There's nothing more important to say at this time than VOTE.

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“The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             – John O’Donohue

The Channsin Berry One-Question Interview

All images Courtesy of D. Channsin Berry

In 2011, film directors, D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke produced Dark Girls, a documentary-confessional unveiling the painful stories on Colorism among African Americans, which later premiered to millions of viewers on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Continuing the dialog on this discriminatory practice that still exists across all stages of life, Channsin Berry takes the lead, examining the subject again in Dark Girls 2 and shares his most emotional moment while filming this documentary after seeking divine intervention to create the setting for his youngest participants to disclose the psychological trauma from colorism in part 2 of this OWN Spotlight feature. 

 

Interiors of Man: One of the most touching scenes from Dark Girls 2 was your filming the testimonies of high school girls sharing their painful experiences of being victimized for their dark skin, and capturing the reaction of a fair skinned girl appearing not to have realized the gravity of their pain until turning around and seeing others crying beside her, and then, it hit her.

It was a moment of healing and humanity and [that’s] where it all begins – the moment when light and dark can empathize with each other’s painful experiences with Colorism.

D. Channsin Berry: When I asked a teacher friend of mine, Fluker, and the assistant principal to put together a group of African-American girls to talk about Colorism at El Camino Real Charter High School, I expected no more than five to ten girls and when I got there the assistant principal said there will be twenty-eight to thirty girls participating, and after we, (my crew and I), set up, the girls started trickling in until there were thirty-one girls packed in there and it threw me off.  I said how I’m going to deal with this?  So I prayed on it and when I went back in, it was quiet as a church, and we talked, (off camera), about Black people – girls, boys, men, women … our history.

Then, I asked the question, and after the first hand went up it was all over and they decided to talk.  [That] scene is the hardest scene for me to watch that I walked out of the screening for that scene with OWN.  It took everything within me to take in all the emotion, trauma, and pain from those babies.  When they started showing their emotions, it was nothing but God and a full-on healing session.  It wore me and the crew out – a 95% White crew oppose to my usual 95-98% Black crew with 55% being women of color.  Not this time, this time I worked with a few phenomenal friends and technicians who were White and whom I trusted, and that day, with those babies, my White crew was done.  The teacher and the co-principal were also done.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Afterwards, girls who never associated with each other were hugging and exchanging numbers … and I ask myself what would’ve happened if that segment never took place?

God showed up for me on this project long ago before I got to this planet, and I have dedicated my life to films of healing for us and to educate others.

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For more on this segment and Dark Girls 2, search and visit  OWN

“The power of faith is transformative.  It can be utilized in your own personal life to change your individual condition …”                                                                        

                                                                                                       – John Lewis

Links to Excellence – Omar’s Blues

What if the young people we have seen rioting, looting, and unleashing destructive anger during the most global protest in history, rechannel their passion by taking a serious assessment of their innate talents and given the needed resources to cultivate the best expression of themselves in alignment with their purpose?  Instead of prejudging them on surface as another cultural assumption, we would see the manifestation of an  Omar Gordon.

        “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”

                                                                       ― Alfred Tennyson
                                                                            

    

Before Corona

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic a fleeting thought went through my mind in regards to the massive resources, wealth, and possibilities we as Americans are privileged to, and the orchestrated logistics that enable us to walk into a store and freely shop for essentials and non-essentials  without struggle – a privilege most of us took for granted until now.

I believe this subconscious thought was planted after watching a documentary on the scarcity of water in African nations, which some have risked their lives to obtain.

Inverse to this, was an episodic observation on #blackAF, which I believe was intended to make an insightful point, oppose to humor, as a comedic character was amazed that there were plenty bottles of imported water for everyone to drink at a lavish cookout – this, again, speaking to America’s privilege, wealth and the possibilities for wealth, as the show depicts an affluent family privy to any material desire, which again, some take for granted or fail to appreciate.

Now being forced to prioritize our needs, scale back, and see that having less brings gratitude, I hope we will learn that abundance doesn’t come with satisfaction and more is not needed to be content.