Only twelve years ago, 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture at the Oscars

My notes on this film were originally published at Looking Closer on November 2, 2013. It's time to republish them.

In just over twelve years since director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, we have seen the “United States” of America take a violent turn that conscientious Americans might have had trouble imagining. It seems as if the worst villains of movies like this one have seized power and are focusing all of America’s resources on a violent campaign of hatred against all who are not white, and all who do not bow at the altar of MAGA madness, making the American dream of “liberty and justice for all” increasingly impossible to achieve. What I loved about my country, what gave me some measure of pride in it, what enabled me to claim that America’s vision is indeed inspired by the Gospel of Jesus Christ — all of that is being burned down, right now, before my eyes.

This isn’t about me, and this post isn’t an “I told you so.” It is, rather, an even more emphatic insistence that what wise mentors taught me is, indeed, true: Those who refuse to be mindful of Jesus’s teachings, to heed the witness of prophetic art, and to learn from the lessons of history will succumb to self-destructive delusions and make the same mistakes that have led to history’s most grievous calamities. Here we are, in 2025, watching America, in its vanity, its worship of money, its self-serving distortions of the Gospel, and its ruinous tribalism, spiral rapidly toward destruction. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” has lost its freedom, giving in to moral cowardice and satanic free. It has failed the tests of Gospel, art, and history.

When I reviewed 12 Years a Slave with some carefully qualified praise in 2013, I received alarming emails from some of my readers — specifically, angry white men — who loudly condemned me and the movie for “obsessing” over America’s history of racism, which they insisted was a thing of the past. They didn’t like this movie. They didn’t like reading any measure of praise for its historical accuracy and prophetic truth-telling. I remember two of them in particular ranting that Black artists in America have a victim complex, that they have no imagination beyond “complaining” about past suffering. Why couldn’t Black Americans just be grateful, they snarled, that America had ended slavery and achieved equality, that their problems were over?

In the years since then, the things I said in response to such spectacularly ignorant complaints have proven true: None of this evil was “in the past.” America’s history of slavery—an evil we committed and then never sufficiently repented of or made reparations for—is a fire that was never stamped out. Sure, we celebrate wise men and women who have eloquently exposed and denounced such evils, including them Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and (of course) President Abraham Lincoln. Yes, we did, for eight years, benefit from the leadership of our first Black American President. And America has, at times, been a shining light of democracy and human rights in the world. But we need to be mindful of our whole history if we are to prevent such atrocities from happening again. We need to be quick to make lasting, substantial reparations for our past sins, or we have not sufficiently repented of them. We need a commitment to telling and enforcing the truth that “all men are created equal” — not only in the arts but in rigorous historical education for the children who will soon ascend to positions of power and influence.

I wish had been wrong about my convictions that, as Faulkner so powerfully wrote, “"The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Those evils were, indeed, still alive. And strong. And waiting for their moment. And here we are in 2025, choking on the smoke as the embers of racism are fanned into full flame, spreading into wildfires again. We are in the early stages of what may well be the most shameful era of American history yet written. The hard-won victories of the Civil Rights era are being erased before our eyes. Hatreds antithetical to the entire American experiment, hatreds that Americans gave their lives to oppose in two World Wars, are being written into the new “law of the land,” turning those ideals symbolized by Statue of Liberty into broken promises. Our President and his closest advisors—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, worst among them—are aggressively racist in their rhetoric and vocabulary. The body of Christianity in America is riddle with the disease of Christian Nationalism. Terminology characteristic of Nazi Germany is now in the daily talking points from Republican leaders, and normalized on FOX News and other news networks who are surrendering to the President’s insidious threats and power plays. Americans can no longer claim any moral high ground in comparison to fascist regimes, as concentration camps for the cruel incarceration and destruction of non-white Americans—immigrants, refugees, and longstanding citizens alike—are already operational with the apparent approval of all branches of government. The scriptures I call holy—the teachings of Jesus, and the poetry and prophesy of the scriptures he revered—are very clear about what will befall nations who commit crimes like those America is, right now, aggressively committing.

And much of the blame for this falls squarely on American evangelical “Christians” who continue to support the rise of this treasonous, criminal enterprise. Enabling such horrors, either willfully or gullibly, they take the Lord’s name in vain. And in my role as an educator, I am surrounded by young people who want nothing to do with Christianity because they now associate it with so much evil. I cannot blame them.

I am looking for anything small or large I can do to overcome these evils with good, and to help us through this “valley of the shadow of death” with fearlessness and hope. While I know that all things are possible with God, I am not pinning my hopes on seeing America saved from this tide of darkness; it may be too late for this country. For all I know, publications like mine may soon start disappearing, just as individuals who might inspire meaningful resistance are already being “disappeared” by this administration. This is what happens under authoritarian regimes — those who tell the truth are silenced, punished, erased. But in whatever time remains in which we can speak freely, I want us to remember, revisit, and recommend the art that has, for a time, honored that world-changing vision that was once a defining priority for America: liberty and justice for all. There is nothing stopping anyone, anywhere in the world, from stoking the fires of that vision. So many of us believed in that vision for America. I want to amplify the art that affirms that vision—whether it be in testimonies of our triumphs or lamentation of our failures.

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When it comes to loving my neighbors—particularly those who are vulnerable and endangered—here is one small thing I can do: I can highlight the art of those whose voices tend to be ignored or overlooked due to systemic injustice. I am committing myself now to prioritize attention to art we need to see and hear from those this treasonous government would silence. You will see more writing amplifying the work of non-white artists here, and work that does not benefit those who advance hateful agendas.

So, let’s start here. I can republish my original review of 12 Years a Slave, one small, first step in preserving what I’ve already published about art that exposes America’s racist history.

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