A conversation about race and racism in America

Today, we’re sharing this clip from an episode of the award-winning TV show The 90’s. It was shot by Jim Mulryan in 1991 for an episode about race and racism in America. In it, James Woods, who is African American, and Matthew Lang, who is white, discuss white privilege while driving a pickup truck through the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. Watching it now, we’re interested in your comments on how you think the conversation and realities about race have changed after nearly 25 years.

You can watch the full “Race and Racism” episode of The 90’s at Media Burn.

Jake Malooley at the Chicago Reader recently discovered a shot of a young Rahm Emanuel preserved in our archive. The shot comes from Tom Palazzolo’s Marquette Park II, which documented a neo-Nazi rally and counter-demonstrations in 1978. Rahm shows up as a counter-protestor starting around 23:56, already exhibiting his trademark dismissiveness of the press.

When Tom Palazzolo originally shot the footage, Rahm was just some shirtless 18-year-old protestor, and even when we first digitized and logged the video, Rahm was still years away from becoming a well-known Chicago politician. This discovery is not only proof that archival footage can hold surprises for future generations, but also that by making our archive available to the public, more and more people can explore and help us discover moments like this.

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A conversation about race and racism in America

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