- Hello and welcome to the second program
in the series Racism is
a Public Health Issue,
Examining the Impact of Police Brutality
on Black Communities
in the Age of COVID-19.
I would like to begin by
acknowledging our presence
on the ancestry and unceded territory
of the Gabrielino-Tongva, Chumash,
and the Fernandeño Tataviam peoples,
representing the Indigenous
groups in the area
that comprises Los Angeles County.
We pay our respects to the
communities past and present.
My name is Christine Y. Kim.
I am a curator of
Contemporary art at LACMA
and co-founder of GYOPO,
both of whom are very pleased
to co-present today's program
with For Freedoms and SDA.
Please follow these
incredible organizations
and the promising work
that they are doing.
I want to thank Michael Govan,
Naima Keith, Rita Gonzalez,
and LACMA for so readily
and whole-heartedly
agreeing to partner with
these phenomenal organizations
for our first talk in the
"Racism is a Public Health Issue"
series from May 7th
that examined the rise of
anti-Asian racism and xenophobia
that has proliferated during
the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was our first attempt at
unpacking racial inequities
and prejudice at the
intersection of the pandemic,
and art and culture in a public forum.
After the killing of George Floyd
in Minneapolis on May 25th,
and ensuing about Black
Lives Matter protests,
we quickly pivoted to
focus on systemic racism
and police violence
against African Americans,
which are hardwired into
the fabric of this country,
from its founding, committed
to capitalism, colonialism,
and slavery, to today,
with BLM as the largest protest
movement in U.S. history,
happening during the
nation's most pervasive
and destabilizing health pandemic,
disproportionately ravaging
Black, Brown, immigrant,
and marginalized communities since March,
with no clear end in sight.
28% of people killed by
the police in this country
are Black despite being
only 13% of the population.
Our screens and feeds
are filled with the news
and depictions of the
brutalization of Black people
at the hands of the police and
the criminal justice system,
exacerbating adverse chronic stress,
higher rates of comorbidities
and lower life expectancy.
Poet, scholar, and president of
The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Elizabeth Alexander,
recently wrote about
how Black bodies in pain
have been an American
spectacle for centuries,
from auction blocks, public
whippings, and rapes,
to lynchings, police
beatings, and imprisonment.
Blacks have not only been
victims of racist violence,
but quote "in one way or another,
Black people have also been looking,
forging a traumatized
collective historical memory
which is re-invoked at
contemporary sites of conflict."
Similarly, with this pandemic,
African Americans are dying
at a rate nearly twice
their share of the population.
Structural factors such as unemployment,
lack of access to medical
care and health insurance,
and essential work and
environmental exposures
are the biggest drivers
of infection and death.
In the words of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi,
director of the Anti-Racist
Research and Policy Center
at American University,
quote "There is something about living
through a deadly pandemic
that cuts open the shell,
removes the flesh,
and finds the very core
of American existence:
the slaveholder clamoring
for his freedom to infect,
the enslaved clamoring for
our freedom from infection."
end quote.
Tonight, we are joined by
some of the most respected
scholars of the current media, medical,
and cultural landscapes.
Our panelists will provide a framework
for understanding race-related
stress and trauma,
as it relates to primary source footage
depicting Black suffering,
which is circulated and weaponized,
as well as the transformative
and radical possibilities
of cinema and contemporary art.
I am honored and grateful to welcome
our four esteemed scholars, practitioners,
and cultural producers
to our virtual stage.
Starting with Dr. Darnell Hunt
who will be our first speaker.
Darnell Hunt is Dean of the
Division of Social Sciences
and Professor of Sociology
and African American Studies at UCLA.
Dr. Hunt has written
extensively on race and media,
including four books and numerous
scholarly journal articles
and popular magazine articles.
Dr. Hunt has been a
frequent public commentator
on questions of media and race.
Welcome, Dean Hunt.
Dr. Eraka Bath MD, is board
certified in child, adolescent,
and adult forensic psychiatry.
Dr. Bath studied at UC
Berkeley, Howard University,
and NYU School of Medicine
where she was faculty
prior to joining UCLA.
She is currently Associate Professor
and Vice Chair for Equity,
Diversity and Inclusion
for the Department of Psychiatry
at the Jane and Terry Semel
Institute for Neuroscience
and Human Behavior in the
David Geffen School of Medicine
at UCLA.
Dr. Bath specializes in
diagnostic assessment
and forensic consultation
with adolescents,
with an emphasis on high-risk youth.
She has a long-standing interest
in health care disparities,
minority and community mental health,
with a particular interest in addiction
and trauma within populations
of juvenile justice
and foster care youth.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Bath.
Our third speaker today is Ava DuVernay.
Winner of BAFTA, Peabody and Emmy Awards,
Academy Award nominee Ava
DuVernay's directorial work
includes the Oscar-winning
civil rights drama SELMA,
the Oscar-nominated social
justice documentary "13TH"
and the Disney children's
adventure, "A Wrinkle in Time",
which made her the highest-grossing
Black woman director
in American Box Office history.
In 2019, she created, wrote, produced,
and directed the Emmy
Award-winning limited series
"When They See Us".
She is currently
producing the fifth season
of her acclaimed series, "Queen Sugar".
Welcome, Ava DuVernay.
And last but not least,
born in Chicago in 1977,
Rashid Johnson is a contemporary artist
whose work explores themes
of art history, individual
and shared cultural identities,
personal narratives,
literature, philosophy,
materiality, and critical history.
After studying photography at
the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago,
Johnson's practice quickly expanded
to embrace a wide range of
mediums including sculpture,
painting, drawing,
filmmaking, and installation,
yielding a complex
multidisciplinary practice
that incorporates diverse
materials rich with symbolism
and personal history.
Welcome, Rashid.
Each speaker will be
spotlighted for 8 to 10 minutes,
some engaging in dialogue
with our moderator,
my LACMA colleague, VP of
Education and Public Programs
and also my fellow Studio
Museum in Harlem alum,
Naima J. Keith.
She will then lead the
panelists in a group discussion
before opening it up to questions,
at which time I will rejoin the group.
Today we welcome over 3,000 viewers,
and I thank you all for joining.
I hope you will continue
to follow our work
addressing racism as an
ongoing public health crisis,
with a third panel scheduled for the fall.
But before I hand this off to Naima,
we have a surprise special guest today,
Supervisor Mark Ridley
Thomas, Los Angeles County,
2nd District would like to
make an important announcement.
Supervisor Thomas, thank
you for joining us.
I hand it off to you.
- Well thank you very much.
I am delighted to be here.
And it's a pleasure to
acknowledge everyone
and to give a shout-out
to this exceptional panel.
I wanted to speak with you today
because not since the Civil
Rights movement itself
have we seen such an
extraordinary moment in time
that has pushed us to rethink
what it is we are doing
and how we are doing it,
and confronting the question of racism,
particularly institutional racism,
took a turn for the better today.
Some ask the question,
how is institutional
racism manifesting itself
in the context of governance,
policy making and service delivery?
Well, it's simply not
enough to talk about racism.
We have to be about it and confront it.
And that's what we seek to do.
The issues we are
dealing with are embedded
in the culture of a county in some way
and I wanna say that
change requires change.
There is no LACMA without
the County of Los Angeles
(faintly speaking) of
the County of Los Angeles
and therefore we celebrate the fact that
this conversation is
taking place right now.
So in this moment, those of us
sit in positions of authority
and responsibility have to engage
in what I would like to characterize
as dismantling systemic racism
and bias from our
respective advantage points.
That's what we have to do.
And so at today's board meeting,
the Supervisors unanimously
adopted a motion
that I put forth on developing
an anti-racist policy framework
for the County of Los Angeles.
And I made the motion
available to the panelists.
It was a very profound moment.
The County of Los Angeles
is 150 plus years old
and this is the first time
that there has been a call
for what can be described as an explicit,
undressing of institutional racism
that confronts the
question of equity head-on
and deals with what we
need to do to make our life
what it ought to be for African Americans
and other persons of color
who know the history of discrimination.
So, it is my honor to just
share these thoughts with you
and to make sure that we understand
that the arts matter as it
relates to advancing the agenda
for social change.
So right now in L.A. County
we have an opportunity.
And we need you to help us push forward.
It's not enough to
celebrate the passing of
the reverend C. T. Vivian
and Congressman John Lewis.
We've got to be about
the task of confronting
the issues of racism on
our terms, in our day,
with the tools at our disposal
while the arc of the moral
universe spins towards justice,
it is the march that is inexorable
that we have to be about,
we've got to take it on.
And I invite you all to partner with us.
Invite me to partner with you
as we engage this
fundamentally important issue,
so that we can, in fact, realize
the promises of democracy.
I thank you.
- Thank you so much,
Supervisor Ridley-Thomas.
The motion that just passed today
which includes concrete steps towards
the formalization of an
anti-racist police agenda
will go a long way toward
establishing L.A. County
as a leader in this area.
So thank you so much.
This is truly a historical moment.
I will now launch into
the conversation portion
of this afternoon.
So, I would like to call to
the virtual stage Darnell Hunt.
Hi, Darnell. How are you?
- Naima, how are you?
- Good.
- All right.
- Thank you for joining us this afternoon.
I know you are incredibly busy,
so again I just wanted
to express our gratitude.
- Well I'm thrilled to be
here, thrilled to be here.
- So, while this conversation
is very much focused
on the impact of police brutality
on Black and Brown communities,
particularly Black communities,
we really can't think
about this conversation
and not think about the media, right?
And we can't underestimate
the impact of the media
especially when we think about films
like "Birth Of A Nation" right?
That debuted in 1915.
So, can you tell us a little bit about
or could you give us a
bit of historical context
as to how a film like "Birth Of A Nation"
directly impacted how we see
Black communities as criminals?
- Sure.
So, I think the first thing
we should note is that film,
television, media, popular
media is not just entertainment.
Media images do matter in society.
The diagram you are looking
at here is what we refer to as
the circuit of culture.
It comes courtesy of scholars
Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay.
And a really important book
they wrote called "Representation."
This particular book talks
about the role of representation
in culture, in society,
and representation can be
thought of as those images
that we take for granted.
Those irresistible images
when we think man, women,
black, white, et cetera,
what comes to mind?
Those are representations.
And the important takeaway
here is that representations
are embedded in media,
they circulate through media like film,
films like "Birth Of A Nation",
they influence our identity,
who we are, who we
aren't, who we hope to be.
They influence the types
of things we produce,
what we consume.
You know, advertising is
all about selling images
that we believe are attractive.
And importantly, they
influence regulation,
what gets regulated in society,
and the ways in which we
draw boundaries around groups
and we can think of policing
as an important part
of that process.
And the important point
to take away here is that
all of these different elements
are related to one another
and mutually influence another in a cycle.
A film like "Birth Of A Nation"
which was released in 1915
at a really pivotal point in our history.
We were coming out of Reconstruction,
it was the height of Jim Crow,
there were all kinds of
backlashes to the progress
that the country had hoped to
make after the end of slavery.
And so you had D. W. Griffith who produced
this racist film basically,
that glorified the KKK.
It was sort of the first
major Hollywood production
in the sense that it introduced
a lot of the techniques
that we take for granted
in modern filmmaking.
It was wildly popular, it
earned between $50-$100 million,
which was an amazing
amount of money back then.
President Woodrow Wilson
showed it at the White House
with foreign dignitaries.
He said it was like history
written in lightning.
He, himself, of course,
was a racist sympathizer
and it really did echo what
this country was all about
in terms of race.
It introduced and popularized
a lot of stereotypes
about African Americans-the mammy,
the coon, the buck, the Tom,
and more importantly, it
talked about the Black threat,
the threat of the Black
male body in particular,
with Gus, one of the
characters who was believed
to have raped a white woman
which of course brought the KKK
to the stage which used this
trope to lynch Black Americans
throughout the South, throughout
America during this period.
So, it was a very profound
film that left a mark.
It's no accident that the
NAACP, which was created shortly
during this period,
saw this as one of its first campaigns.
As the NAACP was trying
to move African Americans
toward more integration
into American society,
they saw this film as a major problem
because they knew that the image mattered,
the representation mattered.
- But speaking of representation,
and media, we know, obviously
fast forward from 1915,
we do know that television
news and TV media
I think had a lot to do
with advancing the causes
around the Civil Rights era, right?
That we know that Ralph David Abernathy
and Martin Luther King, Jr.
and a number of others understood
the power of television news.
On one hand, where there
were images circulating
all the time that are racist
and obviously harmful,
but then you also have the use
of especially television news,
to explore the atrocities
that are happening all
throughout the country
as it relates to the
fight for civil rights.
Can you talk about the role that media
and TV played beyond that?
I mean, this idea that
it wasn't just enough
to tell people that these
things were happening
but really kind of using the
press to their advantage.
- Sure, sure.
So, I think the takeaway here
is going back to this diagram
that media can cut both ways.
They can be anti-racist or they
can promote a racist agenda.
And the real question is
who controls the media?
Who uses the media?
And how do we use it?
So, during the modern
Civil Rights Movement,
the modern Civil Rights Movement,
we had the confluence of two things.
We had this amazing movement
that was attempting to
transform American society
with respect to race,
but we also had the rise
of network television news.
And Network television news
depended upon provocative images
and what more provocative
image could you find
other than what was
happening in the south?
You know, police dogs
being sicced on protesters,
water hoses, Bull Connor,
all of that imagery.
And all that was captured in network news.
Now, Martin Luther King and
Ralph Abernathy and others,
they were very strategic
about what they were doing.
They realized that by making visible
the brutality of southern oppression,
that they could start to
change American attitudes
toward these things.
So, they actively strategized
about how to use the media,
when to use it, and to use it for cover,
realizing that they
would be brutalized less
if the cameras were present
as opposed to when the
cameras weren't there.
So, a number of the pivotal moments
during the Civil Rights Movement,
particularly in the 1960s,
as network news was rising,
like the march from Selma to Montgomery,
the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the John Lewis-led,
God rest his soul,
all those things were captured
and a number of people
point to those moments
as turning points in
American public opinion
about the reality of race
and the reality of racism.
- So now we are at a point
where video footage is,
you know, at a premium, right?
There's something that we're consuming
and seeing all of the time,
but can you talk about how video footage,
and I am particularly thinking
about as an L.A. girl myself
thinking about when I was a kid
and saw the beating of Rodney King.
- Yeah.
- Can you talk about the
kind of the introduction,
at least in my lifetime, the
introduction of video footage?
So from Rodney King
to now we have the killing of George Floyd
and just how we are
seeing, via video footage,
the interactions between Black people and,
you know, the police?
So we have "Birth Of A Nation",
then we have kind of
using the power of media
in the Civil Rights era
but still showing the atrocities,
and now we have video footage
that's being taken by everyone
to show this interaction
that we have long known about
but I think it's being
shown on an everyday basis.
So, can you talk about
what that interaction,
what's that done in terms
of our understanding of-
- I think that's the key point.
The point that you made
about the fact that video,
particularly with the
Rodney King beating in 1991,
March of 1991, captured on videotape,
in a very profound way,
for the first time,
something that we had
known for generations.
So it wasn't a secret in
Black and Brown communities
that police were brutalizing people,
but here you have the
George Holliday video
that was hypermediated around the world
and everyone felt like, well finally.
We now have video proof of
what we have been saying
about the LAPD, about the
California Highway Patrol
and we are finally gonna get justice.
And of course, what happened
was they moved the trial
to Simi Valley, largely white jury,
and they were able to use this narrative,
this trope that was popularized
in "Birth Of A Nation"
and everything since then about the threat
of the Black male body
to argue that Rodney King
was the aggressor, it
wasn't the police officers,
and they acquitted the officers.
And we all know what happened after that.
L.A. exploded into the
1992 L.A. uprisings.
But, from that moment,
1991 with the wide-spread
availability of camcorders,
now of, course we have smartphones
and everyone has a camera in their pocket.
So, we're seeing these
things all over the country.
So we have Eric Garner, Ahmaud
Arbrey, we have George Floyd,
I mean, all of these different
cases were now captured
on video for everyone to see
the naked brutality of
what police have done
is apparently beginning to have an impact.
At least recent opinion
polls are showing that
more Americans now, on
the heels of the protest,
believe that Black people
are discriminated against,
that policing needs to change,
that America has a race problem.
In fact, I saw one survey
that showed a doubling
in the agreement with that position
between 2008 when Barack Obama
was first elected and now.
59% of Americans, the
majority of Americans,
including whites, feeling this way.
This is something that's new.
So, you know, I am a cautious optimist.
You know, with every step forward,
we tend to take a few backwards
but media have a
tremendous amount of power.
The technology we have
at our fingertips now
has created a condition that
we didn't really have before,
and I believe to the
degree that we can continue
to use those media in the
service of anti-racist campaigns,
we have the potential at
least to change America
and move it closer to its ideals.
- But it's so interesting,
I think, in this moment
that there are so many
different things happening
in terms of media and how we
see police being represented
both on film and TV, right?
So we have, on one level, video camera,
everyday videos of different
police interactions
with Black people, then we
have, you know, police on TV,
on film but I'm particularly
thinking about media.
Because a lot of us watch
the news, the evening news.
And I think what's so
interesting is that oftentimes
you see how a scene, or a car
accident, anything, right?
Is kind of told from a
police perspective, right?
So that oftentimes the journalist
will say police reports,
or you know, it's often kinda mediated
through the lens of a police officer.
So, can you talk about how,
you know, in our final minutes
before we kind of jump on
and move on,
but just to say that,
can we talk about the role that Hollywood
and media has played
in terms of how we view
some of these events?
- Well, the first thing we have to realize
is that Hollywood is a
white, male dominated space.
And I've been a critic of this for years.
We do an annual Hollywood
diversity report,
the documents from year to year,
how Hollywood is shifting,
and we have seen progress in recent years
in front of the camera
but where we haven't seen a lot of change
is in the executive suites,
the people who have
greenlighting authority
who decide what gets made,
with what type of budget,
that type of thing.
And Television tends
to be a writer's medium
in the sense that the
show runner sets the tone
for the show.
And crime procedurals, those police,
those law and order shows are very popular
particularly on CBS and
a few other networks-
- I watch 'em.
- And they do tend to glorify the police.
I did a study for Color
of Change a few years ago
called "Race in the Writers Room"
and one of the things we
wanted to understand was
the degree to which the legitimacy of
the criminal justice
system was being affirmed
as opposed to critiqued in
these crime procedurals.
And what we found is that Black people
had very little influence
in the creation of these procedurals.
In fact, only one of the nine procedurals
that fell into our sample
had a Black showrunner
and most of the shows had no Black writers
and a few had like one Black writer.
So, it's a space where
you didn't have people
who come from communities who
have experiences with police
that differ from this
glorified notion of the police
who actually had
influence around the table
when narratives were being written.
And what you got as a
result was everything told
from the perspective of the police.
And what we know about media,
going back to that diagram I shared,
is that when we tend to see
things over and over again,
and when we consume large
sort of amounts of media,
we tend to, overtime,
embrace the media framing
of that thing.
And the same is true for news
and news is very similar.
I mean, if you look at most newsrooms,
you don't have a lot of people of color
in decision-making positions.
And often reporters are told to go
and get a particular story
and you go out and you get that story.
It's framed before you go out there often.
And that tends to be stories
told from the perspective of
the official point of view,
be it a government official
or police officer or whatever.
- So, I wanna put a pin in this
'cause I definitely wanna segue
and make sure that we talk
to all of the panelists
but just how gender and sexuality biases
also play into police brutality.
So, I am putting a pin in that
and then we'll certainly come back.
But now, I would like to bring
to the virtual stage, Dr. Eraka Bath.
Thank you, Darnell.
- Thank you.
- Hi, Eraka, how are you?
- Good, How are you, Naima?
- Good, thank you again for
joining us this afternoon.
So, I know you have a
few slides you would like
to share with us,
so I will let you launch
into your presentation.
- Great.
Good afternoon, everyone.
We are here today to dialogue
on racism, public health,
and police violence
and how it's making Black people sicker
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am gonna kick us off with a quote
by the president of the APA, Dr. Shullman,
who called COVID-19's disproportionate
and savage toll on Black
and Brown people by its name, racism.
We are living in a racism pandemic.
The health consequences are dire.
Racism is taking a heavy
psychological toll on Black
and Brown people and the
stress caused by racism
contributes to the development of physical
and mental health disorders.
Racism is structural and
systemic that means it oozes
and flows in every nook and cranny.
Understanding that racism is systemic,
and operates in every system we have,
from housing, to health, to
education, and unemployment,
is the foundation for this dialogue.
Racism is also central
to our criminal justice
and policing system.
Central to racism is the
structural and violent reinforcing
of white supremacy through police power.
Sadly, there is almost no illness
where racism does not affect us
and that's the systemic
nature of racism's effect
on Black and Brown bodies'
health and wellbeing.
Racism's relentless impact
exists from womb to tomb
whether we're talking
about Black mother's health
or the health of their babies,
prostate or breast cancer,
or the disproportionate
impact of criminalization
on folks with mental illness,
racism is here, there,
and everywhere and the primary driver
of adverse health outcomes
for Black and Brown people.
It's in the air we breathe
for those allowed to breathe.
But fundamental to the
enforcement of racism is policing.
And as Patrick Martinez notes,
racism doesn't rest in a pandemic,
especially when we consider
policing and law enforcement.
In order to fully appreciate the ways
in which police violence is part
and parcel of systemic
racism, we need to look back.
The Ghanaian symbol of the Sankofa bird
is particularly relevant here.
Sankofa asks us to go back and
fetch it, go back and get it.
And reminds us we cannot be ahistorical
when we talk about police
brutality and police violence.
We need to anchor our
understanding in the past.
Slave patrols were the forerunner
of modern American law enforcement.
These were our earliest forms
of policing and they were,
like now, government sponsored
forces that were brutal,
organized, and enfranchised
with impunity to kill Black
and Brown bodies in the
service of the white supremacy.
As my colleagues at the UCLA
Center for Racism, Health,
and Social Justice stated so well,
the root of American
policing are slave patrols
and they functioned in the
service of racial capitalism.
Post-slavery and throughout Jim Crow,
lynching and white mob violence
were additional forms of
state-sponsored racial terror
and underscore the duality
of the legal system today.
It is why we have
barbecue Beckys and Karens
and white vigilantes who
killed Trayvon Martin
and Armaud Arbery.
There are two justice systems.
For white America, police equals safety
and for Black America, police
equal threats to the mind,
body, and souls of our communities.
To this day, despite there being
over 200 anti-lynching bills,
not one has been passed
most recently blocked
by Senator Rand Paul in June of 2020.
The message to Black Americans has been
and always has been clear.
Values of white supremacy
and structural racism
are what rule this nation
and will be enforced
by any means necessary
whether inflicted by lynch mobs
or federal agents in Portland, Oregon.
Law enforcement, therefore,
represents the physical might
and muscle of systemic racism.
They are the ammunition and armed militia
and militarization of the police.
Racism needs the structural
violence and brutality
imposed by law enforcement
to maintain its chokehold
on Black and Brown American life.
Thus, the timeline and the systemic nature
of police violence can be
traced from slave patrols
through the school-to-prison pipeline.
So, we must name police brutality
as the public health crisis it is.
Police brutality is a
leading cause of death
for young men in the U.S.
1 out of every 1,000 Black
men can expect to be killed
by police in their lifetimes
and this constant sense of threat
and siege has long-term
effects on individual
and population health.
Police brutality is
making Black people sick.
Through a structured
cycle at the individual
and population level
whether we are talking
about fatal injuries, mass incarceration,
fees and fines that disrupt
financial stability,
all of these factors collectively
and singularly impact our
brains, our nervous system,
and result in negative health effects.
Let's talk a minute about
psychological stress.
Each episode of police
brutality creates wear
and tear on the psyche.
It's watching Amy Cooper
in Central Park weaponize privilege.
It's experiencing no-knock
warrants and stop and frisk.
And, it's watching the thousands of deaths
of Black bodies go unpunished
for hundreds of years.
The message that Black
bodies are disposable
and undeserving of justice
takes a psychological toll.
And in thinking about this toll,
it's critical to be aware
of what my colleague called
racism pornography and its dangers.
Voyeurism and salacious
spectatorship of police violence
and racial terror is bad for the brain.
While seeing is believing
and we need to see
and document and name and
tell our truth and stories,
the repetitive visualization
of vigilantism,
policy lynchings, and
dehumanization on Black bodies
can cause moral injury
and collective trauma.
Repetitive visualization of injustice
can bring about collective
trauma, anger, grief,
hopelessness, and fear.
Gaslighting by society makes
the collective response
to trauma worse.
It is the underreaction of colleagues
in the face of injustice
and the need to explain
why silence is violence.
It's the need for two
autopsies for George Floyd,
it's the lack of indictments, arrests,
and convictions in thousands of cases.
It's the push for Black folks
to go about business as usual
and keep on keeping on as
if nothing has happened.
The violence of silence causes harm
on the collective
consciousness of communities.
The impact of violence on
Black bodies is making us sick
from womb to tomb.
Even pregnant Black mothers
report higher levels of stress
due to the anticipatory anxiety
of rearing children while Black.
This is your brain on trauma.
In a typically functioning
brain a scary event triggers
a trauma response by the amygdala,
the amygdala is the
control tower in your brain
that regulates a response to threats.
The perception of a threat
causes a fight, flight,
or freeze response which is adaptive
and necessary for survival.
Our hippocampus, another
area in the brain,
creates a potent memory file of the event.
But what happens when the
threats become pervasive?
When they are so non-stop,
and so omni-present that
you cannot walk while Black,
drive while Black, sleep while Black,
or do anything while Black?
This causes an overtaxing
of our nervous system
and an excess release of chemicals
that cause damage to our organs
and result in chronic diseases.
The overactivity of our
stress response system
results in varied dysfunction
as well as a hippocampus
that's reduced in size among other things.
Trauma's impact on the brain
takes up a lot of space.
And for those with complex trauma,
the time spent in survival mode takes up
too much psychic space at the
expense of other functions.
There are many signs
and symptoms of trauma
that can erode emotional wellbeing
and push people into
maladaptive patterns of coping.
This quote from Baldwin's
essay "Stranger in the Village"
highlights that our bodies embody history
and thus the legacy of racial trauma.
So, it is key to understand
that no one who witnesses violence
and police brutality is unaffected by it.
In the spirit of healing,
I'd like to affirm Black excellence
and call attention to the
work of two important scholars
who have written about how
to approach healing our minds
and bodies.
Resmaa Menakem, named the
phenomenon of racialized trauma
as white body supremacy.
His work shows us that
trauma lives in our bodies
from head to toe and is passed on
from generation to generation.
And in order to address trauma,
or white body supremacy,
we need to center working on our bodies
and its primal responses as
part of the healing response.
The work of Dr. Cheryl Grills highlights
that part of the work
is the urgency of emotional emancipation
or as Bob Marley said
"emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
none but ourselves can free our minds."
This begins with rejecting
the lie of Black inferiority,
a root cause of racial injustice,
promulgated by the
ideology of white supremacy
which has anti-Blackness at its core.
And this is just to acknowledge
and thank my colleagues
and team of scholarly advisors.
Thank you.
- Thank you so much, Eraka.
I can't wait to dig into some
of the very important points
you brought up during your presentation.
And now, I would like to
bring up to the virtual stage,
Ava DuVernay.
Hi, Ava.
How are you?
- I am well, how are you?
Good to see you.
- Good to see you.
So, I must admit in preparation
for this conversation,
I decided to grab a glass of wine.
Well, I put the kids to bed
first, grabbed a glass of wine,
and then watched a bit of
"When They See Us" and "13TH".
That is not a double feature.
- That's a great thing to do back-to-back.
- It took me down, I'm not gonna lie.
I was crying, it was a whole thing.
But it's just to say that,
especially with "13TH"
I think what made the,
not only as you know, obviously
emotionally powerful film,
but I think it's just how
resonate it feels today.
Like it was almost scary just how
it didn't feel like this film
was made a couple years ago.
It feels like you released it yesterday.
I mean, just some of the
topics, some of the ideas,
I mean, it was just...
And then I watched the
subsequent interview with you
and Oprah, again, just to
kinda see some of the things
that were brought up
and just how present some
of those topics feel,
it was just a little scary,
I think, in a lot of ways.
But, how do you prepare to
produce content like that
because I know that there is
hours and hours of footage
on the cutting room floor
and what we see is years in the making.
Can you talk about when you
are kind of going through
images of police brutality and
you're seeing video footage
and you're going through
interview material,
how do you prepare?
How does your cast and crew prepare?
Yeah, could you just walk
us through that process?
- Sure.
Thank you for watching the
work and for having me here.
I just believe before the image
it's the experience of making the image,
and that's the privilege
that I have as a filmmaker.
And that's the privilege that everyone
who is making the film with me has.
Yeah, I always think
of Kerry James Marshall
and his whole idea about
the narrative of mastery
and it's so steeped in
the idea of absence.
And when I think of all the
artists who came before me
who were absent on these sets,
whose stories were absent from
the canon, the film canon,
you know, I don't think
of the work that I do
as like anything I have to
prepare for, or put on armor for.
I think we are here.
We have the privilege of making this.
I try to, you know, offer a sense of that
to everyone who is working with me
and fight that feeling
of we are the masters
of this story, we are the tellers,
and even though we are
talking about subject matter
that is intense and is violent,
we get to tell it from our point of view
and that is an honor.
And so every day on set
that is a sacred ground
and sacred work that we're doing.
That's my feeling about it.
So, that lifts me and makes
some of the heavy images
that we might be creating
less heavy in their creation.
That's also a part of
really hand-picking the crew
and who's making it with you
and making sure that
every single fingerprint
is from someone who is intentional
and they are in the right spirit.
So all that together helps,
you know, helps in the making
and so it's not a
depressing endeavor at all.
- Yeah.
But I think that, you know, the benefit,
I guess, of living and
existing in this current moment
is that we do have so many more
examples of police brutality
being seen on film and handled
by several different people, right?
So, you have everything from "Black-ish"
to "The Hate U Give" to "Atlanta"
and obviously your work as well,
but we also have it being treated
in so many different ways, right?
So, in some cases it is
being treated delicately
and then in other cases maybe not so much,
it's a bit more clumsy.
Can you talk about,
you know, the sensitivity
around Black trauma
and how it's being considered?
I mean, the fact you have
so many different people
kind of taking on this material.
Are those discussions kind
of happening in your circle?
Just about how this
material is being treated.
- You know, I think you
always look at projects
that you may not be connected to
and think oh, that's interesting.
So, everyone has the right
to do whatever they want.
I should be able to go...
And that's the purview of the artist.
But the audience also has
dominion over the work
and that's in the way that we regard it.
You know, the way that we're
interpreting the intention
and the end product.
And so for me, I get less
concerned with who is doing what
'cause I'm focusing on what I'm doing.
I'm applauding and sharing the things
that I feel work for me
and not really bothering too
much with the other stuff.
But as you think about Black trauma
and the way that that's being depicted,
it's challenging to see it handled in ways
that lack nuance and
clarity and understanding
but, you know, that's
the story of this country
so it's not a surprise.
- One of the things I
noticed in "13TH" for example
is how you made sure to
include that the footage was,
I don't wanna say blessed
'cause you didn't use that word,
but just you were given
permission to show certain footage
from the families of these victims.
Can you talk about what
responsibility filmmakers owe
to just real life victims
of police brutality?
Like the idea that you
intentionally made sure that we knew
that the family was okay
with you showing this work.
So, can you talk about
what responsibility,
not just you have, but I think
just filmmakers in general
I think have to not
just the material itself
but also kind of depicting
these very sensitive topics in,
I think, responsible ways?
- You know, I grapple with
the word responsibility
because artists are human beings
and I just think it's
important to treat people
the way you'd like to be treated.
So, I imagine the horror
of having a loved one,
you know, murdered and
to see that on camera
and to think that just
because that's public domain
that someone might actually
be able to take that,
whether it is a news
station, or a filmmaker,
show it and use it in any way they want?
That is a violation of
monumental proportions.
And so, just as a human being
that was not right to me.
It was actually my sister
who is a deputy manager
of memorial and museum relations at EJI
and Brian Stephenson.
I said can you work with
me to call these people,
call these women?
She sat on the phone with
the mothers and the sisters-
- Wow!
- And really went through that process
of listening to folks.
There were some people
who didn't want it used.
- I was gonna ask you if got any.
- Many, many.
And then there were
others who said use it,
you know, people should bear
witness to what happened.
And so we respected that on both sides
whether it's the Central Park 5,
whether it's the King family.
You know, and I'm dealing with material
that's based on real people's lives.
I don't take it as an
artist responsibility
I take it as be a decent human being
and think about what if this was you.
And so that's how I go about it.
And I try not to cast any
kind of, you know, weight
or demand on any other artist
because everyone is different.
I would hope that more people practice
that kind of some ethical practice
in the use of the images, though.
- Well, it's just interesting
and sorry to veer off the
questions a little bit
but just to say that,
you know, after the
killing of George Floyd,
my husband and I were watching CNN,
and the Black man that
owned the restaurant
where you have kind of the best view of
the killing of George Floyd was on CNN
and kinda talking about
how he really wrestled
with whether or not to
release that material, right?
But he felt very strongly about the fact
that he should release it
because he didn't want it to be mediated.
Like he didn't want the FBI
to kinda come in and say no,
you can't release the material.
So it's just kind of on
one level these images
and this video was pretty much
the only kind of evidence, right?
That we have that these atrocities exist
except that seeing it over
and over and over again
has such an impact,
I think, of how we're
seeing ourselves on TV.
And, so, can you talk about...
Like 'cause you're literally
dealing with this material
in a lot of your work all the time.
So, I know we talked about how
you kind of come to that work
but just kinda talking
about the power, I guess,
of video content?
That kind of leads me to
think about your new projects
as well.
- Yeah, and I think when you
really think about that term,
your mind's eye, it is
really this internal camera.
You know, it's the images that we consume.
It's not necessarily
just in a film context.
They can either nourish or malnourish you.
They become a part of your DNA,
they become a part of
your mind and your memory
and the images, the more dense they are,
the more they kind of get stuck in the way
that we process things.
And so, you know, for me as a filmmaker,
I'm able to control the image,
I am able to shape it in a
way where certain intention
might make its way through.
These videos that we
have seen of the murders
of Black people at the hands of police
are stories being told in the
most chaotic of situations
but they are, in many instances,
I regard them as the
last voice of the people
who can no longer speak.
You know, see my story and
see what happened to me.
And in that way, although
traumatic in its watching,
we are able to process it
in a different way based on,
you know, our intention in watching.
If you're watching it as trauma porn,
if you're watching it as
lament then it has one effect.
But as I watch it, I try to
watch it and bear witness,
I try to be the person
who's standing there,
the person who is able to be with them
in moments where they
might have been alone.
You know, you imagine all of
our ancestors on from trains
in the dark in the middle of nowhere.
You know, someone just to
see what is happening to me.
And that is the way that
I regard these images.
And it's not for everyone
but for me the intention
with which I watch
really changes my chemistry around it.
And it feels like, to
me, a sacred experience.
It is, to be able to participate
in the transition of life,
even in the most violent situations
to say you are not alone in this.
It makes me emotional to think about it
but I would just invite people,
you know, for some people it's too much,
but I would invite people to
try to think of it differently
because those images
can propel us to places
where we are able to be fortified,
where we're able to be
instigated into action,
they can inform us, they can educate us,
they can prepare us.
I think they have value if the families
have given permission.
- Can you talk about, as
we close this portion,
can you talk about your decision
recently to tweet a video
of a young man in Texas.
I think it was a short video.
Which basically it was just
the idea that you were working
on a project and you
were kind of asking...
Oh, Lord Jesus, did I not
read the tweet correctly?
- No, no, you did, you did.
- But anyways, so, I was just saying that
you recently tweeted this
video of a young Black man
in Texas who was lying
on the ground, terrified,
he was in tears,
and you know, police
stood over him with guns.
And I think it was so powerful.
And I wanna say this is allegedly
because he ran a stop sign,
so, we're just gonna give you context
for why he was pulled over,
but you asked your followers
to identify the police officers
in the video for a new project.
And I thought that was extremely powerful
'cause obviously you have a
huge following on Twitter.
Can you tell us about that
new project and what it means?
I've noticed that people have
started to really call out
the names of the police officers
that have been involved
in these deadly shootings.
- And it was for that very reason.
Every time there is a police
incident a story is told.
A story is constructed in the press.
A story begins to be constructed
the minute the officer
is on the scene and fills
out the police report.
We can see in the case of Breonna Taylor
her police report was empty.
There was nothing on the lines.
They said that nothing had happened.
But if the sister was
able to tell the story
she'd say they shot me in
my bed and let me bleed out.
And so but the official
story is what the police
put on paper.
And so, so often the
police officers are allowed
to have the final word.
If there is not a video,
we go with what they say,
and they are able to disappear
behind this blue wall
of silence and kind of just
go on with life while we,
you know, give eulogies for
our loved ones, our people.
And so the idea that we've
been trained as a society
not to know their names.
To at least know their names.
I invite people to look at,
pull up a couple of
articles on Breonna Taylor,
on, gosh, we know the
names of all the folks
who have passed.
On Freddie Gray,
you have to about five paragraphs down,
if you're lucky to get to the
name of the officer, right?
You will be watching CNN and
they'll talk about an incident,
they'll say the name of the
victim and never the officer.
This is a national blindspot.
And this allows law enforcement
to be unaccountable.
We know that police unions
don't hold them accountable,
we know the statistics about courts of law
not holding them accountable.
But the people can hold them accountable.
We pay their salaries,
they are there to protect and serve us.
And the very minimum is to
at least be able to call out
their names and say we
see you, we know you,
we don't approve.
So, we started this thing called LEAP,
the Law Enforcement
Accountability Project.
It's at leapaction.org.
And we are funding projects about officers
to make sure that their
names are amplified.
And these are not about the good cops,
'cause there are a lot of good cops.
If someone broke in here right now,
I'd be calling the cops.
I'd hope it was a good one, though.
I'd hope it was someone
who believed I lived here
and was someone who would be
as concerned for my wellbeing
as their own.
And so these are the
kinds of conversations
that we're hoping that we can have
and I think artists can be
at the forefront of that
in a lot of ways.
- Thank you so much, Ava.
We'll be back.
On that note, I would love
to bring up Rashid Johnson.
Hi Rashid, how are you?
- Well.
- Good.
So we're gonna jump into a few questions,
we're gonna see a few images.
And of course, I'm gonna compliment you
on the Sam Gilliam in the
background before we start
because I am a huge fan.
But, you know, I think it was
really important to have you
be a part of this conversation
because I think you're not
just thinking about this moment
but I think responding
in your work in real-time
to this moment.
So, I am really excited
I think for audiences
or for viewers to really get a sense of
how you're kind of internalizing
and thus producing in this moment as well.
But as Christine said,
I mean, you've been working
in drawing and painting
and sculpture and time-based
media for a while.
And you've taken on everything
from racial identity,
subjectivity, ritual.
But your recent work has
really, as I mentioned,
has really kind of responded
more to police violence
and to the pandemic and the
events of the past few months.
Can you walk us through
what you're thinking about
and what the work looks like.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I have to start by saying
I'm still really unpacking
Dr. Bath's talk about racism pornography.
I realize that I am really
deeply affected by that
and I seem to experience
it almost every morning.
It feels like I wake up to it.
So, glad that she is talking
about those kinds of issues
and Ava talking about the
idea of responsibility
and how artists relate to
responsibility and our impact
and the need to consider
yourself responsible
as opposed to consider the
opportunity of making art.
So, I realize I had far too many slides.
I'm gonna have to go
through them fairly quickly
in order to touch on some of these things
but the image that you're
looking at right now
is from a body of work
that I call "Anxious Man."
And I started this body of work in 2014.
And in some ways it was a
response to police violence.
Actually having started this
body of work right after
the shooting of Mike Brown
and thinking about kind of the
consequences of being Black
in the street and your
exposure to the police
and the anxiety and the fear
that comes with that experience
and those experiences.
And in a cathartic sense
I started taking material
that I had worked with previously.
In particular black soap and wax
and I started pouring it on to
these tile background surfaces
and there are several reasons
that I was kind of using that,
because of limitations of
time I can't really dig
into the entire purpose and
some of the signifying tools
but I started kinda
making these characters
that I thought were real representations
of my emotional state
and that state of anxiety
was very much where I was
and how I was feeling.
Just kinda a deep concern
for how my body functioned
in space and the potential damage
that could be done to my body
and the confrontation
with police officers.
So these kind of hectic
drawings were born of that time.
That led to an exhibition in
2015 at The Drawing Center.
And the image behind you
is an image of my father,
if you could get a close
up which I don't have,
you would see that behind him he has
the autobiography of Malcolm X,
and a book called the "I Ching",
he's also wearing a green belt.
And I've always really enjoyed that image
and thought that it was quite interesting
because a green belt is not
a particularly high belt
in the process of getting
to black in karate
which he was doing.
And so, you know, thinking
about imploring that image
and thinking about the fact
that I was at the time,
and continue to be a father,
but I was new to being a
father around this time
and thinking about the responsibility
that I had to discuss...
Sorry, my dog's here.
To discuss with my son
and to take him through the
course of how to negotiate
with a country that has an incredible set
of racist antecedents
and things that he is going
to have to respond to.
And honestly, the thing that
concerned me most was that
I had become accustomed
to navigating a world
that was deeply complicated
but the fact that I was
gonna have to translate that
to another person was
really, really complicated
and difficult for me to swallow
and it kind of helped me lead...
Led me into more of
these kinds of pictures.
So, after having started
really with the idea
of these images as self-portraits
they evolved into these larger groups,
and this is an example
of one of those groups
as I was getting feedback
that other people were
feeling kind of similar sets,
you know, similar feelings of anxiety
in the way that they kind
of were looking at my work
and thinking about kind of the
world that we were living in
at the time.
Next slide.
So this brings us up-to-date.
And I guess it kind of
starts to talk about
some of the things around the COVID crisis
and some of my more recent work
which really kind of...
An aggressive way as far
as mark-making starts
to address where we are and
how I am seeing the world.
In this particular image here
you're looking at oil on
canvas which really digs
into a classic canonical narrative
as far as materials are
concerned thinking about kind of
the most classic ways of
representing an art object using,
you know, the material of oil
and I'm kind of digging
into this kind of random,
aggressive gestures and marks
and that's kind of where
the work is right now
as far as considering where we are.
- Yeah.
It's interesting that you
bring up this use of material
because I would love to talk about how
you use different materials
and you use different rituals
to really interrogate
modes of healing, right?
So, there's anxiety and
there's feeling of fear,
and confusion and anger
and then there is healing.
And so I would love to
kinda talk about how you,
like I said, use various
materials to think through
what healing could look like
or the possibilities of healing.
- Yeah, in my work it's interesting.
I don't spend much time at the
art supply store necessarily.
I often find my materials in the world.
And they're mostly signifiers of things
that I've employed in the past
and things that I use
oftentimes on my body.
So, this is a work that
I call "Cosmic Slop"
which is made of black
soap, and black soap
is a West African product
that people often use
who have quite sensitive skin.
So, it kinda functions as a
metaphor for that sensitivity.
And in it, you see a lot
of aggressive mark making,
and gesturing, and
digging into the surface.
And you kind of think
about the physicality
and the dance of how a
work like this is made
but one of the things
that I think you consider
when looking at a work like this is that
it is employable in multiple ways,
it has a different sense of utility.
You can wash yourself with this work.
And that dichotomy, that two-ness,
that it inherently has is
something that is really important
to how my project functions.
We can go to the next slide.
That's a detail.
- I'm curious to know how you...
The use of abstraction.
'cause there's the use
of various materials
but there is also a very
intentional decision
to work abstractly.
So, can you talk about how
abstraction kind of also
factors into how you
are dealing with this,
you know, this type of material?
- Yeah, absolutely.
Abstraction and improvisation,
I think, are partners,
very much.
And I came from a space
where I was really interested
in jazz music and really interested
in early forms of
abstraction and mark making
and the physicality and
the nature of being able
to express oneself without
a representative strategy,
and the physicality that
allows your thoughts
to kind of graduate into image.
So, abstraction and a lot of the heroes
that I have as an artist came,
you know, employed abstract strategies
and those heroes include John Coltrane
as much as they do Ed Clark or Franz Kline
or Jackson Pollock.
So, I'm really a child of history
and an artist really invested
in canonical narratives
and reimagining how
the canon is structured
and who it belongs to.
This is a work that, again,
I think does touch on
some of these concerns around healing.
It has several different
materials in it and live plants.
One of the reasons that I
wanted to show this work
in particular, is I often get
really interesting questions
when I exhibit something
that has live plants in it.
People often come to me and they say,
"Who is gonna feed them?"
People will quite literally
walk over a homeless man
go into a gallery and in
a very frustrated way ask
who's gonna water the plants?
And I think what that does is it starts
to kind of bring empathy into the space
and the opportunity that these
kind of natural materials,
or these really quite familiar materials,
inherently allow for
empathy to enter the space
and the agency that we
feel once empathy is there
it kind of deconstructs some of the walls
that may be present in the
exploration of an art object
when we often are asking
ourselves what is this,
how does it function, why
am I engaging with it.
When you come across an object like this
that's more familiar you
often have to say to yourself,
I know what this object is,
I know what these plants are,
I know how they live in the world,
and that familiarity, I think,
makes people feel that
they have a certain agency
when they come into these spaces
that are oftentimes less
inviting for people of color.
So that's a big pile of Shea butter.
And so, for those who are familiar,
Shea butter comes from a West African nut
and it is often used for application
to the body for moisturizing,
but it's also used for cooking.
It has several different employable tools.
And it's also something
that I sculpt with.
So, it's a really kind
of complicated material
but allows you to kind of think about
the transatlantic kind of trade routes
and how materials get to a place
and also makes you
investigate our relationship
to an Africanness while
looking at materials.
And it also has several
healing properties,
people imagine it.
- So, the last few years you
have been working in film,
or you making film.
How do you see film...
Speaking to your practice,
how do you see it or how
does it function differently
than something like a
Shea butter sculpture
or something else?
I would love to really
understand what role, I guess,
like you said, you see film
playing in your practice?
- Narrative is complicated.
I really do like storytelling
and I like the potential
for telling stories in film.
I mean, I love what Ava does.
My structures and some of the things
that I have done previously,
you know, have not given
me the kind of opportunity
to reach a more broad
audience, oftentimes,
like film can capture.
And to be able to kind of
investigate those histories
and tell stories, really putting the body,
and in particular in my projects,
the Black body into spaces,
is an opportunity that I really welcome
and I'm really excited about some projects
that I'm considering moving forward.
I'm moving really slowly
in my relationship to film
because I am only interested in projects
that are really quite specific
to what I'd like to talk about,
so I'm not coming into
just direct random ideas,
you know, brought to me by others,
but I'm still very
excited about the medium.
I think I have a two-minute
clip from a short film
that's more of an art film or art video
shot in 8 millimeter
that I was gonna include
and let us watch that
and then talk for a brief
second on the other side.
(fast-paced drum music)
(slow piano music)
- And so I know we saw a short
clip from the "The Hikers"
but you also wanted to show
us images from another film
that you made.
- Yeah, last year I made
a film based on the book
by Richard Wright, "Native Son"
and I worked with Suzan-Lori
Parks to adapt it for screen
and to contemporize that story.
And it included the
character that we all know
the protagonist figure Thomas
but in the contemporary telling
we really kind of transform
how he functions in the world making him
kind of a Black punk
and suggesting that his trajectory
is quite a bit different
than that of Wright's original character
kind of taking into account,
but not pandering to some of
what Baldwin's criticism was
and exploring the agency that
this character kind of had.
And that was really a pretty
interesting experience.
"The Hikers," I wish
that we had more time,
so I could show you the entire 7 minutes.
It is quite a short film.
But it is a film shot in Aspen, Colorado
with Claudia Schreier as the choreographer
having given the
instruction to think about
the Black body moving in space
when it is not being consumed,
when it is not being witnessed.
And this anxious mask and
this kind of agoraphobic
kind of large outdoor space
and how that character
then kind of negotiates
that openness and losing some
of the kind of rhythmic nature
or some of the more kind of
traditional athletic movement
strategy that we become accustomed to
in the way we think about
the Black body in space.
These two characters
graduate towards one another
and they kind of have this
incredible kind of exchange.
It's not dissimilar from
when Black folks often
see each other in spaces
to which there aren't
very many Black folks
and there is this kind of
moment of platonic love
that comes as a result,
there's kind of imagining
that you are together
with someone like you
and that if something
horrible were to happen,
at least you have somebody
there with you on your side.
So, that story is kind of told
through a kind of loose knit
narrative in the "The Hikers."
"Native Son" is a film that I made
that was distributed by HBO
but was the film that opened
the Sundance Film Festival
which was really exciting
experience as well.
- So, speaking of platonic love
and being amongst people
that not only look like us
but I think are very
committed to the same things,
I would love to call back the
panelists to just give in...
I'm just kind of looking at the time
and make sure that we have an opportunity
to engage in a conversation.
And I'm sure Ava will join
when she is available.
But it seems like, you know,
going a little off-script here.
But it seems like what
Eraka was saying about
trauma porn really kind of
resonated both with Rashid
and I know with many others,
I can see Darnell kind
of shaking his head,
and just kinda talking
about how on one level
you don't want to view these...
You're like, I can't take another video,
I can't take another image,
but you almost can't look away, right?
Like you're kind of drawn
to looking at this work.
So, can you talk about,
you know, I guess a little bit more
and maybe Eraka could kick it off,
but just about like kind
of the anger, the angst,
the damage to self-esteem
that's caused to Black people
when we are constantly kind
of seeing this video content?
And I just wanna say
that I really want this
to be a conversation,
so, if Ava, if you want to jump in, girl,
just go in there.
Please do not wait on me to call on you
or if Rashid if there
is something particular
that Eraka mentioned.
But just to kinda kick
it off so this seems,
that term really seemed to resonate
with a few of our panelists.
- I think what I was trying to convey
is that we are saturated with images
of seeing Black bodies being beaten,
killed in so many different ways
and we do need to document
and own and tell our stories.
And I think one of the things
that the Panelists brought up
which is important is
like who's controlling
the narrative, right?
But I worry about the frequency
and omnipresence of
certain types of images
which are often not controlled
by Black and Brown hands
that we're seeing and how
that impacts on the brain.
So, seeing, you know, violence,
you know there is a reason
why certain movies are rated R
or NC-17 and there is a reason
why certain violent imagery,
even after September 11th,
people who were watching the,
you know, the buildings falling down,
they had more trauma-like experiences.
And so, these images can be traumatic
and there is a salaciousness
and spectatorship
to the ways in which they're
being consumed by media.
- The thing that really captured me
about the idea of racism
porn was actually not so much
the trauma porn aspect
but really kind of...
I guess this is like personal
but I wake up in the morning
and I kind of look for a Karen.
I find satisfaction in it.
And some of these...
I'm oftentimes looking
for these moments, right?
That really more or less, say to me,
I am not alone in this experience.
And I wonder, for Eraka,
if this is kind of a different position?
When I look to see a Black
person experiencing racism
via video footage
and kind of potentially fighting back are,
you know, are helping me
understand from that location
that I am not alone in these experiences.
And that's kind of more
what I was suggesting
was interesting about racism pornography.
- Yeah, well, I think that's
an affirmative position, right?
So if you're seeing...
I mean, I think we see these images
and then there is no
justice, no peace, right?
So we're seeing these images
and then we are seeing
society sort of ignoring them.
But it 's very different
what you're describing
and sort of your...
It's almost like you're
seeing things in a way
that people are acting appropriately.
It is more empowering to
see someone calling out,
like to see, I forget
the name of Mr. Cooper
who was accused of bird
watching by Amy Cooper
but it was very affirming for me as well
to see how he handled it,
how he turned the camera
in the other direction.
And so we need that.
But I think there is the
sort of juxtaposition
in where CNN showing George Flyod's,
the knee on the neck over and over
in all these different ways.
Like, I wonder if there should be a cap,
and I don't have the answer
but I do know that
seeing that collectively
does affect our mental
health, it affects...
I mean, people have been
actually studying this
and demonstrating this scientifically.
And so, how do we disrupt that?
Part of it is telling
our own stories, right?
- From my point of view,
I think, for me at least,
it goes back to this question of control.
And I think of Emmett Till for example,
and the fact that his mother
insisted that the body be shown
because she wanted the
world to see the brutality
of what happened to him.
She was in control, she had agency,
she decided she wanted to make that point.
What the media did with
it after that, of course,
she didn't control completely
but that was a calculation,
it was a risk she was willing
to take for the greater good.
In the same way that
protesters for example
take to the streets in
the middle of a pandemic
and risk being infected.
You know, there is risks
with everything, I think,
but for me it comes back to control,
or comes back to intention
and what it is we're trying
to achieve with the image.
And all too often, unfortunately,
we don't control the image.
And I think that that's when we lapse
into the type of pornography
that you're talking about
where, you know, it's often numbing
and counterproductive in terms
of the way it's circulated.
- This was referenced actually
in an interview with Ava
but talking about the
latest conversations around,
which are certainly not new,
but have gained more traction,
around defunding the police
and you talked about it in an interview
that I was watching around
really reevaluating obviously
our police system and
our jail system as well.
Can you talk, for those who
maybe who aren't as familiar,
can you talk about the initiatives around
or the ideas around defunding the police
and just how in your work,
and the amount of work you have done,
have you evolved, I guess,
in your understanding?
I'm also kind of weaving in
questions from the audience
so just as an FYI.
These are both my questions
but also I'm looking,
they're feeding me questions on the side.
So, folks are really
kind of interested, Ava,
in hearing your ideas or your thoughts
around kinda like good cops, bad cops,
but then also this idea
around defunding the police
and your thoughts on that.
- Yeah, I mean, defunding the police is,
I think folks are just
encountering the term
in the last couple of months,
and it seems like a lot to reckon with.
Not new, this is a call from,
you know, folks that are working
around mass criminalization
for decades.
I consider myself a prison abolitionist.
A step to the left of defunding.
But defunding is a step towards that.
The idea that, you know,
there is a new dream
about what public safety could be
and that it doesn't require,
you know, people with guns
to show up at every part of American life
and that we can reimagine what that is.
Defunding the police
is a step towards that.
So when people, it's interesting,
I was talking to a very
high profile friend,
not Oprah, 'cause everybody
always think it's (indistinct)
not her, okay?
- You have more than one friend but yeah-
- Another high profile friend
who's very much struggling
with defund the police
and in my mind defund the
police is like a step back,
step closer to the middle
than abolishing the police
but to see people reacting so...
Out of a place of fear.
- I think it is fear.
- And so I just ask people,
and you know, when the term
first started to be introduced
to people who were not aware
of it, it sounded very scary
and violent for the police.
But I just invite people to
really look into what it is.
I mean, it's really saying
aren't there better,
more humane ways to deal
with parts of our life,
our community life, than
having a cop show up for,
you know, a disturbance,
for a homeless person
who might be standing
in the wrong place, for
a mental health issue,
for whatever it may be
and schools, on film sets.
There is no reason for me
to have an armed officer
assist my crew through a red light
when I am shooting a car scene.
It's just not necessary.
Give me someone from traffic control.
This doesn't match up.
Those cops should be
reserved to do their jobs,
to have the right training,
and to be doing their
jobs in the right way.
Don't put them in places
where they don't need to be.
So that's what the idea is.
And the idea about good cops and bad cops
is just like good people and bad people.
I mean, certainly it would LEAP,
the Law Enforcement
Accountability Project,
in anything of the things
we are talking about,
whether it's "When They See Us",
I'm speaking about specific bad actors.
And I don't believe that
that's all police officers,
but I do believe this is a system,
this is not about individuals.
This is a system that
is diseased at its core.
It was built to be this way.
This country was stolen by
white people for white people
in the pursuit of power and profit.
I'm sorry, my friends,
it is just the facts.
And so every system,
the health care system,
the education system, the
criminal justice system,
the entertainment production system,
all of those systems are built
on top of that foundation.
And so we can keep
talking about individuals
and I think that's something
that we should really do
as it comes to the police
and calling out individuals,
but overall we have to keep our
eye on the ball, the system,
and that's what defunding
the police asks us to do,
interrogate the system.
- One of the things we
haven't necessarily spent
a lot of time talking about
but I know is obviously very important
is talking about gender
and sexuality biases
as it relates to victims
of police brutality.
I kinda put a pin in that
conversation, Darnell,
at the end of our conversation.
So anyone obviously is
welcome to answer it
but what role, I guess, has media played
in kinda perpetuating the
silencing of Black women
and trans folks as well as it
relates to police brutality,
state-sanctioned violence.
How has gender now
entered this conversation
in a way it hadn't previously?
- Yeah.
Well, I think the general media response
to LGBTQ issues kind of
parallels societal relations
to those different groups.
And the fact that groups
have been marginalized,
they've been made invisible,
at the same time they've
been targeted by police.
And often that victimization
has been unreported
or underreported.
Until recently we hadn't seen
a lot in terms of storytelling
and narratives in Hollywood.
You take a show like "Pose", for example,
which is a couple years old now,
which has actually dramatized
some of those realities.
We need to see a lot more of it.
What tends to happen is that
as you become more familiar
with those types of images,
awareness rises and then the discourse
around what that means
and what we need to do
to alleviate the problems
becomes more prominent.
And we aren't where we
need to be with that
but we've moved ahead of where we were
just a few years ago when no
one was talking about this
in a very public way.
- I think we have time for
one more quick question
before we have to say farewell.
- I'm trying to think, oh, God,
it's like pressure to
think about one question.
I guess a lot of people
have been asking just
about next steps.
And I think people are...
You know, we have folks kind
of chiming in from Minnesota,
from Brazil, from all over the world,
really just thinking
about what can they do
in their own communities,
but also what do next steps look like?
I mean, not in terms of (indistinct)
for the rest of our lives
but just in terms of what can they do
in their own communities?
What can people do to kinda
keep this conversation going
on the health side, on
the film and media side,
what do next steps look like?
So, I would love actually if each panelist
could just briefly kind of
just give some recommendations
or to give some thoughts on
what next steps could look like
as it relates to this conversation.
Okay, Darnell, I am gonna
call on you because I can.
- Well, you know, I think it goes back to,
I'm speaking as a sociologist now.
It goes back to social structures,
it goes back to systems,
it goes back to understanding
how these processes work
and not focusing solely on individuals
which is what we have
been socialized to do.
So, racism is a concept that
many people are just coming
to terms with now because
of the recent protests,
they're understanding
that something is wrong.
I mean, We've seen a
pretty sizable shift here
in the last few weeks just
in terms of public opinion
and how people are thinking
about these things.
Now, I think the challenge is
to keep the movement going,
to breathe life into it.
To figure out ways to build coalitions
between groups that have
previously been divided
and separated as part of a grand strategy
to divide and conquer,
because as Ava pointed out earlier,
I mean, this is what this country is,
this is what this country has always been.
And if we can imagine a better
America, a better country,
it is gonna require all of
us to sort of come together
and root out the structures that,
you know, lead to police
brutality and all these other,
you know, structures that are in place
that limit our opportunities
and challenge our life chances.
- I love what the doctor said.
Hi, doc.
I think we got two docs here.
Hi, doc.
But two docs and two filmmakers.
Rashid, what are we doing in
here with these smart people?
But I think for me I just try to...
You know, there's no one answer to that
but I'm asked it often after
I show "13TH" or "Selma"
or "When They See Us",
"A Wrinkle in Time",
anything, "Queen Sugar".
What do we do now?
And you know, for me, I think
it is about mindfulness.
Because everyone is in a different place.
So what I am gonna ask,
you know, you to do
is different from what I'm
gonna think of maybe something
that you can do.
You know where your mind's at,
you know where your heart's at,
you know where you live, you
know what your family is,
you know where your neighbors are,
you know if you've never read
a book about (indistinct)
you know if you follow no
Black people on Twitter,
know no Black people in real life,
none have come into your house,
you just don't know us, you know?
You know if you see George Floyd
and I really think that was wrong
but you know, don't have a real connection
to someone who's not like you
and don't have a real idea of the context
for what you're seeing,
and you also know that if
you have a certain amount
of information and
awareness about those things
that there is further to go.
And once you have that baseline of info
that you can get into the street,
that you can have direct action.
That doesn't always mean
being at the protest
but it also doesn't just mean
just giving money online.
It means speaking up when you
hear that something is wrong.
When that joke doesn't quite hit right
and you know it's wrong.
Say something.
Take a risk to, you know,
correct someone if they are,
you know, injuring someone else.
Even in words, especially in words.
And so all that goes back
to mindfulness for me.
If you are in a mind state
that you want to combat this,
you can accept where we are,
then figure out what you can
do where you are to end it
and that means you have
to do a little work.
Someone is not just gonna give you a list
or a paint-by-numbers,
'cause it's all different,
you've got to think about it,
you're gonna have to figure
it out for yourself, right?
You're gonna have to calculate
and do the personal math of what it takes
for you to be accountable
to yourself in this moment
and be mindful.
So that's what I invite people to do.
There is no one way.
- I would love to jump in right there
and I'm curious to know what
Eraka thinks about this.
I think about a great article
that Elizabeth Alexander,
the poet and scholar
I quoted from earlier,
wrote in The New Yorker called
"The Trayvon Generation"
and she refers to the Trayvon generation
as about 25 and younger.
And I think about this younger generation,
one of my daughters is mixed Black
and I think about kind of the
era that she is growing up in.
And I think about this
article by Elizabeth Alexander
specifically where she says
that in this generation
that there are characters
that we have in the media.
Issa from "Insecure", you know, kind of...
Or Earn and Van from "Atlanta"
and ask these questions
that go a bit deeper
around storylines such as
why did Earn really dropout
of Princeton?
Why did Van get high
before the job interview?
Why is Molly from "Insecure"
in and out of therapy?
Then there is Nathan who is bipolar
and that kind of host of mental illness
that either we see directly
as in Nathan's character
or indirectly and she's
asking the question,
Elizabeth Alexander in this article,
around depression and if it is,
I don't wanna say misdiagnosed,
that's too strong a word,
but this is whole generation is suffering
from a kind of intensity of emotion
that is very much attached
to their generation
and all the body camera footage,
all of this bystander footage, et cetera.
That they're exposed
to of course you know,
they're younger and
younger on social media
and seeing all of this.
And so in terms of going forward from now
and thinking about the
younger generations,
Eraka, you work with kids
in the foster system,
the juvenile system, et
cetera, et cetera like,
how this is really impacting
them and how we can,
you know, sort of
collectively think about them?
I think Frederick Douglass once
said it is easier to build,
to raise strong children
than to repair broken men.
I don't know if I have
that quote exactly right
but along those lines.
And so I just want to throw that out there
and make that comment and
ask a question as well.
Thank you.
- Thanks.
So, I think it's hard
parenting in a pandemic
and when everyone is
finally waking up to racism.
I do think we need to, like
Ava said, to be mindful
and continue to have
deliberate, intentional,
and reflective conversations.
I think where people are in their lives,
they need to be able to work
on dismantling structures.
So, as a physician with the
privileged positionality
that I have and working
in juvenile justice,
what are my efforts to
decarcerate young people, right?
So that they're not in these structures
that are dehumanizing them.
I think white people
have to do a lot of work
and that is going to
require being reflective
and seeing how white
supremacy also affects them.
And so those are some things
that I would think about.
- I don't know if anyone
wants to give a final word
or comment about everything
or about anything
but I think that we...
We need to close our panel.
I first and foremost want to thank
these brilliant panelists.
It was so incredible to have
you on our virtual stage
convening on this particular topic.
Your words, your thoughts,
your reflections,
and all of the work that
you do are so important,
so thank you very much.
(clapping)
Thank you, Naima, Chelo,
Ellie, Cat, Conor,
everyone behind the scenes.
It took a lot of people
to make this happen.
And we had thousands of people signing on,
I am so grateful.
And we continue to do the work that we do.
Thank you and good night.
