Didn’t the civil rights law result in huge progress?
Yes, but we’re almost back to where we were. There are statistics about black-on-black crime, but when do you see percentages of white people killing white people?
Racism is institutionalized. There are a lot of folks who don’t see themselves as practicing racists who can be inherently racist in their attitudes. A huge swath of this country believes racism doesn’t exist. I had a conversation with a guy who said the problem is not so much racism but economics, but the two are inextricably bound.
A lot of white folks don’t want to see inside themselves as racist. But you’ve grown up with negative stereotypes poured into your ear like poison, and you can’t help but be affected by it. For hundreds of years, generation after generation was pervaded by this, so it’s almost part of our DNA. There’s an unwillingness to slough it off. It’s like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. Most white people have never spent an extended period of time with a black person.
So what’s the answer?
Look at yourself very honestly, instead of saying, “I’m not racist.” By being true to who you are, knowing who you are, realizing that race has affected every person in this country and will manifest itself in some sort of event close to you before you clock out of here.
Google Darryl Davis, blues musician, KKK, and you’ll read a story about this brother who had a closet full of robes from Klan members who no longer belonged to the Klan because of his conversations with them. He debunks their idea of what black people are, makes them see black people as human beings and questions their attitudes for their entire life. If you present truth and information, people will inevitably change their attitudes. That’s my paradigm.
So the keys are self-knowledge and having a conversation.
Not all white people are racist, and even the ones who subconsciously are aren’t necessarily bad people; they’re just not fighting actively to combat it. If you watch people getting the crap beat out of them, you’re guilty. We need more and more conversations. I have huge hopes it will eventually happen. We as human beings have to look at ourselves to see if we are culpable, accept that, then make changes and have conversations. It’s about information. In my play, I have this crack in me too.
How does your play and theater in general contribute to raising awareness?
The power of theater is that it is mostly about the human condition. When you’re in a play, movie, watching a TV series, it gets inside of you and strums those chords, trying to put that truth in your viscera; then it becomes part of your filter. This is what shakes things up: It has an immediacy, like being in church. The truth of that passion and experience, you can’t escape it. It’s the proverbial leading a horse to water: Doesn’t it smell good? Why don’t you taste it? Once you do, you don’t want to drink anything else.
How would you sum up your early experience, as expressed in the play?
You’re making all the right moves in the right sequence, but you still come face-to-face with the Minotaur. If we start looking at people as not colors, but as human beings who happen to be of this hue, then we’re going to be in a lot better place, where we can formulate a community and relish and enjoy the differences. But right now there’s a huge movement to dumb down this country and keep people uneducated and unsophisticated.
Interview with Thomas Harris
Thomas Allen Harris grew up in the Bronx and Tanzania. He won two Emmy nominations for his work as a staff producer at WNET (New York’s PBS affiliate). His film Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, inspired by the exile of his South African stepfather, made its theatrical premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Cinematech and won international awards. His 2001 documentary, É Minha Cara/That’s My Face, also made its theatrical premiere at the BAM and won international honors. Harris is currently a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence College.
How did you get involved in this project?
It started when Deborah Willis, who is a MacArthur Grant “genius” winner, reached out to me about turning her book into a film. She’s a friend and mentor and thought I would be a great person to work on the film because she had been looking at my films, which take a LGBTQ or African-diaspora perspective (and specifically anti-apartheid, in the case of my last film, The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela).
We went through a lot of iterations. It’s a challenge turning an encyclopedic narrative into a movie, and I realized I had to be a character in the film. I talk about my family; one side has a photographic history going back to the 1880s, while the other side of the family took no images. There’s an incredible history of black photographers, in terms of the circumstances they were operating in and the images they’re responding to in popular culture.
Briefly, what is that history?
The stereotypes in photography started 20 years before the end of slavery, in the 1840s. The dominant images had a certain amount of violence toward the black body and undermined the idea of African Americans as human beings or citizens worthy of protection and value. In contrast, the black photographers were taking pictures of African American families and talking about how they created themselves, coming out of slavery and being citizens, how they were evolving. Black people who took up the camera portrayed leaders of a community or private individuals.
The irony in the history is, we never get these images. They were never accepted into popular culture.
Did that change over time?
Extreme pejorative images were so prevalent. Until the 1950s, 15 minutes from where I live in Warwick, there was a community called Nigger Pond. The only African American images were of criminals, of the brute, as opposed to African American family members. Positive images were almost exclusively in the African American press or in people’s homes. The film talks about the war of images, which is the historical narrative we’re living with to this day.
From the 1930s, [think of photographs] of sharecroppers. But they also went to the African American studio dressed up for church. They were using their resources to get photographs of themselves. This tension of the war of images could be shown within the context of the American family album, in terms of the images that could be shown. For example, people who passed for white were not in the album.
In terms of LGBTQ family members, why don’t we see them? People who were gay or lesbian, were they also exiled? It’s a battle of who’s in and out. I start with a very personal story about my father. I am every person, looking for missing images.
How many photographers are featured in the film?
We interviewed 26 photographers, some of whom are very famous and some older, who have recently passed away, like Gordon Parks. Some of them are more fine arts, some more documentary. We worked on “How does each one’s work serve our story, as both African Americans and artists?”
How long has the film been in development?
Ten years. We were trying to figure out the story and wondered if there was enough content to fill an hour, then we ran out of money.
It was important to include ideas around the vernacular story. To represent that voice, we asked people to share their photographic albums. We found a number of images through doing a road show for several years. We’re still doing it and sharing in front of a live audience. We’re working the digital diaspora and developing a reality TV show around that.
When was it completed, and what has been the reaction?
In 2014. It was shown at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festivals. It has been shown in over 60 cities in the world and will be broadcast on PBS. The reaction has been amazing. Many people I don’t know have e-mailed me.
How has making the film affected you?
When I first started the film I was angry at the abandonment of my father, at my country, at my country not seeing me. I really had to let that anger go in the ten years it took to make this film. Instead I began to see the film as truth in reconciliation. How do I pass this information down to the next generation? We have to see the negative and disturbing things and come to terms with them, like South Africa did with apartheid. We never had a truth in reconciliation in this country about slavery, but [in South Africa it] was really empowering.
You said you were in Willis’ book. Are you also a photographer?
I’m a filmmaker who started out as a photographer. This film made me realize I need to start doing photography again! I use images to tell stories. As an artist and African American, I’m very aware of my body and how racism impacts me to this present day. I see how people project things onto me. I’ve lived outside the country, and also had the experience of living outside and coming back. I know the difficulties of having to do deal with a racialized society that sees me as a problem.
How did living outside the country affect you?
I spent some time in East Africa in the 1970s, when I was growing up. My mother went there looking for a mythic homeland. I was able to see myself in another kind of way, outside of the racial dynamic. In Africa, I was an American. We went to Tanzania to reconstruct ourselves in a new way. Many African American photographers did that journey to Africa, to see what was going on there and extend their vocabulary. We get into it in the film.
What are you working on now?
There are several new projects, documentary and fictional. I’m interested in mixing documentary narrative elements to see the ways in which we talk about history and photography; also the idea of the object, which is fast becoming rarefied. Maybe people will not able to hold photographic objects in the future. When I started the film, we didn’t know the family album would become a thing ending up in a museum or library. There’s a radically shifting perspective. How do we use this family album creatively, especially in my work in film and performance?
Rhapsody in Black will be presented at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 6 and Through a Lens Darkly at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 20 at the Bardavon, located at 35 Market Street in Poughkeepsie, in collaboration with Vassar College and the Poughkeepsie City School District. The performance and screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring prominent local African American scholars, artists and educators as well as Gantt and Parsons (February 6) and Harris and producer Don Perry (February 20). The suggested donation is $6. Call (845) 473-2072 or (845) 339-6088 for tickets.
