Binary thinking states , if youve seen the film : talk . If youve not : shut up . Still not seem the film . Still not shutting up about it ... Even so, it is unfortunate that in the film, the victimized blacks are generally victims and very seldom, drivers of their own agency. When one of them, a man called Robert, speaks of resistance aboard a boat, his ideas are targeted at the ‘better slaves’ who were ‘free men’ before their calamity. He speaks with disdain about the other slaves who were born and bred on the plantation, observing that they did not know how to resist and refers to them as ‘niggers.’ This introduces the discourse of intra-black class divisions and attitudes, where some blacks define themselves against others that might not be so fortunate with accessing education and property. The problem of intra-black hatred is itself an offshoot of white supremacy that made of Africans, inferior ‘niggers’ who could only achieve humanity with the attainment of an elusive whiteness. It appears then that white supremacy does not entirely rely on institutionalized systems for its continuance; it also needs ‘free’ blacks to banish the rest of the black world into a state of unfreeness.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 07:50:24 +0000