To Someday Understand

One after another, Americans of Color from all walks of life share memories of racist experiences, many of them alarmingly recent. Dana opens the film by telling us about a not so long-ago dinner at a Lexington club where she and the senior partners from her law firm are made to sit in a room separate from the main dining hall because, as one partner says, "Dana is here." This leads to a painful realization: "That you're sitting in the front dining room because you're a black person and that means you are not allowed to be brought back into the club." The film interweaves defining events such as these with stories of everyday microaggressions. Parisa, a first-generation Persian American, talks about bringing her daughter Melody to the park where the other mothers ignore her because they think "I'm her caregiver because Melody is white and my skin color is brown." Ellen, a celebrated scholar, remembers a police officer's question: "Is this man bothering you?" She and her sister, children at the time, are out for the day with their "father who is dark skinned while my sister and I are light-skinned." Genevieve, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, talks about all the ways she tried to come up with to make herself look white as a teenager. As the stories and memories accumulate, many of them illustrated with stark, charcoal animations that capture their elemental force, they begin to echo each other. White people cross the street to avoid Darren, a young black man who lives in Oakland. The white owner of a dry-cleaning store refuses to even interview Erica for a job once he sees that she is Black. Rema receives a call from her son Marcus's white teacher explaining that he is "hanging out with the wrong crowd," but when her husband investigates it turns out that Marcus is only spending time with the other Black students at the school. A police officer puts a gun in Johnny's ear. Another holds a gun to James's forehead. And Darren's parents beg him to "please believe that you can and will get shot down." Finally, the film focuses on resistance and strength. "You don't let people scare you off," Rema's mother tells her after their house has been vandalized by white supremacists. It is a theme that all the people in the film take up. As one of them, Onjonet, suddenly chants: "Racism, racism, racism! You just have to keep repeating it until people get it in their heads."