Soledad O'Brien's BET miniseries, Disrupt & Dismantle, challenges viewers to accept that structural racism is in America's DNA and then asks: What are we going to do about it?
In the series, O'Brien is taking a deeper dive into how structural racism works in America. Produced by Soledad O'Brien Productions, the series doesn't merely spotlight ongoing instances of racism across the nation; it begs the questions: Why is racism happening in the first place? And how has it managed to run rampant among our society for so long?
Over six episodes, O'Brien calls out the antiquated systems within our local and federal governments that allow racist practices to continue to thrive, and in true O'Brien fashion, she has the reporting to back it up.
"I've spent a lot of my career covering conversations about race, and class, and racism, and injustice, and bias," O'Brien tells BAZAAR.com. "When we were sitting around coming up with ideas for the series that we would want to watch, one thing we kept coming back to was, What are the solutions? How do you explain to people what's happening in ways that connect the dots?"
And connect the dots, she does. While other shows may focus on news stories about the racism of today, O'Brien plans to dig deeper, explaining the historical context of modern racism. "I often think when we talk about racism, when we talk about structural racism or environmental racism, people almost roll their eyes like, 'Come on, haven't we been through this?'" she says. "I think it's because we, the media, generally fail to connect the dots. It's not a, 'So let's take you back to the 1940s [sort of situation].' Instead, it's, 'Let's take you back to last week.' We wanted to see if we could create content that would, number one, really tell the story about racism in today's terms, but connected to the past—what's unfolding today and use that as an opportunity to explain it."
No comments:
Post a Comment