The death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police sparked outrage and protests by thousands [3] of Baltimore residents and people of color around the world. It seems that almost daily, the headline “Unarmed Black Man Killed By Police” [4] has pulled back the veil on what many white Americans, liberal and conservative alike, have been blinded to by privilege: racism is real in American society. Our new film, which we have shared here, highlights it.
With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the success of entrepreneurs like Oprah and Tyler Perry, and the increase in African Americans attendance in college, about half of white American’s have wrongly concluded that the US has entered a “post-racial” phase [5], where race is no longer the determining factor in inequality.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The crux of much debate surrounding the death of Freddie Gray and the subsequent civil unrest by both moderate and conservative media and pundits lay the blame squarely on the backs of the protestors and victims[6] of such assaults. They contend that these deaths and protests are a result of those unwilling to take responsibility for their actions. That criminal activity and arrests are a result of poor choices and poor moral character. That, in this post racial society, everyone has equal ability to change their circumstances if only they try hard enough.
What happens when we try to qualify those beliefs?
Well, we find that blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates, but blacks are four times more likely to get arrested for it [7], and six times more likely to go to prison. [8] This certainly proves that arrest has a whole lot more to do with what you look like than the actual crime.