'The Big Payback.' Actress, filmmaker Erika Alexander brings reparations debate to Raleigh
On stage at St. Augustine's University, Tuesday, the big debate was about the debt: What if anything America owes to Black Americans.
"I've got skin in the game. I'm a Black woman in America, "said Hollywood actress and now documentary film director Erika Alexander. She arrived at the Raleigh historically Black university as she wrapped up her tour of all ten North Carolina HBCUs for debate and discussion about her directorial debut, 'The Big Payback.'
The documentary chronicles the story of an Illinois city alderman leading a charge for the nation's first tax-payer funded reparations bill for Black Americans harmed by centuries of enslavement, state-sponsored terror and systemic injustice.
"I learned making this film that I don't know what I don't know until I know it," Alexander told ABC 11. "A lot of people have opinions about reparations but they don't really know what it's about."
St. Aug students and faculty-led a performative debate that aired out the differences in what is often a contentious discussion.
"It's amazing how the students have approached the debate in their own way," Alexander said. "They've come to it in a creative way and put their minds into it intellectually."
Alexander has been exercising her own creativity for decades. She's most famous for playing 'Maxine Shaw' on TV's 'Living Single' in the nineties. She got her break playing, 'Cousin Pam' on the Cosby Show.
Now, she's a filmmaker, who sat side-by-side with her co-director Whitney Dow on stage on St. Aug. They say they've created a film aimed at healing and repair -- and not just for Black people.
"It's hard to talk to a room full of mostly Black Americans and say that there's trauma inside White people because of this relationship," Dow told the crowd. "But there is trauma in the way that when you injure somebody and you don't make amends for it, it hurts you."
Alexander says she chose North Carolina for her college tour because it has the highest concentration of historically Black colleges in the country.
"No one should be afraid to talk about (reparations)," she said. "Universities are where you go to discuss big ideas. And we should be having this debate not only at HBCUs but across America."
'The Big Payback' is currently free to stream on PBS.
WATCH | Our America: The HBCU Experience Special
