Please go and watch the 2001 film Focus, directed by Neal Slavin and starring William H. Macy and Laura Dern. It is based on the great playwright Arthur Miller‘s novel of the same name.
The film takes place in the waning months of WW2 when a man and his new wife are mistakenly identified as Jews by their anti-Semitic Brooklyn , N.Y.C neighbors. They soon become victims of religious and racial persecution. Many of us may not realize just how bad things were for Jews and Blacks during the WW2 years.
We have this illusion that ‘All for one and one for all’ was the motto of the day, as America fought off the German and Japanese threat of world domination. Well, as the movie revealed, even in Northern cities Jews were ‘Restricted’ from many jobs, housing and places for vacation. The employers of businesses and owners of housing and hotels actually used the word ‘Restricted’ in advertisements and billboards. For blacks up north just their color was enough to have them ‘Restricted’ from employment or housing… let alone a hotel accommodation. Jim Crow and Jim Cohen was not only in the south.
Many will state, and perhaps rightly so, that we have come a long way since the 40s, 50s and 60s. Yet, the hate is still there, engrained in the minds of white Christian Americans… or should I say Amerikans. It stays hidden from public view, reserved for private home conversations or whispered invectives and not so funny jokes. (more...)
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