My father was one of the men and women who helped get King Hospital built, but he missed half of the PBS documentary 'Matters of Race'. So did most of America, I suspect. It's the one reality program that nobody really wants to watch.
It was done well. You could smell the lefty bend of the Siler City episode, but it was unique in that it wasn't the same old thing. For once it came from four racial directions.
There were actually some extraordinary quotes that I wish I could get from a transcript. One of them had to do with the notion of wishing race away - that one could certainly be colorblind at the individual level but everybody in America inherits racial history whether or not we want to, and that doesn't go away. Wideman's comments apropos riots in Los Angeles, when people say 'Oh no, not again', they are decieving themselves, as if something stopped and then appeared once again as a total surprise.
Anyway, I hope to find somebody not particularly burned out to fill in some critical details. I think I'm headed to writer's blockland in a day or two.
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