Basquiat?

Next have the White kids and Black kids compete in making rhythms on a drum.

The Black kids' rhythms are vastly more complicated, echoing the complexities of their racial history.

The White kids' drum beats are simple and arrhythmic, owing to their lack of introspection about the racial harm they've caused.

SCIENCE.

I remember this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Black_America

>>>OF BLACK AMERICA was a series of seven one-hour documentaries presented by CBS News in the summer of 1968, at the end of the Civil Rights Movement and during a time of racial unrest (Martin Luther King had been assassinated that spring and riots in many cities had followed). The groundbreaking[1] series explored various aspects of the history and current state of African-American community. The executive producer was Perry Wolff,[2][1] and the series was sponsored by the Xerox Corporation.

Yes, KIDS! Once upon a time, television networks broadcast documentaries, and multinational corproations paid for them. On the minus side, civil rights leaders were dropping like flies.

I'm sure that this WAS groundbreaking, because in 1968 there was so much ground to break. I don't even remember hearing the phrase "BLACK AMERICA" before then.

This is from the first part of the seven part series BLACK HISTORY: LOST, STOLEN, OR STRAYED, which won an Emmy. I actually watched this in fifth grade social studies. Strangely enough, it was in black and white. The highlight was scenes from racist film comedies of the 20s and 30s that had the all-white class laughing its ass off, to the consternation of poor long-suffering Mrs. Mydlowski. That same year, we had a mock election, where we elected George Wallace President. Fifty years later, I still wonder what the fuck THAT was about! They say Mrs. Mydlowski died from cancer, but I know it was from trying to teach ten year old suburban white kids about racism. (Honest, I voted for Humphrey!)

OF BLACK AMERICA was a big deal at the time. I wonder what would stand out if we could see this again now, other than the host being a convicted rapist. I'm going to try to find these documentaries for Streamdumpster Wednesday Nights. I'm making it my goddamn mission.

I think this is a pretty shitty edit. It leaves out the white kid drawings. But the argument presented was always anecdotal, obviously cherry-picked by definition, and by necessity. By now, we've seen fucked up kids drawings blamed on all sorts of presumed social evils, from heavy metal music to divorce. If I never drew a picture of someone hanging from a noose when I was kid, it was probably because I couldn't draw.

Still, I was only ten years old, but it never occurred to me that growing up black in racist America might fuck with a kid's head. This was the awkward beginning of an important converstation that, seeing where we are now, obviously ended much too soon.

I submitted BLACK HISTORY: LOST STOLEN OR STRAYED, the documenentary this rather out-of-context clip was taken from, and I will also be streaming it tomorrow night.

When I submitted it, I expected to see something painfully dated, but it's painfully the opposite. To see scenes of blacks commiting voter fraud from BIRTH OF A NATION in 1918, a trope that Trump's GOP likes to push, and then to see Bill Cosby in 1968 say "This all seems silly and dated today", is more than a little disheartening.