BY JOELLEN COLLINS
Lately, I feel awash in sentiment as I say goodbye to friends and the world of my youth. I miss those rather innocent days and my loving family. I don my rose-colored glasses more than I used to, as least when considering the gifts I was given as a child.
Oddly, after last year’s upset at the lack of “color” in Academy Awards nominations, this year has seen a proliferation of fine movies by and about African Americans, portrayals about the time when I was young and racial lines were still clearly drawn in our country. I have been moved by the reminders of how far we have come and yet how much we still need to do to heal the scars we all acknowledge as inflicted by racial injustice.
I don’t recall my parents ever exhibiting bias towards others because of race, though I did read “Little Black Sambo,” listened to radio’s “Amos and Andy,” and saw Disney’s “Song of the South” that reinforced racial stereotypes, though supposedly “in history.” I remember being embarrassed even as a small child by my aunt commenting on “cute little pickaninnies” and her use of the outdated label “colored.”
In many recent films we experience anew the strictures imposed by our society on those of “black” color. While I have appreciated viewing authentic set décor, clothing, big old cars, and settings, I couldn’t help but be ashamed, even though I may have been too young to correct them, of the fear and suffering of so many innocent citizens of my beloved USA.
In “Loving,” we observe the anguish of a humble rural couple guilty of the “crime” of miscegenation, an action which led eventually to a Supreme Court decision permitting interracial marriage. In “Hidden Figures,” brilliant black women, unacknowledged but essential to the success of America’s space program in the 1960s, worked in a room entered beneath the sign “Colored Computers.” There they figured out mathematical logistics before NASA brought in IBM’s room-sized computers. Surprisingly, those modern buildings still housed racially segregated bathrooms and water fountains. When I joined 23 other students in Miami as a 19-year-old, the only “black” volunteer on the way to build playground equipment in poor schools in the Andes had to drink from “colored” water dispensers and stay in a separate dormitory.
I plan to see both “Fences” and “Moonlight” by the time this piece is published, and I am pretty sure that I will experience the same regrets mixed with a slight sigh of relief that perhaps I would have had the strength to oppose these injustices if more mature. I so hope that the embracing love of all humanity with which I was raised did infuse my attitudes.
I wouldn’t miss these sources of the cracks in my rose-colored glasses for anything. We all need to acknowledge our individual responsibilities for the mistreatment of others. However, maybe it’s time I see “La La Land” in plain old glasses while, as always, I experience the joy of cinema.