The New Black

LGBT POC: Karess Taylor Hughes in The New Black

Time Investment: 75 min.
Return on Investment: 65 min.

Filmmaker Yoruba Richen says she was inspired to make her new documentary The New Black after the 2008 election when marriage equality activists blamed the African-American community for Proposition 8 passing in California. The accomplished director, known for Promised Land, her documentary on post-apartheid South Africa, spent three years trying to understand the issue of gay rights within the black community, the moral and political center of which still lies within the church. How could a community defined by civil rights turn their back on the oppressed? The New Black, which has its US premiere at Film Forum, explores that question against the backdrop of Maryland’s 2012 marriage equality fight.

Richen follows three women of color trying to put an end to what one calls “the unfinished business of black people being free.” But she also follows the opposition, many of whom are candid about their beliefs. (“Gay is a white man’s disease that got on us,” says one.) She finds a deep struggle between faith and sexual orientation, even amongst activists. And though things are changing—Maryland’s equality bill passed—it appears the power to sway votes, and hearts, still lies with the clergy. “People who have been trampled upon to feel power need to trample on someone else,” says one activist. Blame the black clergy or blame the black community for Prop 8 passing; it seems that to achieve full equality trampling on anyone should end once and for all.