Sobering TV highlights intolerance
George Floyd’s killing in the United States has prompted calls for more education on racial inequality. These Netflix shows should help.
The killing of George Floyd after he was pinned down by police on the streets of Minneapolis has prompted protests and riots across the United States and the world.
Floyd, a black man, was being restrained by police on May 25 when a bystander filmed Derek Chauvin, a white man, who was one of the four officers holding him down, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.
The video showed Floyd pleading for his life, saying ‘‘I can’t breathe’’.
Chauvin has since been charged with seconddegree murder. On Wednesday (Thursday NZ time), the three other officers at the scene were charged for the first time with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Floyd’s death has sparked protests calling for justice.
The Black Lives Matter movement is also urging people to educate themselves about racism and inequality today and throughout history. Here are eight recommended shows on Netflix.
The Innocence Files (2020)
The Innocence Files sheds light on the untold personal stories behind eight cases of wrongful convictions – most of them African Americans – that were uncovered and overturned by the
Innocence Project.
The nine-episode series exposes problems within the criminal justice system in the United States.
The wrongful convictions led to innocent people spending decades behind bars.
Who Killed Malcolm X? (2020)
Who Killed Malcolm X? follows the work of AbdurRahman Muhammad, a historian and tour guide in Washington.
For more than 30 years, he has been investigating the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, an activist for human and civil rights. The sixepisode series attempts to search for the truth.
When They See Us (2019)
Based on a true story, When They See Us follows the case of five teenagers in New York, who were convicted of a brutal rape they did not commit.
The four-part series begins in 1989, when the teenagers were first questioned about the attack, and spans 25 years, including their exoneration and a settlement reached with the city of New York.
The Rachel Divide (2018)
Often described as ‘‘transracial’’, Rachel Dolezal sparked a media storm when she was outed as a white woman who had been living as the black president of a New York civil rights organisation.
The Rachel Divide film follows how the controversy erupted and how she finds herself in the middle of a race and identity debate in the United States.
Mudbound (2017)
Mudbound shows how two Mississippi families – one black, one white – confront the harsh realities of prejudice, farming and friendship in a divided community after World War II.
The film shows how the families forge a fast but uneasy friendship as they struggle to keep their dreams alive.
Dear White People (2017)
Dear White People
is set against the backdrop of a predominantly white university in the United States. The satirical series follows a group of black students attempting to navigate a diverse landscape of social injustice, cultural bias, political correctness and sometimes misguided activism in the millennial age.
Imperial Dreams (2017)
A reformed gangster’s devotion to his family is tested when he is released from prison and returns to his violent old neighbourhood. Imperial Dreams explores the effects of incarceration, education, racial profiling by police, and systemic racism.
13th (2016)
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution reads, ‘‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States’’. Historians, activists and politicians analyse the criminalisation of American Africans and the astonishing prison boom.