Jason George & Todd Grinnell Take A Page From Norman Lear’s Book, Unpacking Systemic Racism In Video From Hollywood Health & Society — Watch
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Is systemic racism still a thing? The short answer is yes. And for the long answer, well, that’s something that Jason George and Todd Grinnell are unpacking in a video from Hollywood, Health & Society and USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center, which Deadline is debuting exclusively. “[Racism is] still baked into our society, certainly on a personal level, but on a systemic level, these laws that were created after slavery was abolished to keep former slaves from being able to advance in society, were baked in to our systems, and still are there,” Kate Folb, director of Hollywood, Health & Society, told Deadline.
She revealed it took nearly a year to get the script right for the 9-minute video in which the two actors take viewers from the Civil War to modern day, illustrating how racism and the desire to protect slavery influenced the laws and systems that still control the United States today.
The goal of the video, George says, is to get across the message that “it is nothing that you, individually, should be ashamed of because you didn’t do it, unless you are actively holding slaves or actively preventing people from getting housing because of the color their skin, etc, etc.
But it’s just something that needs to be acknowledged as fact, and we need to not run from it.” The country has gone through somewhat of a racial reckoning in the last few years, after the murder of George Floyd prompted massive, widespread protests during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
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