Maafa 21

Maafa 21
Directed by	Mark Crutcher
Produced by	Life Dynamics
Release date(s)	June 15, 2009
Running time	approx. 137 mins
Country	United States

Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America is a 2009 pro-life documentary film which draws a connection between the targeting of African Americans by the eugenics movement in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the modern-day prevalence of abortion among African Americans. The film argues that abortion is an attempted genocide or maafa of black people, and has been so since the 19th century.

The film has been praised by pro-life activists and condemned by historical scholars, pro-choice activists, and other writers, particularly in light of its unfavorable depiction of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, to whom it attributes racist and genocidal positions. Pro-life activists have said that the film is an exposé of the racism of abortion in modern times, and that Planned Parenthood is especially racist. Critics have called it a shockumentary and propaganda for, according to them, distorting the role of Planned Parenthood in the eugenics movement, deliberately misinterpreting Sanger's position about black women, and for blaming institutional racism rather than social conditions for the prevalence of abortion among black populations.

Synopsis

The title comes from the Swahili term "Maafa", which means "tragedy" or "disaster", and is used to describe the centuries of oppression of African people, globally, during slavery, apartheid and colonial rule. "21" refers to the maafa of the 21st century, which the film says is abortion by black women. It states that abortion has reduced the Black population in the United States by 25 percent. The film discusses some of Planned Parenthood's origins (formerly the American Birth Control League), attributing to it a "150-year-old goal of exterminating the black population." It attacks Margaret Sanger, along with other birth control advocates, as a racist eugenicist. The film features Alveda King, who claims that Sanger targeted Blacks.

Release and screenings

The film was released on June 15, 2009, and the premiere screening was held on June 18, 2009, on the eve of Juneteenth, at the United States Capitol Visitor Center.

The film was shown in November 2011 in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, as part of an effort to link Virginia state Senator Edd Houck to racism. Terry Beatley, the founder of a political action committee called No Excuse Ministry, screened the film in a black neighborhood and distributed leaflets describing Houck as being supported by Planned Parenthood, and saying that Planned Parenthood was working toward race genocide of blacks. In the subsequent election, Houck was unseated by only 222 votes.

Reception

Support

MovieGuide, a film rating website that judges films based on how well they promote conservative Christian values, gave the film an "Excellent" rating. It describes the film as a "very carefully reasoned, well-produced exposé of the abortion industry, racism and eugenics." MovieGuide found the conclusions of the film to be "irrefutable", though it criticized the film for employing class warfare.

In The New American, a John Birch Society publication, Rebecca Terrell praised Maafa 21 as "an explosive exposé of the racist eugenics agenda of the abortion industry in the United States."

Pro-life activists praise the film as a tool in their campaign against abortion rights, choosing to believe its claims although they are unfamiliar with the history of family planning or with the research that supposedly went into making the film.

Criticism

Reviewers of the film have generally criticized its false attribution of racist views to family planning activists, as well as the other false claims it makes to tie genocide to family planning and the fact that it blames the high abortion rate among black women on a conspiracy rather than on unequal socioeconomic conditions.

Writer Michelle Goldberg argued that the film falsely attributes racist views to family planning activists like Sanger and Gunnar Myrdal and deflects attention from claims of racial discrimination in access to reproductive services. She also said the film ignores the racist and eugenicist arguments used by opponents of family planning, and that it implies or states outright that eugenics advocates such as Charles Davenport and Adolf Hitler supported family planning when in fact they opposed it. Goldberg characterizes the film as dishonest propaganda. On the Ms. magazine weblog, Eva McKend similarly criticizes the conclusions of the film, arguing that black women have high rates of unintended pregnancy due to income inequalities that prevent access to effective contraception.

Esther Katz, editor and director of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University, questions the scholarship behind Maafa 21's portrayal of Sanger and her racial views, calling the film "propaganda". She said quotes attributed to Sanger are taken out of context or simply fabricated. While criticizing the film's depiction of Sanger as a genocidal eugenicist, Katz concedes that "Sanger made mistakes" and "was very naïve" in her campaign to legalize contraception.

The editors of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project praised retired teacher and blogger Arthur G. Broadhurst who wrote against Maafa 21 in his Christian Humanist column, saying that the film was guilty of misinformation and distortion. Broadhurst said that the propaganda film portrays Sanger's Negro Project as being about abortion when it was not. The Negro Project was about family planning and birth control, all voluntary, formed and implemented in coordination with black leaders who wanted to help black communities prosper.

Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, writes that the film is a "shockumentary" used to support the activities of the black pro-life movement. Darnovsky quotes legal scholar Dorothy Roberts who said that the black pro-life movement is "blaming black women for their reproductive decisions and then the solution is to restrict and regulate black women's decisions about their bodies... Ironically, they have that in common with eugenicists."

The Liberator Magazine gave the film a mixed review. The reviewer said that the film "does a good job of placing the Eugenics movement into a larger historical context," but that "one gets the impression that the point [of the film] isn't so much about saving black people, but furthering a political agenda" against abortion, using emotional manipulation to do so.

Loretta J. Ross, author of the scholarly paper "African-American Women and Abortion: A Neglected History", founder of the National Center for Human Rights Education and co-founder of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, wrote that Maafa 21 was a "pseudo-documentary" produced by a white Texan—Crutcher—"who has made a career of attacking Planned Parenthood." Ross wrote that the premise of the film was wrong, that black slave women brought to America the knowledge of birth control and abortion, arguing that black women worked to reduce their collective birthrate after the American Civil War as a way to raise themselves up, not as a form of race genocide. Ross wrote that black women understood that having fewer children allowed parents to give each child a better opportunity. Ross wrote that African-American leaders worked with Sanger to establish family planning clinics in black neighborhoods as part of a "racial uplift strategy", not racial suicide.

External links

• Official website
• Maafa 21 at the Internet Movie Database