Here are a couple of documentary movie reviews that deal with the subject of American race relations. I highly recommend both films. Both are available on Amazon Prime. One is “Who put the Klan in the Ku Klux Klan”and the other is “The Uncomfortable Truth”.

“Who put the Klan in Ku Klux Klan” narrated by the author, Neil Oliver.

This is a very interesting documentary linking the Ku Klux Klan to Scottish immigrants that settled in the south in the 1770s. Escaping the tyranny of England and warring clansman, traveling to the new country meant a new start. The new settlers were the skivvies in their old country but now that they were able to own property and define their future. The increasing demand for cotton enticed the new plantation owners to purchase slaves. One can question how formerly oppressed people could justify oppressing others. Perhaps it is because humankind is willing to protect people that looked and talked like them but not people that are different.

Neil Oliver travels through the south visiting former plantations, cemeteries, historical monuments, and having interviews with several southerners and white supremacists. He travels to Stone Mountain where, in a Mount Rushmore way, there is a monument to the Confederacy carved in the side of a mountain. It was there, on top of the mountain, where the KKK set fire to a large cross vowing to “take back America”. Neil interviews Michael Hill, the leader of the the League of the South, a white supremacist. The belief that the South will rise again is in his heart and in his blog. Neil, a native born Scotts, is shocked that people call themselves Scottish but are so full of hate for others. Watch and learn more interesting things.

“The Uncomfortable Truth”, a Loki Mulholland film.

This film aligns nicely with the research I have done so far. The narrators in this film are Loki Mulholland, a white man, and Luvaghn Brown, a black man. Luvaghn states at the beginning of the film that he is not fond of white people. It is interesting to see the comparison of history through the eyes of these two men. The two men met when Loki was a young boy having joined his mother on a freedom march in the ‘60s. Loki, although exposed to civil rights by his mother’s efforts, really did not understand what it was like to be black in this country. Like me, he started to do research by reading everything that he could get his hands on. His library collection is similar to mine. Loki and Luvaghn review the history of slavery, restructure, lynchings, red lining, white flight, and the cleaver ways the government worked to keep things segregated. An interesting fact is that Government programs established to help returning soldiers after WWII did not help African Americans. Most homes built for Vets were in exclusively white neighborhoods.

Also interesting is that Nixon declared a war on crime when the crime rate had already drop signficantly. He painted the criminal as black or hippy simply to win an elections.

When it comes to crime, the fact is that more whites commit crimes but African Americans are the majority in the justice system. Here are some interesting statistics discussed: White people make up 42% of the poor but take 69% of the social benefits whereas African American make up 22% of the poor but only take up 14% of the social benefits. Unemployment for African Americans are double that of Caucasians. Watch and learn more interesting things.