Blackkklansman: All lives won't matter until Black Lives Matter

Blakkklansman (2018) is actually the Spike Lee film I’ve seen and it’s surprising that it’s only until now that that has happened. In any case the movie is about Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) who becomes Colorado Springs first African American police officer and shortly after starts to infiltrate the Colorado Sect of the Ku Klux Klan with Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) as his white stand in to fool the Klan, eventually exposing yet unable to stop the terrorist attack.

Even with just how I summarize the film I still can’t find the words to properly describe what this movie is about. Flip says it best that he’s “never thought about my jewish heritage, but now it’s all that I think about.” That’s how I feel about watch Blackkklansman. Don’t get me wrong I liked this film and it’s message about racism and how, even though this was the past it’s still very real and in more many ways even worse now because of what trump and his presidency has done to embolden racists to be more public and overt about it. And yet as a middle class white man all I can’t help but feel guilty about who I am while watching, and that’s the point, it’s supposed to be uncomfortable because this is the first time I’ve truly felt what is was like seeing people on screen who looked like me be the bad guys, being racist and now am now in the position many POC have been in since the inception of film. We see this in the movie when the KKK ceremony they watch D.W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation. The first blockbuster, and it’s about the KKK being the heroes.

Yet I feel like I really can’t talk about what this movie because I don’t know that struggle, I’ve never been a black man in America, I cannot experience that, all I can do is empathize and understand the struggle and use my privilege as a white guy in America to tell other dumb white people “hey, don’t be racist” all call them out on it even if they are my friends, especially if they are my friends. Black Lives Matter.

 

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