This is her documentary about the journey which ten of us undertook to re-trace the footsteps of our ancestors in the slave trade, and to explore the meaning of that legacy today.

The screening was hosted by the Providence Black Repertory Company, which provided an excellent venue and generated a large turn-out.

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I want to offer up this passage by Senator Obama, on his racial and ethnic background and experiences, and implicitly, how he tends to view race and ethnicity in our society:

As the child of a black man and white woman, born in the melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who is half-Indonesian, but who is usually mistaken for Mexican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, I never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.

— Senator Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p. 231

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As we continue to screen Traces of the Trade in more venues, and prepare to take the film nationwide in the coming year, we’re going to be holding a weekend retreat in December with staff from Crossroads.

Crossroads conducts training sessions to assist institutions in analyzing and addressing systemic racism in institutional contexts. They are going to be conducting a version of their 2-1/2 day training workshop for Traces participants and staff. The particular goal of the training, in our case, is to aid our ability to have conversations about race with those who may have different perspectives, including each other and those who view the film.

I’m particularly interested in Crossroad’s focus on historical racism and on institutional analysis and change.

Marcus Rediker has written a fascinating new history of the transatlantic slave trade, The Slave Ship: A Human History. His approach is to focus on the slave ship as a social institution and a window into the slave trade itself.

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