Nate Parker's Birth of A Nation

   From The Ramparts

                                                                                Junious Ricardo Stanton

  Nate Parker's  Birth of A Nation

 

 

            Filmmaker Nate Parker's Birth of A Nation has as of this past weekend grossed over twelve million dollars. The film cost eight point five million to make, so it is making a profit despite attempts to undermine this important film about Nat Turner. We went to see it last week. I was  impressed but I also know why the powers that be attempted to sabotage the film by bringing up Parker's personal history of being accused of rape while at student at Penn State. Parker was subsequently exonerated of the charges but his accuser committed suicide several years after the event. All that is tragic but should not have any bearing on Parker's film.

            The film makes a deep political statement, it presents Nat Turner as a hero. By making this film Parker violated one of the most sacrosanct commandments of American race dynamics, "never make white people uncomfortable by telling the truth about their evil."  Parker's film does exactly that, it exposes the vile nature of slavery; what the whites called "the peculiar institution."

            Making a film about Nat Turner is a touchy project.  Even today to whites Nat Turner represents their worst nightmare a motivated and inspired black man who dared to challenge his oppression by using violence as the means to gain his freedom. In 1831 two years after David Walker a free Black man living in Massachusetts published his Appeal to The Coloured Citizens of The World in which he called for the use of violence in the cause of freedom Turner who by all accounts was a literate man led his rampage in Southampton County Virginia.  Turner was an itinerant preacher who felt he was called to lead his people to freedom.

            Parker's version of Turner's life begins when the young Nat is recognized by Africans practicing traditional African customs as a child bearing special marks which destined him to be a leader of the people. Young Nat was allowed to learn to read and write by his owner. The film follows Turner's life as a boy slave learning to read and write but subsequently being taken from the tutelage of the owner's sister to working in the fields. The book she used to teach Nat to read was the Bible. Of course the slave owners wanted docile slaves so servility and submissiveness were stressed.

            A white preacher convinces Nat's owner to use him to influence slaves throughout the county to be submissive and obedient. The white preacher and Nat's owner split the profits the slave owners pay to have Nat preach passivity and obedience to their bondsmen and women.  I won't spoil it for you by telling you any more but suffice it to say Nat Turner makes a three sixty degree turnabout and Parker shows the incidents that led to his transformation.

            I strongly urge you to see this film. I know there have been a rash of slavery films:  Amistad, Twelve Years A Salve, Django Unchained, Belle to name a few but this is a must see film. Parker deliberately linked his film to the Black Lives Matter movement. By  watching his film we see the social and political roots of the systemic devaluation of Black lives and we can connect the dots to present day racial dynamics in the US.  

            America has not dealt with its legacy of slavery, the endemic racial animus, terror and brutal oppression, nor has it dealt with the values and mindset that fostered such a system and allows it to continue hundreds of years later. So rather than deal with the film and the historical material it presents, the powers that be have chosen to demonize Nate Parker. Rather than discuss and connect the dots about the slave patrols (patty rollers) and how the police treat many Blacks today we are subjected to personal attacks on Parker.

            Our biggest problem is we do not know our history nor the forces arrayed against us today. Go see the film. It will fill in some of the blanks and give you some understanding about what our people experienced, survived and overcame.

 

                                                                                                                          -30-

           

 

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  • My sister was told at school in the 1940s and '50s that Nat Turner's revolt was the only slave revolt, and that this proved that the "slaves" were happy on the plantation. 

    Thank goodness we now know that there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of slave revolts in the U.S. and throughout the Americas, and dozens of maroon communities founded and maintained by the formerly enslaved. 

    Our biggest problem is not that we don't know our history, although that history has deliberately been distorted, marginalised and misrepresented.  Our biggest problem is self-hatred, and ignorance of our history is part of the process that generated that ingrained self-hatred.

    Thanks very much for posting this.  I am sure this is an important film which everyone should see, and I look forward to seeing it when it comes to Britain. 

    Having said that, we need to have an ongoing healing process as this kind of information can re-traumatise us, and does so.  Still, we need this information.  Knowledge is power.

    • We have fought on numerous fronts against a war loving, violent people for centuries. We have won on the continent of Africa, won in the Caribbean, won here in AmeriKKKa. The oppressor wants us to think we cannot win. When we study our history we learn we won when we knew who we were and used our African cultural traditions to keep us strong focused and in tune with DIVINE FORCES. Nat Turner was a hero even though he  failed in his mission,  David Walker was a hero even though we never followed is advice about the use of violence. We have to be strong know who we are and press to return this planet to sanity and peace by exerting our DIVINE NATURE and using DIVINE WISDOM. 

  • Caricom

    The film "Birth of a Nation", although depicting the horrendous and brutal treatment of enslaved black people and Nate Turner's heroic effort to free our people from slavery via violent means, was well done and long over due. There are so many stories of our people and their ability to survive conditions that defy description, even in film, that have never been told.

    As much as I enjoyed the film from a storytelling point of view, it still fails to deal with a few critical realities that apparently escaped Mr. Turner's thorough study of the Bible. 

    He failed to notice Deuteronomy 28:15-68, which describes in graphic detail the chattel slavery he and most blacks in America were experiencing. Had he read it carefully and realized that he was living out the prophecies written therein, he would have also noticed WHY we were being treated so badly and WHO we really are, as a people. 

    By reading carefully the prophecies there and matching his experiences of enslavement with those prophecies, he could have also identified the reason for our afflictions - disobedience to the Most High.

    He would have also recognized that we really are - the "lost sheep of the House of Israel". Yes, we are God's "chosen people", in exile. Yes, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

    Had he read carefully the prophecy at Genesis 15:13, he would have discovered HOW LONG we would be enslaved before liberated - 400 years.

    Finally, having put this information together, he would have realized the futility of waging a violent war of liberation that cannot be won; not just because of the military might of our oppressor, but also because of the Word of God. Our liberation will come about only through the true God because he cannot lie and God has said freeing us is his job. He promises we will leave "with great substance", allow us to return home to our own land and rebuild our land and a prepare a New Earth.

    My biggest concern with the film and linking it to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, is it is a TRAP. 

    Encouraging our people to "rise up and fight for their freedom"is very dangerous propaganda, designed to lure the unsuspecting into a "killing field". An attack by our people is exactly what our oppressors want us to do. They are seeking a reason to try and kill every last one of God's holy people, since they are under the strong influence of our adversary - satan.

    We, as a people, cannot win a fight with America's military might. We would be slaughtered in the streets like animals, which is exactly how our enemies have been taught to regard us.

    Somewhere it is written: Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD. Family, will we let God do his thing while we watch his powerful work? Or will we imitate our disobedient ancestors and try to do God's work ourselves?

    Please, listen to reason and not respond to unbridled emotion. Yes, we have been mistreated, but now we know WHY. We have been a disobedient people. Now we know WHO we are - the "lost sheep of the House of Israel". We are God's "chosen people".

    We cannot win a war with these people. They have the weaponry and the will to destroy every black man, woman and child. All they are looking for is an excuse. Please, do not give them an excuse.

    Have faith in God's ability to deliver and protect his name people. Stay in your homes. Maintain a low, peaceful profile. Suffer the indignities, and slights, knowing that our deliverance is getting near. Freedom is at the doorstep. Don't be misled into violence and bloodshed, my dear Hebrew family. Shalom.

    • We have fought tremendous military might before and won.  We can do so again.  The Haitian Revolution is just one example of that. 

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