Blurring the Color Line: Disrupting Race, Gender, and Historical Narratives Through Documentary Film

Abstract

Disrupting the predominantly Black-and-White narrative of America’s racial history, I complicate this binary structure by examining the lives of Chinese families who ran grocery stores in the Black neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia during Jim Crow. I present my research in the form of a documentary film, using visual language as a privileged medium for critical analysis. Challenging conventional modes of knowledge production, Blurring the Color Line presents itself as a form of radical scholarship at the intersections of history, memory, and the politics of framing. I argue for using Blur as Method, to dwell in liminal spaces in search for deeper knowledge. This documentary presents a performative way of understanding how history is produced and what forms of power are at play. I question how race performs, how hidden voices speak, and what the women’s stories reveal. The Chinese complicated America’s racial history. Their invisibility marks the power systems which I address in the film. Through the women’s stories, I entangle the Chinese immigrant experience with African American history. Situating myself in the film with my partial perspective, I present a vulnerability that exposes both the power and fragility of voice. Blurring the Color Line not only privileges the silent spaces as a critical lens on racism, but interrogates the very system that perpetuates the unequal distribution of power. Through a critical analysis of my process in the making of the film, this dissertation illuminates the complex and political process of knowledge production while breaking boundaries in scholarship around racial and historical narratives.