Monday, December 24, 2007

Now on YouTube: This film managed to convey, in twenty minutes, the desperation and exhilaration of being a member of a White club in the midst of Chicago's turbulent and violent era of neighborhood change.

There is no acting. All of the dialog is spoken by those who lived through those times, the places we see are all real, the young lives ended tragically close to our hearts.

When we speak or think of White youth today, it is invariably in terms of privilege. We think of suburbs, private schools, and so forth. This is far from the reality, and seeing and hearing the men in this film should remind us, brutally, of the often violent struggle of White youths to maintain a sense of identity and belonging in their neighborhoods and their schools. There is nothing racist in this-quite the contrary. This is survival, plain and simple

Great American Youth