In a new documentary, politicians and activists work to build a program to pay back Black Americans for the lasting legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination
Photograph: The Big Payback, LLCPhotograph: The Big Payback, LLCIn the heated debate over reparations in the US, the daunting task before those fighting for compensation for Black Americans is twofold.
In The Big Payback, a documentary premiering on PBS on Martin Luther King Day, the co-directors Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow set out to meet both these challenges head-on.
“When we first started, [the film] could only be a case for reparations because it hadn’t been done,” Alexander told the Guardian. “But then suddenly, in those few months, that young alderwoman did something that has never happened in American history, and we were able to catch it. It was like being with Rosa Parks on the bus.”
“Looking back at what my dad had to go through back in the south during Jim Crow, you could literally be beaten and killed for standing up for yourself,” he said. “It took me a long time to understand that my dad was protecting me by shuffling his feet and skinning and grinning in front of the white man.”
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