The Role Of Racial Injustice In Film

Filmmakers undertake a great deal of pressure when depicting the harsh realities of the black historical experience. They deal with many challenges when portraying racial issues such as slavery, segregation and violence. These challenges range from historical accuracy, to how the audience will respond to the film. Black agency is also a central theme when dealing with historical injustices. There is an effort to portray African American characters without sacrificing such agency. However, the degree of agency exercised differs depending on how closely tied to actual historical events a film is.
There are numerous challenges filmmakers are met with when depicting historical and racial issues such as slavery, segregation and racial violence. …show more content…
For example, in the film Rosewood, Jon Voigt’s character, John Wright character becomes a sort of vigilante protector of African Americans by hiding them within is home and then later on in the movie, helping them secure passage on a train leaving the town. This is problematic because John Wright as a character is not faultless. He sexualizes the young African American woman who works for him, and is seen having sex with her in the store. It could also be said that he may not have gone out of his way to save the numerous people that he did if not for his own self interests. He owned the store where a good majority of the African American residents of Rosewood did their shopping and had the good majority of the black population of Rosewood been murdered, he would have had a serious lack of income. The white savior concept also undermines the actions of the African American characters. For example, Mr. Mann, played by Ving Rhames, was the most responsible for gathering the women and children in order to get them to board the train, yet because it was John Wright who actually got the train and came up with the idea, it is made to seem as if Wright was the savior. White saviors in themselves are not inherently bad characters, but the issue at hand remains that they take away attention from the minority characters and the progress, or positive influences they make or have over others. When a film deals heavily with racism, which is the institutionalized oppression of a group of people, which in this case the oppression of African Americans by whites, it is very important that African Americans characters are given the recognition they deserve, rather than the white characters, because in history, time and time again white people are given more attention and African American triumphs are looked