Rattlesnake & George Wallace

Hi all,

I know I’m behind on my updates.

We had a great ten days of filming for the “White Guilt” documentary in the Arizona desert. We couldn’t have asked for better weather — blue skies and 75 degrees throughout. And no snakes — until the very last day. A big rattler got a little jealous of my father hogging the screen and decided to make an appearance. No harm aside from a certain someone running into a cactus. ; )

Seriously, it was a great series of interviews — about 14 hours in total of my father talking about everything from his childhood to the Israel-Hamas war. It’s gonna be a pain to edit but worth it.

Here’s a screenshot from the shoot:

While in Arizona I was asked by Benjamin Boyce to be on his podcast. What followed was a great 90 minute conversation that covered everything from the Killing America documentary to George Wallace. Yes, that guy. In the free flow of the conversation, I made the unexpected comparison of Wallace, the segregationist guy, to Ibram Kendi, the antiracist guy.

Here’s Kendi:

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Here’s Wallace: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Both used race as a means to power and I pointed out that the difference was that Wallace eventually had an reckoning and admitted he was wrong. Will Kendi ever? Was I right to make that comparison or not? Here’s the video with subtitles:

I am still waiting to hear back from Youtube and Vimeo — the full Killing America film is still down courtesy of the censors at Menlo Atherton High School’s newspaper. I hope to hear back this week.

Will send along more updates in a few more days.

All my best,

Eli