The
election of the first African American President, Barack Obama in
2008, was celebrated worldwide. However, the situation of a large
part of the African American community still remains outside of the
American dream.
Dreams
Deferred - legacy of American apartheid
explores the realities of a system that
supports exclusion
effecting the African American community.
The
film focuses on drug laws, stricter punishments and longer prison
sentences, sentencing discrepancies, government subsidies to police
forces stimulating drug arrests and confiscations, laws penalising a
’felony conviction’ with the loss of vote, loss of possible
student loans, food stamps and public housing etc. The Children
Defense Fund has estimated that 1 of 3 African American males will
spend time in a prison or a jail within his lifetime.
It
tells about present day community activists, organisations and
individuals such as Michelle Alexander author of The New Jim Crow and
Jamie Fellner from Human Rights Watch. It examines the effect, both
physical and psychological, of the prison absence on the community
and the family. From organisations such as Roseland Ceasefire doing
work to prevent street violance to special schools in youth detention
centres, it gives the viewer a deep understanding of the reality
American
Director Joe Davidow, with a civil rights background, has lived in
Europe for almost 30 years. He explores systematic exclusion in the
US from a European viewpoint.
