Black As U R: Film Screening and Panel Discussion

As a post-Trump society wracked by Covid-19 and economic recession, America is experiencing radical and constant change. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, who suffocated Floyd as bystanders pleaded with him to relent. Protests immediately erupted and the city of Minneapolis went up in flames, as the murder sparked a firestorm of national and international protest.

Minneapolis now had the world’s attention, yet in the same week, in the same city a young black trans teenager named Iyanna Dior was brutally attacked following an altercation in a convenience store parking lot. as Iyanna was viciously beaten by a mob of young men and women screaming homophobic slurs, a few blocks away Black Americans were chanting that ‘Black lives Matter. Given Iyanna’s experience, it appeared that actually not all Black lives matter. Or do they only matter if you’re Black and heterosexual? This film also features the first time a documentary has highlighted the story of Dominque Rem’mie Fells, a young black trans woman whose murder reignited the “Black Trans lives Matter” movement of 2020. Black aS U R, not only reflects queer-phobia but accents many issues today that affects gay culture such as HIV/AIDS, abandonment, depression, suicide, and bullying.

Black aS U R a Micheal Rice Film brings to the forefront a conversation whispered and often silenced within the Black community for generations. Unspoken fear, hatred, and misunderstanding of Black queerness have catalyzed mental and physical violence against a subset of the Black community who have largely been the leaders in cultural expansion and the fight against racial injustice in America.