For Black History Month: Classroom Films that Don’t Shy Away from Challenging White Supremacy
“Black History Month is more than a celebration of black achievement. It is a political and moral project that exposes the willful ignorance about black people that shapes American history and informs our present troubles.”
— Eddie Glaude Jr., Time magazine
While Black History Month was conceived to center and celebrate the achievements of Black Americans throughout history, it also provides a much-needed opportunity to reflect on the persistence of white supremacist ideology and anti-Black racism in this country.
“Black History Month is traditionally a time to honor Black Americans and, theoretically, accord them their proper place in American history,” Erin Aubry Kaplan observed in the New York Times. “But at this very perilous moment in the history of us all, it’s urgent that we turn the lens around, take it off the worthy Black individuals, and put it on America as a whole.”
Below, you’ll find titles that critically examine the political, cultural, and social forces that continue to breathe life into white-supremacist ideology, racial scapegoating, and racial repression, and others that show how Black Americans have experienced, understood, and resisted these systems of racial repression.
With a little over a week to go in Black History Month, we want to remind you that we’re offering 25% off all of the titles below – along with the rest of our Race and Representation Collection – with the code BLACKHISTORY21.
We encourage you to use these films in your classes, program virtual screenings and discussions on your campus, and host remote screenings in your community.
THE GREAT WHITE HOAX: DONALD TRUMP & THE POLITICS OF RACE & CLASS IN AMERICA
The Great White Hoax, featuring acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores how American political leaders of both parties have been tapping into white anxiety, stoking white grievance, and scapegoating people of color for decades to divide and conquer working class voters and shore up political support.
HEALING FROM HATE: BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF A NATION
THE MAN CARD: WHITE MALE IDENTITY POLITICS FROM NIXON TO TRUMP
Ranging from Richard Nixon’s tough-talking, fear-stoking law-and-order campaign in 1968 to Donald Trump’s hyper-macho revival of these same tactics in 2020, The Man Card shows how the right has employed a deliberate strategy to frame Democrats and liberals as soft, brand the Republican Party as the party of “real men,” and position conservatives as defenders of white male power and authority in the face of seismic demographic changes and ongoing struggles for equality.
Filmmaker Daphne Valerius’s award-winning documentary The Souls of Black Girls explores how media images of beauty undercut the self-esteem of African-American women. Valerius surveys the dominant white, light-skinned, and thin ideals of beauty that circulate in the culture, from fashion magazines to film and music video, and talks with African-American girls and women about how these images affect the way they see themselves.
NOT JUST A GAME: POWER, POLITICS & AMERICAN SPORTS
In this exhilarating tour of the good, the bad, and the ugly of American sports culture, iconoclastic cultural historian and Nation magazine writer Dave Zirin argues that American sports are about a lot more than just fun and games. Exploding the myth that the world of sports somehow stands outside the world of politics and ideology, Zirin shows how American sports culture has long been a haven for the most reactionary attitudes and ideas, promoting everything from nationalism and militarism to sexism, racism, and homophobia.
HIP-HOP: BEYOND BEATS & RHYMES
Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood.
WHITE LIKE ME: RACE, RACISM & WHITE PRIVILEGE IN AMERICA
White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we’ve entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today.
HOW RACISM HARMS WHITE AMERICANS
Distinguished historian John H. Bracey Jr. offers a provocative analysis of the devastating economic, political, and social effects of racism on white Americans. In a departure from analyses of racism that have focused primarily on white power and privilege, Bracey trains his focus on the high price that white people, especially working class whites, have paid for more than two centuries of divisive race-based policies and attitudes.
BELL HOOKS: CULTURAL CRITICISM & TRANSFORMATION
bell hooks is one of America’s most accessible public intellectuals. In this two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.