How do you even begin to talk about an incendiary issue like racism?  This problem is resolved within the first minutes of the documentary The Color of Fear when all the film’s participants, by way of introduction, are required to describe their own ethnicity and David Christensen, a Caucasian man, announces, “I’m an American.”  This assertion plunges the film headfirst into a discussion on whether or not “American” is an inclusive term and two patterns are set up for the film: First, Christensen proves to be a lightning rod.  Second, the questions are more illuminating than any of the answers. 

The Color of Fear (1994) is a documentary about eight men – two African Americans, two Asian Americans, two Latino Americans and two European Americans – who discuss racism at a weekend retreat in Ukiah, CA.  The Color of Fear won the National Education Media Network's best Social Documentary Award in 1995, and Lee Mun Wah, the producer of the documentary and the facilitator in the documentary, was invited onto the Oprah Winfrey Show that same year to discuss his work.  Mun Wah is now the founder and executive producer of StirFry Seminars & Consulting, dedicated to facilitating dialogue about diversity issues, and he has lectured at many places, including the Pentagon.  Mun Wah, and Victor Lee Lewis, co-director of the Center for Diversity Leadership and a participant in the film, came for a showing of The Color of Fear at the Calhoun School and stayed for a Q & A session afterwards.   

The most memorable scenes in the documentary are Lewis’s explosive diatribe (watch it on YouTube ) and Christensen’s tearful confession.  These two scenes counterbalance each other, and the other participants teeter from one emotion to another throughout the film, but for the most part, these men are pissed off – and they’re pissed off at Christensen.  To be fair, Christensen’s an easy target.  His incredulity, his baffled looks, and his “why can’t we all just get along” philosophy all justifiably upset the other men.  At one point Mun Wah asks him what would happen if he supposed for a moment that the suffering around him was real and Christensen, blinkered, says, “Why, that would be horrible.”  The problem is that the task of educating Christensen casts the other men into the role of teachers and, in their efforts to help, they sometimes fail to look at themselves. 

Focusing on Christensen also creates a white vs. minority dynamic, so when the talk finally turns to racism among minorities about one hour into the film, the conversation, once so volatile, turns polite and apologetic.  The participants seem afraid of offending one another.  The inflammatory language tones down and the same people who accused David of being an insidious force of laissez-faire racism moments become hesitant.  There’s a lot of, “I don’t want to offend you but…” and “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you but...”  The conversation changed from assertions to qualifiers.  The language shifted from “you vs. me” to “we.”  The men that have been united in their front against racism from Caucasians don’t want their fledgling camaraderie to be damaged by infighting.  The conversation is uncomfortable because the issues have shifted from majority vs. minority to minority vs. minority, but also from blame to self-examination.  Naturally, the ground is a little more yielding.

During the Q & A session after the film, a woman in the audience said that racism isn’t just a black and white issue and the real problem is ignorance.  Lewis replied, “Prejudice is an attitude that any individual or group of individuals can adopt.  Racism is a system of power that favors white supremacy.”  Unfortunately, this distinction is not made in the film where everyone uses the word racism as an umbrella term for the hostility and discrimination in general, though there is a tendency to blame white people.  While discussing racism among minorities, David Lee, a Chinese American man, says, “We’ve been exploited,” and several others insist that hostility they experience from members of different races is the by-product of the greater discrimination they experience at the hands of white people.  

Such comments come dangerously close to laying one’s prejudices at another’s feet.  The view that the prejudices harbored by minorities in America are merely learned from the dominant white culture is misguided – such an evaluation gives too much power to the others and undermines the responsibility of minorities.  For example, there is a lot of racism among the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean communities in America, and the antagonism can be traced to history (notably from atrocities committed by Japan during WWII), not beliefs plucked from Caucasians.

The documentary is strongest when the participants reveal a little about their history, and thereby some of their motives for participation.  Mun Wah’s mother was killed by an African American man and third generation Japanese American Yutaka Matsumato family’s was placed in the internment camps by the US government.  This information is only mentioned in passing and they’re like glimpses through a pinhole when you want a panoramic view. 

The ability of such disclosures about personal history to make seismic shifts in everyone’s attitude is evident from Christensen, who, usurping more than his fair share of attention again, reveals that he was abused by his racist father and how he learned to adopt his father’s views.  It’s something of an Oz moment as Christensen steps out from behind the blank, smiling hypocrisy that he seems to represent as Mr. White Oppressor and the rest of the men see that he’s human.  Huzzah!  David’s no victim, but he’s easier to relate to and everyone visibly relaxes after his confession. 

 The movie would have been strengthened if it offered more about the other men’s backgrounds. In particular, all the focus on Christensen makes you forget that there are two white people in the room, but the other, Gordon Clay, escapes the heat because he is more aware of his privileges.  From the outset, he describes himself as “a recovering racist and recovering sexist.”  Admission seems the equivalent of expiation here because no one ever questions him.  Later in the film, the other members enlist Clay to talk sense into Christensen and, in one awkward exchange, the two of them talk, white man to white man.  The conversation is brief and falls flat.  This is no surprise since Clay is light years away from him in terms of social awareness and Christensen is no more capable of understanding him than he would understand an alien, whether or not they share the same skin color. 

What is surprising is that Clay, who wears a look of permanent consternation (or is that concentration?) throughout the documentary, fades into the background so easily.  How did he become more socially aware?  I assume it’s not through an intervention style discussion.  This is one of the film’s blindspots and background information would have been handy.  If Christensen is the weakest link, then Clay, the most silent member, is the missing link. 

After the film, Mun Wah said, “We have no model for hearing each other,” and to that end this documentary goes a long way.  Everyone is earnest.  No one is ever flip or dismissive.  No one interrupts.  In the film, Loren Moye, an African American man, says, “As a white person, [Christensen] doesn’t have to think about his position in life, his place in the world; history books tell him, as they are written, that the world is his.”  Moye gets it right.