Mark Reviews Movies: WHO WE ARE: A CHRONICLE OF RACISM IN AMERICA

Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, Sony Pictures Classics

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 13, 2022

Attorney Jeffrey Robinson sees the history of the fight for civil rights in the United States as a series of tipping points. There was one during the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War, and when that process ended prematurely, the ball of the civil rights battle rolled the wrong way. There was one when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, and after that came Richard Nixon and the so-called "War on Drugs." There's one now, obviously, and in 2018, when the attorney gave the lecture that makes up Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, Robinson saw the tipping point in that moment and suggested where it would go in the future.

He was right then, and recent events only help to prove how correct he actually was. Despite his knowledge of the past and his awareness of social and political patterns that seem to define our collective future, Robinson is fairly optimistic in this presentation—or, at least, he ultimately makes us feel that way. This extended speech is as much a rallying cry for knowledge and activism as it is a history lesson—about how racism against African Americans has engrained itself in the systems of this country since before its official founding.

Some of that hope comes from Robinson's personal experience, as the son of "unicorn" parents—as he calls them—who ensured their children would have as many opportunities as could be afforded to them—even if it meant manipulating the system a bit. Robinson fulfilled that dream, graduating from Harvard Law School, becoming a practicing attorney, and gaining a position at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Even with all of that education and experience, it wasn't until years into his career that he learned the full extent of how racism has defined and persisted in this country. If he hadn't been taught those facts after receiving a Harvard education, what hope does anyone in this country have of already knowing or learning them?

A lot of what Robinson discusses in this lecture, recorded almost four full years ago at the Town Hall theater in New York City, has become more prominent since then. When he mentions the arrival of enslaved Africans to the colony of Virginia in 1619, our current thinking brings us to the 1619 Project, which would start in the New York Times a year after this lecture (Some of the other then-revelatory details in Robinson's presentation, such as the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, have since entered into the public consciousness, but that doesn't lessen their impact in this narrative).

Robinson begins his lecture by quoting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Our current thinking brings us to the backlash against the 1619 Project, the demonization by some of any academic philosophy that tries to teach the truth of slavery and the effects of racism in the United States, and how one political party and its allied organizations in this country created an uproar about such education.

When Robinson mentions that certain states want to make it official policy to stop teaching students that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War, we're taken aback by how that reactionary movement has evolved in only three years. Now, a lot of politicians want to make it policy that the very notions of racism and its consequences shouldn't be taught in schools. That ball of progress—reaching its contemporary tipping point with the Black Lives Matter movement—is moving backwards before our very eyes.

Now, then, Robinson's lecture serves as a vital reminder, not only of where this country has been since before its founding, but also of how quickly the political, social, and cultural climates of the United States can change. Robinson's speech, filled with plenty of historical insight and footage of various interviews to help cement his points, is almost exclusively about the past—slavery, segregation, the civil rights movement, Robinson's own story. The speech itself, though, has also become a part of the past—when there was some truth to be taught and learned, some very clear lines being drawn, and some reason for optimism about what progress could still be made in the here and now.

All of those elements still exist in our current moment. Maybe, with this documentary, Robinson is one of the right people—and this particular lecture is one of the right things—to put matters in perspective and on track again.

The attorney is amiable, down-to-earth, and frank in this presentation, which makes up the bulk of sibling directors Emily and Sarah Kunstler's film (The interviews, performed by Robinson and which almost certainly played in the theater on the large screen behind him during the speech, offer some respite from the stage setting, and the filmmakers include some more recent footage when the lecture turns to abuses by the police against Black men and women, as well as protests against those actions). There's no denying this is a lecture, but the tone of it is more welcoming—and the content, structure, and themes of it more engaging—than that word might suggest.

Almost four years on, time, events, and some obvious backward movement have, perhaps, put a bit of a damper on the optimism of Robinson's main takeaway here—that, this time, the arc toward a just society doesn't have to be two steps forward and three steps back. When Robinson gave his lecture in 2018, it served as a warning against making the same mistakes again, and Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America could serve as a warning for how society has started to err in exactly the ways he predicted.

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