Written by: Philip Remington Dunn
Forgive me but I am a middle aged white male that does not want to believe there is systemic racism in the United States of America today. Sure there are individual racists, and even certain institutions that get away with it, but please don’t tell me it is still engrained in our broader culture, I don’t want to hear it. I want to believe that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders won that war when I was just a kid.
I fear I may have left my eyes open for too long. As a participant in the criminal justice system for thirty-two years and more recently a regular visitor to inmates in state prison I can’t ignore the vastly disproportionate rate of prisoners of color. Mass incarceration of minorities has been staring me in the face for a very long time, but still I resist. There must be larger socio-economic issues involved in this phenomenon for which racism cannot be the dominate factor, right? I’m afraid the public persecution of Nate Parker and the continuing popularity of Donald Trump have sent me over the edge.
Nate Parker was acquitted. Fifteen years ago twelve good citizens picked from a Pennsylvania community heard all the evidence, deliberated, and then came out and unanimously told a judge, the prosecution, the alleged victim, and a packed courtroom that Nate Parker was “Not Guilty.” This twenty year old kid turned down a plea bargain, went to trial risking the next fifty years of his life in prison, and won! As he now says he was vindicated. Does he not have the right to make such a claim? Is there any type of vindication on this Earth greater than an acquittal at a public jury trial?
No matter, he was accused long ago and now that this young black man has achieved some measure of success with his film Birth of a Nation he must again answer accusations that he is a rapist. On Sixty Minutes Anderson Cooper wants to know if he still has “something to apologize for.” His movie is boycotted by interest groups that never met an accused that wasn’t guilty, and his posters are publicly defaced by writing “rapist” over them.
Compare Nate Parker’s situation with Donald Trump. We’ve all heard the Donald brag about getting away with sexual assaults on women because he is a “star”. Tape recordings are real evidence, a perpetrator’s confession should be used against him. When his victims hear his confession and thereafter his feigned apology for “locker room talk” some are motivated to come forward. Their courage is not met with contrition however, but rather vicious denial and accusations of fabrication. Worse than that, blanket denial and public slandering are met with cheers of approval by countless supporters across the nation. What accounts for the difference in treatment and acceptance of these two men?
Nate Parker borrowed the title of his movie from the infamous silent film Birth of a Nation done by D.W. Griffith in 1915. Griffith glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed black men as unnaturally sexually attracted and aggressive towards white women. Still considered some sort of epic, it’s hard to calculate the damage this new form of media had on the public psyche. Jim Crow laws prospered throughout the South and just ten years later 25,000 people dressed in full Klan regalia marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. They were protesting the fact that African Americans, immigrants, Catholics and Jews had equal rights under the Constitution. Any of this sound familiar? Are we doomed to repeating our history that we refuse to learn from?
Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation is about a failed rebellion. Nat Turner believed God called him to lead a violent revolution against slave owners in Southampton County Virginia in 1831. Tragically, like many revolutionaries Turner and his followers didn’t discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. As many as sixty-five people were slain including women and children. The violence and oppression of slavery were the justification for what Turner would call the need for spreading “terror and alarm” amongst white people. Violence begets violence and institutionalized oppression and injustice are the father of it all. Nate Parker is living it today, the justice system exonerated him, but our society’s cultural prejudices continue to seek his oppression. Where does it all end?
It ends with us, the People of the United States of America that still believe that all men (and women) are created equal. We believe in the rule of law and the equal protection of us all under that law. We cannot afford to go backwards on this, our history is too painful to live through this again. We must return to the values we learned as children when we stood before the flag every morning and finished with”… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”