The contrast couldn't have been more stark.
In the lead up to the Presidential election in 2008, Obama delivered one of his seminal speeches in Philadelphia in regard to race relations, following the relentless attack from the right about the incendiary comments made by the pastor of his church, Reverend Wright, accusing the white race in total for both the historical injustices and the continued persecution of the blacks. Obama's response, after first distancing himself from both the comments and the pastor, was a measured one that took into account both the present mistrust the black community has with the judicial system and also the remarkarble progress the blacks have made in all fields - social, economic, political, educational etc - in the past few decades, thanks to a combination of laws, activism and an elevated sense of morality in the white community with regard to their viewing of the minorities. Obama concluded that America was a work in progress, however slow and incremental the steps in the right direction might be, but progress nonetheless.
Following one of the most explosive moments in recent American history that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, when the white supremacists clashed with the protesters in broad day light resulting in several injuries and a death, President Trump (in)famously uttered the now iconic line "There are some very fine people on both sides", essentially creating a moral equivalence between the hate-spewing, race-baiting, racial-sloganeering neo-Nazi group and the other side (contaning members of all races) vociferously condemning the supremacist and nationalistic tendencies of the former. President Trump tried playing with the same (white)nationalistic fire during his campaign refusing to distance himself and denounce the endorsement from the KKK's leader David Duke, uttering another of his lines "I don't know the man, I just don't know anything about him", which in political parlance amounts to a non-answer answer. Two conclusions could be drawn from his willful ignorance of the explsoive nature of the race relations in America and his penchant of pushing the envelope deeper into the dangerous zone - 1. As evident from his earlier stance of going against the judicial verdict (based on DNA evidence) of exoneration of 5 blacks youths in a rape case in the 90's, President Trump may have his sympathies lying on the white nationlistic side, which he masks in a broader "America first" agenda 2. He lead a too privileged life in his ivory towers to not truly understand the reality of an uncomfortable divide that exists between the races in America, which is glossed over in good times and which explodes from its fault lines into a mushroom cloud when things take a turn for the worse - Rodney King (1992), O.J. trial (1995), Hurricane Katrina (2005), police shootings (2013-2016), Charlottesville (2017).
America stands torn between these two viewpoints espoused by the two different ideologies of men perched at the highest position.
On the surface, "BlacKKKlansman" looks like any other infiltration saga, real and fiction alike, of an undercover operator ganining a foothold into the organization under investigation and bringing it down from inside like a "Donnie Brasco" with the mafia, "The Departed" with the Irish mob. But in this true tale that could not be made up, a black cop, during the 70s, finds his way to the highest seat of Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Wizard, earning the ear and trust of its head, David Duke, and pries open a conpiratorial plot about blowing up a minority rally. But the true gut punch in Spike Lee's "BlacKKKlansman" occurs in the epilogue of the movie when the movie transitions from a seemingly happy ending of the good guys winnings and supremacisists losing into the real life footage of the Charlottesville, replete with the bloody clashes and the ghastly plowing of the car by the bigot into the protesters' group and running over one, followed by the press conference of President Trump refusing to take sides against the blatant, repugnant, racist extremism of the right. Spike Lee is never one for subtext. He draws a direct line, drags attention by the hair to the message, and essentially hammers his statement straight into the skulls, lest any subtext, innuendo or suggestion is lost during translation. Right from "Do the right thing" down to "BlacKKKlansman", he continues to expose the unease of elites in acknowledging that race is still a festering issue in modern America, despite all the advancements, while focussing his looking glass on the aversion of the other side in even accepting the role of the minorities in the current day context. Lee doesn't offer simple solutions, and neither does he sugar coat. He seems to be of the view that America hasn't completely reconciled with its brutal past, regarding purging of the Native Indians and slavery of African Americans, to this date and until that sit down happens with its dark history, any solution is merely bandaging an ever widening crack.
If the American society rested on its laurels self-congratulating itself for ushering in a post-race era electing its first black President in 2008, it didn't have to wait long to have the curtains removed on its crusty tendencies revealing a far disconcerting picture during the campaign and the election of Donald Trump, just 8 years later. Whether this shift to the hard right is a mere electoral aberration (like, market correction) remains to be seen, there is no discounting the fact that race played a major factor in this tilt towards what is being branded as mere nationalism. The difference between racism and other forms of discrimination - gender, sexual orientation, class etc - is that because the victims with the latter forms of bias cut across a large swathe of different races, a solution can finally emerge from this global pool - like work-place safeties, sanction of same sex unions et al, racism is too localized to one or just a few communities to build a critical mass for an everlasting change. While measures like Desegregation, Affirmative Action, Civil Rights etc help in easing the disillusioned into the mainstream at an institutional level, it is at the individual level that the problem refuses to go away. The continuing coverage of vilification of the minorities by the way of racial epithets, even in this day and age, in subways, malls, shopping stalls et al, is a bitter truth of modern day homogenized societies. As the balance continues to swing between the two extremes of society racing forward, with comforts of modern living, and getting stuck or regressing even, at least in mind, with protectionist tendencies, Lee presses on with his interrogation.
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