![]() Racial tensions and violence rose in these tightly-packed communities, as it became clear that prejudice was still high even where it wasn’t codified in statute books. Not that the transplants were welcomed unequivocally. They were pushed by their home states oppressive laws, and pulled by a wave of industrialisation that promised well-paid jobs in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore. In 1900, it was estimated that 80 per cent of the Black population lived in the southern states, but between 19 a wave of migration saw several million people move to other parts of the US. These laws permitted segregated schools, workplaces transportation, bathrooms, seats in cafes and restaurants and public places, as well as empowering vote-suppressing measures that are still being unpicked (or, in the case of current Republican efforts in Georgia, furthered) today. Although slavery was officially abolished in the US in 1865, the southern states enforced Jim Crow laws – named after the racist cariacture of a dancing white man in blackface – that allowed racial segregation and propagated the notion that Black people were second class citizens, which led to further sustained abuse, mistreatment and violence. View full post on Youtube The Great MigrationĪmerica’s founding principles, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, come with an unwritten caveat: only if you’re white. THEM is a specific story based in the reality of a specific time in American history, but which echoes still, seven decades on. ![]() And the really scary thing is, it doesn’t go away when you close the screen. Like Get Out, the horror in THEM isn’t just jump scares it’s there in the poisonous, pervading experience of everyday racism, which is as destructive as anything supernatural. Their hateful message is designed to intimidate and threaten the Black family they see as encroaching on ‘their’ neighbourhood. The neighbourhood menace (played by Alice Pill) and her Stepford wives gang make life a living nightmare for Lucky and Henry Emory (Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas): threatening stares through windows, blaring radios outside their front door. Cue the real horrors of THEM, the new Amazon series created by Little Marvin and executive produced by Lena Waithe.Īlthough there are be supernatural spooks beneath the terror anthology’s surface – think Twin Peaks meets Get Out – the real malevolent force at play here is racism. But something’s off from the moment the parents and their two young daughters arrive at their white-picket-fenced house in the glaringly white neighbourhood of Compton. ![]() The year is 1950-something and a family is moving across America from North Carolina to LA in search of a better life. ![]()
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