How movies and TV can change the conversation about race

It was the spring of 92’ and the streets of LA were on fire. My home in the Palisades was only 12 miles from South Central, but as Angelenos know, the two neighborhoods may as well have been an ocean apart. The distance had a way of separating me from the reality of what was happening, but as I walked out onto my yard I could see the towering flames and billowing smoke on the horizon. In an instant, the distance between my home and theirs was gone.

Almost 2 years before the riots exploded, I began my effort to have what I call a “curiosity conversation” with then police chief Daryl Gates. I’d been having these “curiosity conversations” every 2 weeks with experts in art, science, sports, medicine, tech – anything outside of my own field – and I became somewhat obsessed with setting one up with Gates. The date we were finally scheduled to meet just so happened to be the very same day the LA riots ignited and the Rodney King verdict was handed down. Of course Gates was going to cancel, right? There were thousands of buildings burning to the ground and the entire city was gripped with fear. To my total surprise, he didn’t cancel – and after a Guantanamo-like body search, I was escorted upstairs to his cavernous office inside Parker Center.

There he was, sequestered away like Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” Here’s a man who’s paramilitary police force was tearing the city apart and eerily, he's as calm and composed as can be. Halfway through the meeting, a lieutenant burst into the office raked with intensity to tell Gates he was on TV. And together we watched as the city council voted him out. Despite the obviousness that these would be his last days as chief, his only response was, “They’ll never get me out of here.” I suppose power has a way of anesthetizing certain people and shielding them from the reality of the moment. For Gates, that reality became unavoidable 6 weeks later when he “retired.”

 That meeting, and the weeks of violence that followed, disrupted my perspective in a profound way. It forced me to take responsibility by employing my own “power of one” to help make a difference in the fight against racial discrimination. The "power of one" is the profound impact we can all make in our everyday lives to chip away at human injustice – it can be harnessed in the form of educating, informing, influencing and role modeling to our family, friends and community.  What that meant for me personally was doing what I know how to do best – tell stories and communicate through movies and TV shows. As a producer, I have the ability to broaden the spectrum of understanding by not relying on cultural or racial stereotypes. In my work, I hold myself personally accountable to challenge narrow perceptions of what it means to be a minority, so audiences see a variety of representation on screen.

 Since then, I’ve pursued projects that help shed a spotlight on the issues and challenge stereotypical conventions of racial discrimination. Both in the early 90’s with the movie “Boomerang” and today with “Empire,” we've sought to dispel the notion that African Americans don't have a place at the height of the corporate world by showcasing the characters' professional success and the lifestyle it affords. Shonda Rimes, creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and "Scandal," has done tremendous work on this front through Kerry Washington’s wildly popular “Scandal” character, Olivia Pope, who provides a brilliant example of how far an African American woman, or quite frankly any woman, can rise. And with the massive amplification that’s now possible through social media, shows like “Empire” and “Scandal” have created an even farther-reaching impact on the culture.

As part of telling a great story, the power of cinema transports the audience into someone else’s emotional space. Remember the eye-opening, heart-wrenching experiences of “Do The Right Thing," "Boyz in the Hood” and “Menace to Society?” These movies used an intimate lens that enabled audiences to truly empathize with how others view the world, and ended up shifting many people's perspectives for the better.

My upcoming film “LA Riots” is a project I’ve been working on for over a decade with John Ridley, who won an Oscar for writing “12 Years a Slave.” It’s a film about the urban warfare that can result from police brutality and importantly, the humanity on both sides of the issue. I’m also developing a TV series called “Indictment,” with its creator Gina Prince-Bythewood, which takes the audience inside the toxic and inequitable authority wielded by some city governments. With each of these projects, we’re trying to expand the audience’s consciousness of racial discrimination by sharing the stories of characters that we may not come across in our everyday lives.  That is the beauty of movies and television; they can influence us in such a visceral way that prejudices can be broken down through deeper empathy and understanding.

 Racial discrimination is not a problem that can be solved with one sweeping solution. There’s no magic cure and no amount of money that will make it go away. But we do have an incredible tool at our fingertips: “the power of one.” Every single one of us has the power to not stay silent and to give voice to the change we want to see in our world by influencing those around us whose lives we touch every day. The mother who teaches her child love and equality, the teenager who corrects her friends when they make a racial slur, the guy that doesn’t stand for the bigoted joke on social media and the Fortune 500 CEO committed to workplace diversity – they’re all channeling the “power of one” by showing that they will not stand for any form of racial discrimination.

One by one, day by day, we can eliminate this disease from our society but it will require an individual effort to create a collective victory. If each of us changes one person's mind, we can change the world.