DIFFERENT BUT EQUAL

Considering the extent to which not judging a book by its cover has been enforced into our subconscious, the title of this film encapsulated both the more profound meaning and the context in which the messages are being sent; and from where. One of the more significant concerns I had going into this film was whether or not the opinions and teachings being shared would feel risqué. However, by taking a much more educational approach in it's creation, the film focuses most of its content on the cultures and history of the African continent rather than individuals or their biases. I found this approach to be much more fitting to frame Africa's complicated history. While many historians seem to want to dive directly into when American history concerned Africa, the choice of this film to center it around art, culture, and interpretation of blackness throughout art history. 

The way the film begins and the discussions that it stimulates within the first few minutes help frame the rest of the narrative in a significant way. Throughout a majority of the runtime of this film, only a few minutes are given to discourse relating to black people's supposed “inferiority” in relationship to whiteness. The narrator frequently dismisses the notion that thoughts such as these should even be relevant today, considering the mounds of evidence given proving it incorrect. Using both historical evidence, and scientific fact, Davidson allows Africa to be read and seen as what it is, the birth of some of the oldest and greatest civilizations known to humankind, without being diluted or watered down by historical elements too overexposed to allow for unbiased viewing. What Davidson does is shows viewers real landmarks of history in both the cultural and artistic sense. When faced with the ideology or questioning of black success without the interference of whiteness, Davidson remarks “*white people* were too blinded by their prejudices to see the evidence before them, that Africans may have had a history of their own”. I think this sentence alone gives way to Davidson's entire narration. Simply put, this film is not about to be about the interworkings or relations Africa had with the history everyone else knows, this film is about Africa, its people, and the beauty and stories that it holds that, to most, (especially most in the US) remain unknown. 

One of the more interesting ways in which Davidson expressed the overarching theme of this film, as suggested in the title, was the constant comparison and examination of African people in art. In multiple instances throughout the film, Davidson refers to how black people are depicted. One example that stands out to me the most was the Medieval knight Saint Maurice whom Davidson used as a way to drive home his argument. “Different in face and form but just as surely equal in dignity and human worth”. He touches on how, throughout most of European history, St. Maurice had been depicted as white, whether due to a prejudiced mind or details of his character being lost to the ages. And while the former does feel like realistic reasoning, the latter falls in line with much of what Davidson focused on earlier on in the narrative. Prior to the colonizer's re-discovery of Africa, much of the continent's land and resources had been shared and, much of Europe and Asia's land had been shared with them as well. As Davidson says, racism such as we deal with now is a much more modern invention and wasn't really until the white man had long since left and came back that the narrative of an inferior race took hold. Throughout the film, we see castles and kingdoms and empires from the East, the West, and the North, and the cultures that reside and resided alongside them. Most notably and most commonly known are Egypt and Giza, one of the human histories most ancient civilizations. Davidson goes into detail, explaining its people, the traditions found within it, and the art inspired by ancient Gods. But what is most important to be seen within these, is how they all tell of what life may have been like when the old was new. Art and carvings and ancient temples show us people of many nationalities living together, with little to be said about differing treatment based on their different physical attributes. 

The one painting he showed I found particularly interesting, depicting a group of individuals of varying skin tones, as well as tying in the illustration depicting what he said were all the known races; Egyptian, Indo-European, Black, and what I would assume was either white or Asian, though a title is not given in the film. These art pieces so clearly represent a time of coexistence, before the centuries of hate and violence yet to come. But most importantly, it depicts differences, in our features, and our faces, yet no difference in terms of class, hierarchy, or inferiority. 

Above all of this, however, the most important detail lies in traditions. In the start, Davidson gives way to a narrator who details how Africans are beneath those of white descent, calling them every harmful word under the sun that would leak and poison the minds of generations to come. Yet throughout the rest of this film, whether it was focusing on the people of Egypt, Meroe, or Nubia, you can see hard evidence of the ever live traditions and diverse cultures of its residents. This, beyond anything else, is what I think proves Davidson's main point of default. They sing and dance, they wrestle and create, and they farm and plow. They have a history and so many cultures and traditions dating back centuries that they continue to uphold. The only real difference between the people who live there, and everyone else, is that everyone else attempted to erase the people that lived there. Prior to high school, I had never been taught anything from Africa beyond Ancient Egypt, and even then we were led to believe that because the Egyptians were so advanced, the only logical explanation would be aliens. But we have a history like them, art like them, stories and fairytales that have passed through both of our families. I believe this is the equality that Davidson means to address. Not equal in the way we mean it today, a desire for humans to be treated like humans, but equal in the way that we were never different, to begin with.