Commentary: Films about slavery mislead us into believing oppression is a thing of the past
Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation” is yet another movie about slavery. Our Black colleagues express a resounding fatigue with films on Black oppression and triumph.
Watching these films is stressful, and people grieve those ancestors brutalized for profit and pleasure. But the main reason these movies drain so many people is that they risk rendering the past as over and offer only salvation as a route to survival.
Critical portrayals of U.S. history are timely: The Supreme Court is debating outlawing affirmative action, and critical race theory is under attack. Yet, at the very
