“They are boycotting the movie.” Brittany, my Black colleague, waved her hand in a gesture of helplessness—or maybe frustration. “What!” I exclaimed. “What on earth for? It is an amazing movie.”
I went on. “The Black woman behind me in the theater cried as much as I did. We chatted on the way out about how fantastic and uplifting the movie was and how both our white and Black friends raved about it.” Others I talked to said it was a breakthrough to make a public point of how both Africans and Europeans were guilty of promoting the slave trade, a point I hoped would bring people together in a shared understanding about the universal evil that resides in all of humankind and our shared responsibility to stop it.
As the great philosopher Hanna Arendt said, “For the idea of humanity, when purged of all sentimentality, has the very serious consequence that in one form or another men must assume responsibility for all crimes committed by men and that all nations share the onus of evil committed by all others.”
The movie is not historically accurate—who cares? Examples of the lack of historical accuracy notably include Hamilton, Cleopatra and Passion of the Christ. It is accurate in terms of universal truths. It makes a valid point. It entertains, uplifts, and empowers. Who cares who wrote it, as long as it was written with the best intentions and the results were unequivocally for the good?
No apologies required.
This story isn’t Trump fiction, whose only goal is to deceive and dismantle democracy. Stop the boycott, see the movie.
Carole J. Garrison 