Interweaving lectures, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.
Standing in front of an audience, Professor and Civil Rights Attorney Jeffrey Robinson declares “slavery is not our fault, but it is our shared history.” Throughout his powerful lecture, Robinson combs through the Nation’s various laws and policies enacted to keep black citizens in poverty in order to serve the needs of its economy. As a child, Robinson recalls attending the striking sanitation workers rally organized to demand better wages led by MLK in Memphis. This experience led him to understand the power young activists wield to help a country see issues of race and failed policies. Failed policies like Nixon’s War on Drugs that still continue to incarcerate disproportionate numbers of black and brown people to this day.
The documentary came to fruition when directors Emily and Sarah Kunstler reached out to the civil rights attorney after previously attending one of his presentations in 2017. Using 4K cameras in a packed theatre, the directing duo capture Robinson’s lecture and cross-stitch it with newspaper clippings and archival footage giving his thesis visual irrefutable evidence. One newspaper article describing President Andrew Jackson’s slaves is even more disturbing when Robinson mentions he was only one of twelve US Presidents that owned slaves. The directors also capture Robinson’s personal life, along with emotional trips to a slave market exhibition in Charleston and other tragic historic landmarks.
In one of the most powerful scenes, Robinson presents slides showing the formation of slave patrols in the South. These slave patrols were formed to quell any uprisings and became the blueprint for police in America today. This point is bookended by a heartbreaking compilation of police executing unarmed Black Men and Women in various cities and towns.
Touching on Marxist economics, Robinson wants to drive home the point that America has maintained a fascist rule to benefit and maintain capital. The exploitative cotton industry was a booming economy and when it dwindled, the slave owners were bailed out with $1 million each, instead of assisting the impoverished freed slaves. “Who We Are” also touches on the eye-opening Kerner Report published to determine the cause of race riots happening around major cities in the 1960s. The Kerner Report analyzed America’s poverty and racial divide which found that only by continuing to polarize Americans and decreasing democratic options will the country be under control. After this Report’s findings, Robinson turns towards the audience and asks, “Sounds familiar doesn’t it?” The final point and one of the most important is that his professional success and his parents were due to dumb luck. His parents were not better or smarter than their peers. They just happened to be very lucky to have prospered in a country that did everything possible to deter the success of marginalized people since its genesis. I hope to see more documentaries containing this mix of an academic and personal approaches.
In Select Theaters Friday, February 4th
