BlacKkKlansman Analysis: Black Power Movement Versus Ku Klux Klan

To the investigation, but the chief insisted. Ron would act like he was close friends with Duke to make it seem like they were allowed to be associated with each other. After a few days had past, Duke called Ron on three separate occasions to invite him to a planned cross burning. Ron had the police set up extra patrols in the areas where the cross burnings were scheduled, but he always declined to attend due to legal concerns about entrapment. After two cancelled attempts the KKK eventually disregarded their planned third cross burning. Ron was proud of his role in stopping all three planned cross burnings. When people ask Ron what the investigation achieved, Ron would tell them that he prevented a generation of black children from having to live through the horror of being brutally beaten or be considered as less of a person just because of their skin color.

Based on a true story, and set in 1970s Colorado Springs, BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee is about a man named Ron Stallworthand, the first black man to work at the Colorado Springs police department. Assigned to work in the records room, he faces racial slurs from his coworkers. After he requests a transfer to undercover work with a goal to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan in hopes of making a name for himself not just in the office but nationally. The film is a great way to represent the period, charting the parallel rise of the Black Power movement, and the loss of the power of the Ku Klux Klan. The undercover cop realizes that this will not be a one man job and decides to add a member to his heist, Flip Zimmerman. Together, they team up to take down the extremist hate group and become mainstream.

Spike Lee makes it very clear to us that this film was set in a period of time where black people were still not accepted into the world yet. Back in the 1970s a hate group called the Ku Klux Klan was very famous and known for killing any race (usually black) just to prove that whites were superior to everyone that was not the same race as them. In the midst of a historical nightmare, director Spike Lee decides to take advantage of what was going on in those times and educate us on what really used to happen to black people in the past. To drive the point home, Mr. Lee concludes the movie with footage from the riots and the response from the president. There was lots of ‘casual racism’ that was common in much of middle America at that time and there was no one that would step up and fight for their rights because everyone was scared of the things the superior race could do to them and get away with it. Police brutality against African Americans and people of colour, the rise of the far-right, neo-Nazism needed to be stopped as soon as possible.

BlacKkKlansman is set in the late 1970s, an era in American history where Black people had finally achieved civil rights, but anti-Black violence was still a threat. The Black Power movement offered up political leaders and ideologies in support of African-Americans educated and affirming themselves. To the latter point, “Black is beautiful” became one of the many rallying calls of the movement. It was a cultural clapback to the idea that African features, like dark skin, nappy hair, and wider noses, were inherently unattractive. Believing in the aesthetic value of Blackness was just one of the many means of resisting racism and anti-Blackness. Lee latched onto this at several key moments in BlacKkKlansman that made the film that much more educational but at the same time intriguing to the audience.

The movie seems to want to shake up the audience, to open their eyes to the dangers that the KKK and white supremacy more broadly pose to not just black Americans but Jewish Americans and others who oppose the “white Christian”. During this time of the movie the KKK was very well known and in their prime. Since the 1970s the Klan has been greatly weakened by internal conflicts, court cases, a seemingly endless series of splits and government infiltration. While some factions have preserved an openly racist and militant approach, others have tried to enter the mainstream, cloaking their racism as mere ‘civil rights for whites.’ Today, the Center estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different – and often warring – organizations that use the Klan name. Ron decided to take action on this terrible group that was being formed to take them down and start a strong movement for black lives. There was another black movement group called the black panthers that helped bring down the KKK as well.

This film educates us on what really happened back then and the things that could have still been going on till this day if we ended up never taking action on the racism and supreme groups that were being formed at an alarming rate. The 70s were a big time for African American people to be oppressed and raped for simply just being black. This is when the African American people decided to take initiative and stand up for their rights to be considered the same as everyone else.