The Top 10 Best Systemic Racism Movies

5. Hidden Figures

There’s been a recent rise in the production of systemic racism movies, which is awesome since the first step to fixing a problem is education. Hidden Figures is a prejudice twofer since it deals with not just racism, but misogyny as well! See, back in the day when all those eggheads at NASA were trying to put a man in space, they soon discovered that despite being both white and men, they weren’t necessarily the smartest people in the room. In fact, those first space missions wouldn’t have been possible without the MAJOR contributions of Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). It got to a point where astronauts were more comfortable with their mathematical equations than those of a supercomputer. It doesn’t take a genius to know that black women make things happen. 

4. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

We’ve looked at a lot of newer movies on this list of systemic racism films, but the issues have been around for longer than I care to think about. While interracial couples have become a bit more mainstream over the years, there are still a lot of backwoods idiots that are far from accepting them. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner tackled not just systemic racism, but also the racial prejudices that even the most liberal white people might still have lurking deep down. Sidney Poitier plays Dr. John Wade Prentice who is getting ready to meet his fiancé’s parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy), a pair of self-proclaimed liberals and firm believers in racial equality. That is until their daughter brings home a black man. Even in a supposedly safe space, Dr. Prentice still faces a ton of microaggressions from his hosts and things get tense. It just goes to show that systemic racism can bleed into the most open minds.

3. Get Out

Director Jordan Peele recently took the concept from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and put a dark twist on it. Now, fortunately black people don’t have to worry about white people literally performing brain transplants to take over their bodies, but that doesn’t mean Get Out doesn’t deserve a spot on this list of systemic racism movies. See, the plot is metaphor meant to show that even white people with the best intentions can still make life difficult for people of color. Get Out is a film that supposed to reflect the darkness of slavery combined with the underlying jealousy that lies at the heart of so many foolishly declaring that being black in modern society is an advantage. Even though the bad guys in the film all seem like they’re allies of black Americans, they still seek to only use the black characters in the film to their benefit, to use them as tools in order to further their own agendas. To them, Daniel Kaluuya is just meat. 

2. In the Heat of the Night

Sidney Potier contributed to many systemic racism movies at a time when they mattered most (they still do). One of his greatest films was In the Heat of the Night where he plays a top homicide detective from Philly named Virgil Tibbs. He’s brought in to help with a murder investigation in a small southern town filled with racists cops. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Tibbs doesn’t take any #$% from any white men. The investigation proves to be plenty difficult as a lot of southern people aren’t comfortable with a black man who has any sort of power. Despite being from the 60s, I can attest that this sort of racism is alive and well in the south. Just watch In the Heat of the Night and tell me that the behavior towards Tibbs doesn’t piss you off. Now, imagine living that all the time. Sure, you might think that things have gotten better since the 60s, but they really haven’t.  

1. To Kill a Mockingbird

I know that a lot of people throw around the term “white savior” for characters in films that come to the aid of black people in need. However, I don’t think that the term applies to one of the greatest cinematic heroes of all time, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck). In the crappy little southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, Tom Robbinson (Brock Peters) is accused of raping a white woman. The trial stokes the already heated racism in the town, and Atticus has to teach his children that ignorant white people suck an awful lot of the time. Despite proving that it was physically impossible for Robbinson to commit the crime, he’s convicted. The thing is that even though Atticus knew that saving Robbinson from a corrupt and racist judicial system was all but impossible, he still fought with everything he could. Why? Because Robbinson deserved the best defense he could get, even in a losing battle. A lot of stuff from the old days isn’t worth hanging on to, but I think we could use more Atticus Finches in the world today willing to stand up for what’s right. Maybe then, there wouldn’t be a need for systemic racism movies…      

Honorable Mention:

Blindspotting

There is an aspect of Blindspotting that looks at systemic racism, but it looks much closer at racial relationships and how tone-deaf they can be even among friends. This was one of my favorite films of 2018 because it looked at the differences that two friends (one white and one black) experiences as their neighborhood became gentrified. Despite both growing up on the same block, their experiences and outlooks were very different because of their race. A perfect example of ambiguous optical illusion theory being applied to systemic racism.  

The Hate U Give

One of the most celebrated recent systemic racism movies was The Hate U Give. The movie is based on the award-winning book about a protest led by a girl over the wrongful shooting of her friend by a cop. Despite being a solid example of the sort of systemic racism that the black community faces on a daily basis, I found the adaptation to be a bit cumbersome and unwieldy at times. Still, I know what this film means to some people. So, I wanted to give it a shout out.

It feels weird calling the films above the best systemic racism movies of all time, since putting “best” and “systemic racism” together in a sentence doesn’t seem right. However, these 10 movies are great places to start with anyone wanting to better educate themselves. Of course, there are tons of other great systemic racism movies out there, and I’d love to hear some of your favorites in the comments below. As always, I’ll be updating the rankings as new systemic racism movies hit theaters. So, be sure to check back in the future to see how these rankings might change!