500 years later

"500 years later" is a documentary mostly about the enslavement of African people and how it has affected the way they live now. Slavery is an awful thing no doubt but in history there is always injustice.

How does an individual identify with a group and feel proud? For example, Indians find a pride in their culture and no one has to force them to feel that. India was among the first countries to get colonized and yet an Indian woman loves her sari, her bindi, and even the food. As an individual you can always acquire a skill and feel pride and forget all about your history. The Jewish people have not suffered only the holocaust but they suffered discrimination much longer than Africans. And yet today as a group they are influential to a point that they can punish German nazis. But they cannot punish European people who discriminated against them way before nazis. The documentary talks about imposing a pay back for injustices rendered and it is not clear how this can be done. No, not even for the Jewish people.

The African people according to this documentary are still searching for an anchor to pride and this documentary is a good beginning. But if I were to make a documentary about African pride it would not be about the pyramids which only Egyptians identify with or about Martin Luther King who only Americans identify with. Since Africa is such a diverse place not every African feels a connection to these events.

On the other hand Africans are one with nature and have learned to coexist with the abundance around them with little disturbance. A rich flora and fauna of a region is a triumph of its people. This every person of African origin can identify with. In other words a documentary that searches for the quintessential African is yet to be made.

This documentary is one where my review tends to get long. Its funny how the people in this documentary want a different school system for African Americans when a few years back they fought against segregation of schools. The many paradoxes such as these define the documentary and the African people who I think are still searching to find themselves and what they really want.