Last Wednesday, Whitman screened Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” in coordination with a talk given by Black Lives Matter activist, Theo Wilson, on Thursday.

Whitman African Student Association (WASA) member and event organizer Jordon Crawford introduced the movie saying, “When you’re watching just keep in mind that this actually happened, the protagonist in this film actually lived. This is real.”

“BlacKkKlansman” is a movie centered around the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American cop, who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). While the majority of the film follows Stallworth’s story in the 70s, the movie’s final scenes include live footage clips of the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville in 2017, emphasizing the message that racism is still an unresolved issue in America.

Theo Wilson further stressed this point in his presentation the following day. Wilson said, “I came of age when we thought this thing [racism] was beaten, this thing was kicked, but during my upbringing I had several run ins with white supremacy that would reshape my ability and emotional fortitude to be able to deal with this.”

Wilson went on to recount personal experiences. He talked about the multiple white supremacist bombings he witnessed while attending a primarily black college in Florida, a run-in with racist cops who led him upstairs of a bar and beat him for resisting their unlawful detainment, the murder of one of his childhood friends who was tasered to death by cops, and so on. His message was clear: racism is here, it is prevalent and it is dangerous.

These events inspired Wilson to infiltrate online white supremacist forums, much like how Stallworth infiltrated the KKK by phone call, to see what information the supremacists were circulating. The supposed facts, insults, even memes the supremacists shared shocked Wilson. He was struck with the realization that this issue is bigger than he could have imagined.

Despite the great strides civil rights movements have made, with help from organizations like the Black Lives Matter movement, America still has yet to heal the rift created by its racist past. America may have outlawed discrimination, but the underlying culture still percolates. Wilson reminds us to consider how we cannot be complacent, and that in order to change this culture we must be proactive and outspoken.

Another WASA member Asare Buahin agreed saying, “As students of the world, it is important for us to try to better understand race relations.”

“BlacKkKlansman,” Buahin, Crawford and Wilson all highlight a similar unsavory message: racism is not dead.