A history of racism

[sqbr]

The History of Racism - Episode 1 (part 1/6) by the BBC.

I found this very accessible, I have trouble concentrating on documentaries with brainfog (and today am having trouble concentrating on everything) but this gets right to the point, and there's a lot of punch even in this first ten minute chunk (which is all I've gotten around to so far). They start with a white male academic doing a voiceover then as I recall all the remaining academics were non-white/POC, which is... interesting.

Comments

[ex_pippin880]

Did you see the series on SBS about the white Australia policy and immigration and stuff? I didn't catch all of it, but it was really interesting (in very horrible ways, sometimes).

[sqbr]

I did not! I'm slowly working my way through "The First Australians" but it's slow and depressing so I keep stopping.

[ex_pippin880]

One of the bits I remember involved them talking to the very first 'boat people' -- some guys from Vietnam. They had a boat and a children's atlas, and decided to go to Australia rather than the US because the Australian soldiers had been nicer to them during the war.

They made it to Darwin, and the very first thing that the Aussie fishermen do is give them some money for the phonebox (to ring the police) and a box of ciggies, so they were all "well we made the right choice, it's a very friendly country!" and then they rang the police who went "wait what you're from where".

[woldy]

Thanks for the link. I just watched the first episode, & found it pretty good. There are quite a few white guys featured (and not many women, let alone women of colour, which I suspect is mostly a commentary on academia *sigh*), but the level of academic expertise and sophistication was impressive for a BBC program.

[sqbr]

Yes, it's not the Best Documentary Ever, but better than I was expecting.