A Personal Lesson from the BlackkKlansman
This past year like, many others I take some time to reflect and continue to work to educate myself and try to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Pushing myself outside of the comfort zone I know society has created for myself and breaking out of those boundaries to try and attempt to understand what others go through and what a better way to do this than take a look a the man, the myth, and the legend himself - Spike Lee.
From "Do The Right Thing" to "He Got Game" to "Malcolm x" Lee is a director who has broken barriers and forced the nation to face harsh realities we often chose to shy away from. His film "BlacKkKlansman" does that, with a strong call to action at the end, he makes it impossible to ignore.
The feature film tells the remarkable true story of Ron Stallworth, the first African-American detective for the Colorado Springs Police Department back in 1978. Stallworth's mission, with the help of his colleague Flip Zimmerman, was to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan by going undercover as a white man looking to join the group.
Together, Ron and Flip work to create a trusting relationship with the members of the local chapter as well as with the president of the KKK David Duke, in order to expose them for their racist beliefs and to protect the Colorado community from the racist mentality and actions.
Throughout the entire film, you can see how Ron struggles to understand his own identity. As a black man, he tries to establish himself in a career prominently dictated by white people who don’t want any changes to happen. Meanwhile creating a relationship with a woman named Patrice, a member of the local Black Panthers chapter and someone who believes the word cop is pronounced 'pig.'
The film goes on to show how Stallworth eventually stops a planned attack orchestrated by the local KKK chapter, the one he and Flip had invaded, as well as completely embarrassing the KKK Organization as a whole and its president Duke on a personal level. He saves the day, gets the girl, looks badass doing it, and makes necessary social changes to his society. And that's it - that's the end of the film, or so it was intended to be.
During my Semester at Sea study abroad last year, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Ron Stallworth. No, I do not mean John David Washington, (yes his Dad is Denzel, and yes he is just as attractive if not more), I mean Ron. The man who wrote the novel BlackkKlansman, the first black Colorado Springs detective, the man who tricked the KKK, the man the movie is about. He came to my class and talked o us. He recounted his own events of what happened. We met his wife who he fell in love within the second chapter of his life. He freestyle rapped (it was as cool and as good as it sounds like it would be). He asked questions, he answered questions.
One night as a ship (it's a ship, not a boat, don't get it twisted), we all watched Blackkklansman together. Following the showing, Ron went up on stage and spoke to us about his work and collaboration with Spike Lee, telling us which parts had been dramatized and which hadn't, his own recollection of events, what he has been up to since then, what it was like at attending the premier and receiving a call from David Duke the night of, the fame he got from telling his story, his family and how they feel about him and his difference and so much more. By the end of his stay, I, and I'm sure many others, felt like I had known him for years.
He left a mark on us all - just as he did on the police department all those years ago. After we had all watched the film - the room was silent as the screen went black. But there is something he said that I will never forget.
For those of you who don't know, the film begins with footage from one of America's oldest and most notably racist films, 'The Birth of a Nation' circa 1915. The film ends with clips from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA back in 2017. It consists of news footage and the infamous video of innocent bystanders being struck and killed by a car. The rally was a white supremacist rally, KKK members (yes that's correct, the KKK is not extinct but is very much so still around) organized this to show their racists support and beliefs. Footage of the president at the time, Donald Trump, is shown, symbolic of the growth our nation has come since the premiere of 'Birth of a Nation' and all these years we have had to change.
Ron walks up to the stage and takes the microphone and looks around the room, all of us staring back at him. The weight of the room itself felt heavy, little did we know how much weight his words were about to carry.
He tells us that originally, the movie ends just before the Charlottesville coverage begins. But once the rally happened, and that woman was murdered, Spike reached out to the family and asked to honor her. Lee in doing this creates an opportunity for viewers to either shy away from the harsh realities he brought to light or to join him in exposing the horrors our country faced in 1915, 1978, and now. We have had years of time and we have grown, but there is more left to do.
Ron taught us that and Spike tells us to do something about it.
