Probably won't recommend this to be Netflix'd

Burned

My roommate asked me the other day if racism factored in my decision to stop watching the show Boardwalk Empire.  I explained to him that since the show is based in the 1920’s, I expected to see some racism and rather I thought the show was boring.  I then told him that shows almost never bother me because I’ve dealt with racism for so long that most of the shock has worn off.  Later on that day, I realized that wasn’t entirely true.  In fact, there was one movie that thoroughly offended me; so much so that I tried blacking it from memory and refuse to watch it again.  It is truly the worst movie that I’ve ever seen.

Mississippi Burning.

The movie is set in Mississippi during the 1960’s and centers on the murders of three white civil rights workers and the ensuing conflict between the investigating FBI agents and the Ku Klux Klan.  Now what offended me wasn’t racism, the use of the word nigger or the images of flaming crosses because their absences would have simply made the movie unrealistic.  What pissed me off was ironically the small role that blacks played in the movie.  The creators of the movie made the entire civil rights movement feel like a war between good and bad white people and blacks just sat in the middle like helpless children in a custody battle.

Its bad enough to be reminded of the oppression and persecution that my people had to suffer through, but to deny me the small satisfaction of at least seeing them fight courageously for their rights is deplorable.  The blatant omission such a critical aspect of that time period is something that I can’t forgive.  I will never denounce or trivialize the role that whites played in making change, but the movement was driven and lead by black people who refused to be victims and fought to give me a better life.

I remember being so angry watching the movie in my college classroom that I was literally shaking at my desk.  Had it not been apart of a class, I would have walked out.  I’m not even sure what it would take for me to sit and watch it again.  Even the minimal research that I did to jog my memory angered me because when I read the synopsis on IMDB, it said, “Based on a True Story”.

Emphasis on story.