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Racism:►By SUSAN WELLS (Editor’s note: Wells Is a member of the New American Movement.)“Birth of a Nation,” D.W. Griffith’s 1918 version of Reconstruction history, is a remarkable film. Its shooting was marked by producer/director Griffith searching for a “happy plantation” effect, throwing a handful of dimes into a crowd of black extras with the command “Scramble for ’em! That’s it! Laugh and cut up! ” For its promotion, hooded and sheeted horsemen rodehe deafIt is, mis-verts from and n the ersity mong the 1 with dcon-into a3 A/4their stewardship, the regents’ proclamations about their legal rights are plainly beside the point. They evade the issues raised by the criticisms, provide no explanation for why questioned decisions were made, obfuscate any attempt to engage in substantive dialogue and raise blood-pressure levels all around. They only make sense i f /-\n A hniHc the dubiousdown city streets, an ap propriate beginning for a movie publicity stunt. “Birth of a Nation” shows slaves, newly liberated from what Griffith describes as the idyllic life of the plantation, inexplicably resentful of their former masters.THE RECONSTRUCTION legislature is shown as a group of barefoot buffoons, singlemindedly bent (horrors!) on passing laws making interracial marriage legal. They have, of course, been stirred up by an outside agitator, Simon Lynch, the mulatto protege of carpetbagger Stoneman, who has a fiendish plan for “the complete emancipation of the Negro race.”A character called “the renegade Negro Gus” attempts to rape one of the frail, delicate, and helpless specimens of southern white womanhood who populate this film, and the Klan, its flag “consecrated in the blood of a white woman” is formed to restore order. It does. The Carpetbaggers repent, and “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright.” Theguest viewpointyesterday and Hftum tn thp rescue. and that’s Brown, by the way, took adown to the rescue, and that’s when you are lifted by the hair and go crazy.” A familiar sensation, no doubt, to U.S. Supreme Court Justice White, who was moved by the film to reminisce about his youthful days with the Klan.Others were not so pleased. Hundreds demonstrated against the film in New York and Boston. Scores of black people were arrested for trying to enter theaters where it was shown. Many audiences hissed Klan scenes. Women suffragists objected to the film strenuously. In Chicago and Cleveland, the film was banned outright, along with the less famous and more blatant Hollywood production, “The Nigger.”FROM THE film’s release in 1919 until the present, it has been, in the owners’ word, “controversial. ” But it might be instructive to ask why such an obviously old-fashioned, blatant and crudely racist film still has the power to move audiences. Last year, when the film showed at UT, the student audience cheered the entry of the Klan — a response which isn’t made prettier by claiming, as some students did — that it was aBrown, by the way, took a leaf from Griffith’s book. Griffith answered objections to “Birth’s” portrayal of blacks by saying that he’d shown plenty of “good Negroes” who were faithful to their former masters; Brown allowed as how the black students in his class just might be exceptions to the general rule — they might be intelligent. But after all, Brown said, “there’s no point in trying to educate people who are stupid.”IT’S VERY important, I think, not to see these especially striking instances of racism as isolated incidents or personal quirks. They are part of the general system of racism, large and small examples of the systematic attempt to prevent black people from reaching “full emancipation.”Brown’s blatant class lecture is a less polite form of the same “science” that the University administration uses in its reply to HEW. Rogers quotes with polite regret the same studies proving that black people have no business in the University that Brown quotes withtodaytransparent delight. The crude racist caricatures of the Klan are softened, applied to other minorities and used to sell records, beer or pancakes.“Birth of a Nation” presents its racism in obvious, neatly labeled forms, but the racism of the University, and the capitalist system generally, is often accompanied by the disclaimer that we’re just tyring to be scientific, or sell records or make a joke.As Griffith put it, “No ethnic slur is intended.”People didn’t believe Griffith in the Twenties, and we don’t need to believe his respectable successors now. People didn’t respond passively to the original showings of “Birth.”We don’t need to sit silently when more modern forms of racism are peddled in our classrooms, in movies or by the University administration. We can educate ourselves, speak out and organize — the showing of “Birth of a Nation” Tuesday should be a reminder to us that there’s a lot of work to be done.DOONESBURY
Newspaper Details
Austin Daily Texan
Austin, Texas, US
Tue, Feb 03, 1976
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 15 Jan 2025
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