The College of Charleston’s African American Studies Program is offering its annual fall film festival throughout the month of October and into November 2017 This year’s festival is titled “The Whiteness of Whiteness: White Supremacy and White Liberal Complicity.”
The screenings (listed below), which are free and open to the public, will take place in Maybank Hall, Room 100, starting at 6 p.m. Popcorn and sodas will be provided.
- Oct. 9: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
- Oct. 23: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Oct. 30: Get Out (2017)
- Nov. 6: I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
The films are collectively intended to help viewers explore various aspects of white liberal complicity in white supremacy, and each screening will be followed by a brief discussion led by a College of Charleston faculty member.
According to Mari Crabtree, assistant professor of African American studies and the organizer of this film festival, “The inspiration for the film festival came, in large part, from Martin Luther King Jr., who criticized ‘the white moderate’ for ‘paternalistically believ[ing] he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.’ King went so far as to say that white moderates proved to be a greater impediment to African American liberation than the Klan or the Citizens’ Council because their ‘good will’ and ‘lukewarm acceptance [of blacks]’ reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of justice and the protests that lead to justice. The films I selected reveal the often unconscious ways in which, in addition to white moderates, white liberals have replicated the very systems of power they purport to oppose, and the discussions will hopefully encourage us to think through strategies for disrupting this longstanding tendency to place white liberal comfort above the liberation of others.”
