What does it really mean to be white? And how do white people define themselves in a post-Ferguson world full of rage and protest? Today on BOLD, LeGrande Green interviews Whitney Dow, the award-winning director of “The Whiteness Project,” an explosive documentary about race and cultural identity in America.
Whitney tells LeGrande: “People see this as controversial but I don't. I simply wanted to create a vehicle for white people to look at themselves. Whiteness is an attribute that affects everything in our everyday life and our interactions. But no one talks about it.”
“The Whiteness Project” features intimate interviews with 21 people from Buffalo, New York, discussing race in a frank–and often cringeworthy–fashion. People like “Jason” who says, “For some reason, some black people hold on to the back-in-the-day slave thing. Should slavery be something that because it happened we owe black people more? Absolutely not.” Another woman expresses her fear at how “black men in general” take a smile as “an invitation to approach.”
Is this documentary fear-mongering or illuminating? You decide. “If you want to talk about race,” Whitney says, “you have to be willing to hear things you don't like in order to get to true understanding.” His site is www.thewhitenessproject.org. Join the conversation at www.getboldtoday.com.
