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Documentary addressing racism in Boulder approached with love by filmmakers

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by Amanda Horvath, Julio Sandoval • Published on • Last modified on
Filmmakers, John Tweedy (left), Katrina Miller (center), and Beret Strong (right) discuss their film "This Is [Not] Who We Are" set for it's broadcast premier on Rocky Mountain PBS on April 20. 
Rocky Mountain PBS

BOULDER, Colo. — In 2017, National Geographic named Boulder, Colorado the "Happiest City in the United States." Citing "breath-taking scenery, a pleasant climate, a charming downtown and enough outdoor activities to keep even the most active person busy," National Geographic's accolade is just one of many that uplift Boulder as having a higher-than-average quality of life. 

While scenery, climate, and outdoor opportunities cannot be denied, defining "quality of life" by these things alone created a question for three Boulder County residents: Is it really the happiest place in the United States for those who are Black?

Filmmakers Beret Strong and John Tweedy have traveled the world making documentaries since the 1990s, and for years, wanted to bring their work closer to home. After learning there were a lot of people in their community that didn't agree with the "Happiest City in the United States" designation, they determined to uproot the racism in their own backyard.

Over years of work and collaboration with filmmaker Katrina Miller, the couple worked to capture the voices and experiences of Boulder residents who aren't always heard from. The resulting production is an hour-long documentary titled "This Is [Not] Who We Are," set for a broadcast premiere April 20 at 8 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS.

In the film, viewers witness Boulder Police body camera footage from 2019 that caught national attention when a police officer confronted a Naropa University student outside his home. The city settled with Zayd Atkinson in 2020 for $125,000. The film features Atkinson talking through the incident, a perspective — the filmmakers believe — people don't often get when police body camera footage is released. Outside of Atkinson's story, the documentary takes a historical look at Boulder featuring a number of residents. A religious figure, barista, middle schooler, and more create space within the film for a unique conversation the greater community has often avoided for generations. 

Rocky Mountain PBS sat down with Strong, Miller and Tweedy to talk about the production of the film and the understanding they hope it will create.

Interviews with the filmmakers have been edited for clarity and length. 

Filmmakers behind new documentary discuss racism in Boulder

"This Is [Not] Who We Are" documents the history and present day racism in Boulder, Colo.

How did the idea form for "This Is [Not] Who We Are"?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

We have deep, old roots here. We're all long-term Boulder County residents. We're all CU alums, and we all raised kids here or are raising kids here. We all have feelings about what's right and wrong with our communities. We felt like there's a lot of history about Boulder that's not known and needs to be known, and there's a lot of lack of diversity. And even though we think we're equitable and promoting a lot of great values, actually, when we get down to talking to people, it's not true. It's not true enough. And so there's work going on to remedy things, but it's in the incipient stages in a lot of ways.

The film's thread seems to be the body camera footage from 2019. Was that your starting point of production for the film?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

Actually we did not begin with Zayd Atkinson's story. It was the first footage we gathered, but we were on the historical research part of the project before that, and then history broke into Boulder right in front of us, and we dashed to get footage of the march to in support of Zayd Atkinson. So, it's been a very interesting journey, because also George Floyd was alive, and then murdered in the course of our filmmaking. And so history and our efforts wove together in a really interesting way.

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

And really, people do ask about Zayd Atkinson, whose story is a through line in our film. They also ask about how much the murder of George Floyd influenced this. But again, as Beret said, us wanting to make this film was before a lot of those incidents. And what I tell people is that it's a lifetime of experience. There's not one thing that has happened for me to say, 'Oh, this documentary should be made because this happened, or that happened.' It's a collection of what I've seen in my life and just living here in Boulder. A lot of the micro-aggressions and different systemic situations that you see became more pronounced when I moved here. So it's definitely a culmination of experiences and wanting to bring awareness to it, and also give voice to African American members of the community.

Katrina, you are featured in the film, and share part of your own story. What was your thought process behind opening up?

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

To be honest with you, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be in the documentary. I didn't want the messages of the film to get confused with any type of intention of mine to be on TV or be in the movie or anything. And I didn't want to take away from the stories of everybody else. A lot of the questions in there are things that have been on my mind, and I have skin in the game. I'm really personally interested in this as an African American woman. It really did make sense for me to get in there and to tell my story, too. Another thing that was happening with me was, 'Well, how about some of those micro-aggressions that I feel like I've experienced? Is it really noteworthy? Is it really something that I should mention?' Because there's people who experience things far worse than I do, you know? So me with concerns about, 'I have nowhere to go get my hair done,' concerns about, 'Wow, nobody here dresses the way I do,' or not being able to make friends, you know, I really kind of thought these things were very frivolous. But what's happened is, since I have talked to more African American people in the community, these are also issues that they have. And they have felt like they weren't really worth talking about because, you know, they're more like micro-aggressions. It's not police violence, it's not bullying in schools, per se. So what happened is that me being in the film did not take away from those messages, it actually enhanced it because I did help to speak to those people who have those problems socially, which is quite a bit of people when you're in a town and you feel like you don't belong. 

There are a number of people featured in the film who reflect different lived experiences. What was the intention behind that?

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

We did try to find people from various places in Boulder society — different ages, demographics of various kinds, different occupations, students, elders. One of our goals was to really show the broad spectrum of what life in Boulder looks like for Black people. The other thing we were hoping to do was to look at how Boulder as a city was constructed. We wanted to show Boulder as a character, because very often there's the perception that places like Boulder, which have professed liberal values, but highly segregated actual circumstances, that they just "happen." But they don't just "happen." Boulder didn't just "happen." Boulder is the product of very conscious design decisions and policies that were enacted since the beginning. So not only did we want to draw from the voices of many different people who are alive in Boulder today, but we wanted to draw from the voice of Boulder itself throughout its history, and to show how Boulder was really constructed as a city to have the demographic and racial outcomes that it has. 

What were some of the unique challenges and opportunities of producing this film?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

On the subject of recruiting film subjects who are willing to bravely share their stories with us, there's a whole lot of trust building because it's very vulnerable. Even if they're happy talking to Katrina or happy talking to me, there's a issue of, you know, this is very public. Your pain is public, and it's permanent because film is kind of forever. And so, in some ways the bravest subjects were the children, the youth, because they change. How they might feel in five years might be different. But [all of the subjects] shared this desire to be heard and have people understand them better. In some ways, I think the film is a dialogue between Black community and white community. And there's also resistance on the part of the white community. I mean, we got weird comments as we were making it, people looking very uncomfortable. There's been an incredible positive response since the film was released. And Boulder is trying hard to rise to the occasion of dialogue and productive action. And we're very proud of the community for that, but it's still emotionally difficult. White fragility, white supremacy, all those things that are hard for people to talk about.

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

One thing that was amazing that happened during our production was how much people wanted to open up and wanted to talk after the murder of George Floyd. You know, it was as if people were taking that opportunity to say, 'We really need to make a change and, what are we gonna do?' What I find a lot is people don't always want to share their stories because they feel like they've done it before. And it's like, 'Is this gonna be something that exploits me? Are you just using this for entertainment? You know, if I say something, is it gonna matter? Because I've said something before.' And what it started to feel like is people were understanding that this might matter, this might be big. Right now is the time I have to speak, and so, that's what's happened since the film has been out. It's been wonderful to see just at least in our community of Boulder, so many people who've come out and started talking more about their experiences or starting initiatives just based off of this film and how it's opening people up and making people want to talk. And the fact that it's very story-based is what, we feel, I feel especially, makes it so accessible, because it's not necessarily a preachy film.

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

One of the things that we did was really try to see how we could connect the story of Zayd Atkinson. The body cam video of Zayd Atkinson is remarkable because we see these body cam videos all too often in our society, and all too often the person who is shown in the body cam video does not survive. And in this instance, Zayd Atkinson survived and is a very thoughtful person about what he experienced and how he lived moment by moment in that interaction. And because there were six police officers who arrived on the scene, eventually, you end up with six different camera angles in this situation. And so the ability to understand the microdynamics of that situation was a very rich opportunity in the film. And so then cross editing that with these other voices created an opportunity to make an extended dialogue with the various participants in the film, and the history. Zayd says, 'The history that I had bringing up to that moment is the only reason that I was not just oppressed.' And that really is a touchstone for the film because it's the history that we all have coming up to these kinds of moments that bring us into these crucibles of understanding or misunderstanding about race. And that's really what we were trying to unpack. 

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

We had a work sample that we did early on, and we got some feedback like, 'Well, why didn't he just cooperate?' And you have to listen to Zayd talk about his experience and also to realize if this doesn't become public, if there isn't a public forum for looking at exactly how he was treated and having a public process of reaction, then it repeats and repeats infinitely. It still is repeating infinitely. But, I love living in the age of cameras because the person on the street with a cell phone can change the world. And so people realize now that rather than stick our heads in the sand, we should be aware and engaged about these things. And I think seeing Zayd really talk about it and all of the parts of it and seeing what the city council did and how the government has responded has been a really good process of learning for the whole community. It's really easy to say, 'Oh, the government should fix it.' Well, no, the citizens have to fix a lot of things, too, because we're contributing to all sorts of racial oppression that's not by our hired officials. I think that our filmmaking approach is empathic. Katrina has this lived experience connection, but there's also this question for somebody like a white filmmaker like me, of just learning about film subjects and empathically caring about their suffering and their situation. And people open up more when they feel like they're safe enough to talk, you know?

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

We all definitely approached this film with love and that was something that we had talked about. It's definitely just how we try to create all of our products anyway. We have all made content that has to do with social justice and that has to do with highlighting issues that not a lot of people know about. I feel like also just the dynamic of our team, the fact that we all we're from different demographics ourselves ... I think that really helped in the creation of this film because there were things that maybe I didn't understand or they didn't understand, you know, and together we had this very comprehensive way to talk to a lot of different people. I believe that diversity in teams always makes something better, because you have a lot more thoughts. If I was just gonna go to make this documentary by myself, I don't think that it would be as successful because I don't have the experience of the other side, you know, and I'm not necessarily sure what questions white people have and vice versa. I was able to fill in a lot of gaps as well as far as the BIPOC community. I believe the combination of us working together across demographics really helped to tell this story. And just really listening to each other and knowing that we were coming into this from a place of heart. 

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

One thing I just wanted to follow up with what Katrina said is that we've been making films for a long time, but with this film, we did something new for us, which was, we had a very broad-based community feedback process while the film was still in the editing phase. And we solicited structured feedback through focus groups of hundreds of people. And the result of that had a significant impact on the final product because we understood how certain aspects of the film were landing for the community. And I think that helped us also change our focus. It certainly helped me change my focus in the edit, because one of the things that I was preoccupied by when we first were working on the project as a white filmmaker was, 'Well, what were the white people thinking? You know, did they do this on purpose? Was this intentional discrimination or was it just an accidental byproduct? And that's gonna be an important aspect of the film. We really wanna inquire on that.' And through the course of the filmmaking, and especially through the course of the feedback screening, I really felt like we de-centered that question and refocused the film upon the experiences of Black residents within Boulder, regardless of the intentionality of the practices and policies that have been in place for so long and are still in place that result in these experiences that they have. We as a society get very hung up on, 'It's only racist if the white people meant it that way.' And I came to believe that racism is an entirely different construct from that. Racism is actually a transaction between people. It really is defined by the impact on the person who is experiencing the racism more than the express intentionality of the person who is inflicting that behavior. And so that really changed certainly my understanding of the subject and approach to the film.

Who is this film ultimately for?

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

I'm gonna tell you this film is for everybody. Everybody should really see it because I think there's something that you can learn from it no matter where you are. When creating this film and when it was coming out, I had a very keen focus on the Black community, just in general, definitely Boulder, but beyond, 'How is this gonna be received?' I really wanted to make sure that people felt seen — a major purpose for me. 'Did we tell segments of this story right?' It has just been wonderful to have received the response that I've received from the African American community. And after a screening, so many people say, 'Thank you, I feel seen. It feels like I've been gas lit, you know, living here. When I tell people things that happen, they tell me, 'No, that's not what you thought it was.' And here is a film playing it all out. I want everybody I know to see this so they know it's real.' When I hear that type of comment, I really feel like, you know, mission accomplished. I feel like we did do right by the Black community. And we definitely focus on the African American community, but it's for the non-white community, and groups that feel marginalized. And so that's why many people from different backgrounds come up and say, 'I feel seen.'

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

When you make a film, you don't actually know how it's going to be received. You have lots of hopes. We got another acceptance yesterday (April 5) to the Los Angeles Black Film Festival. To have that community feel like, 'This actually speaks to us, we want to share with our community at our festival,' that is super affirming and uplifting. I knew that a lot of the subjects were speaking in a certain way to a white audience to say, 'Hey, would you look at this? Would you really listen to what's happened to my child? To me?' I knew when I was in the interviewer's chair. Sometimes that was hard to deal with. I remember sometimes people would be telling a really painful story and their eye gaze wouldn't be on me, and normally when you're the interviewer, they're looking at you. And I was like, 'I represent the pain. I represent the pain that has been inflicted by my demographic [for] hundreds of years.' And that's painful as a filmmaker to feel that. I've done a lot of international filmmaking, and I don't feel quite as responsible. So, you know, you have to kind of work with your own guilt and shame to get to something productive. That's why you make a film, to do something that's not mired in your own story. But I so appreciated people being willing to talk to two audiences at once or all audiences.

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

We as filmmakers of different races and ages get feedback from different people. And I have received a lot of feedback from white viewers that the film is accessible to them, that the film does not take a judgmental approach, that the film presents the information in a way that it can speak to an unspoken or unarticulated hunger that I think many white people in Boulder have, which is, 'Well, we all believe the right things, why isn't our community doing better with it? Why are we stuck? Why are we the way we are? Why are we so segregated?' And there's pain and confusion in the white community as to why that is, and the film shines a light on that. First of all, it names it. And second of all, it explores it from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. And so white viewers find themselves being grateful for that information. And it also provides next steps and some ideas about how Boulder could be better and how communities like Boulder could be better.

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

The historic aspect has been really important for people. Not only does it give people a chance outside of Boulder to like look at what their town's history is, especially in regards to race and racism, but it's really given our communities some context as to how Boulder was formed and how that feeds into how it is today. It's been really interesting, at least for me, to go to different towns and film festivals and different screenings and try to figure out, 'What's your history here? What's the history in this, ski town, Crested Butte? How come the Black population there is so sparse? What's going on in in Virginia?' To go to all these different places and try to figure out what's happening in their community and have them critically think about it as well, is like, 'What got us to this place?' Because I think that a lot of times when you talk about racism, I think white people get defensive, you know? I think bringing in historical facts, historical accounts and whatnot really helps people to understand, 'Okay, so this was an intentional way this was set up. And then they start thinking, 'Oh, so this is what you mean when you say we have to intentionally disband racism. We have to intentionally be moving towards dismantling white supremacy.'

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

When Katrina begins a post-screening discussion, the first question, for all of us, is, 'How are you feeling?' People have said things like, 'I'm really sad. I'm angry.' They feel a certain powerlessness about having gone this way, because it's not how they want it to be. Sometimes there is guilt and shame and sorrow, and like, 'What's the productive thing we can do?' There's a lot of positive energy that comes quickly, especially from students. They're like, 'What can we do about this? How can I be a good ally? What do I do when my friend says this? Or if I observe this?' So, people are often moved to some sort of positive action thinking. I think that the younger generations are more on the cusp of changes, and so they have a more progressive view about many things. A lot of Boulder's problems that are intertwined with our racial issues are economic. And the young people are like, 'I can never afford to buy property here or stay.' And so they're thinking in a very intersectional way. And older generations, we're all, 'Oh, you've got it made in the shade, you're all set.' We are probably thinking differently. And it's great when there's an intergenerational dialogue about like, 'Well, look at our position, you don't even see us.'

What are you hoping people take away from this film?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

I hope after people see this film that they are just different. They can't unsee it, that they wake up the next day and they're like, 'Well, my landscape has changed. My myths of where I live have changed, or I need to go do some investigation about where I live and how it is the way it is, and that I bear some responsibility for it. That I'm not just a consumer of my place, I'm actually an actor.' I think that motivated all of us to make a film. We were like, 'Well, we live here. What's our toolkit? What can we offer the community? We're in a good position to do it.' I echo what Katrina said about how we're a great mixed-demographic film team. And to say, 'Well, we stood up and did the thing.' And we volunteered almost the entire time. And we would like you to be invited to pick up whatever tools you have and go forth and do something, too.

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

It's that accountability piece that is really important. So when people watch this film, what I'd really like for them to do is to be accountable and not just look at it and say, 'Oh look at Boulder, or look at the police and what they're doing.' No, people really need to take that step back and see where they are within all of these situations in the film and look at their resources, just like Beret said. Helping people walk out of there with some accountability, whatever that means to them. If it's saying 'Hi' to your neighbor that you never met, or throwing a smile at the grocery store. Sometimes it's something as simple as that. Just help people walk away with an action step.

How is the young girl, Celine, who is featured in the film doing now?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

Well, Celine is the one who breaks everybody's hearts the most because of her vulnerability and also how long she suffered without getting any adult help. And she's quite an amazing person; she's a leader. She's established an equity organization in her school. It's still very vulnerable. This material is vulnerable because there's ongoing harms that happen in schools. And everybody knows that amount of 'n' word usage in Boulder County is shocking. Zayd even watching the film is reliving of some of his trauma. And I'm sure for Celine as well. I'm in touch with Celine's mother, who's an advocate for her and advocate for her being a public speaker and an ambassador for some of these issues. She's finding her way. 

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

The person that bullied Celine really awoke a giant in her. I do bring her on to come speak at panels as a professional speaker with me. And she is hanging around other leaders in the community in those types of spaces, doing work with the NAACP. So it's been really good to see her turn this situation into something that can help other people. So other people don't feel so alone or they have to remain as quiet for as long as she was. I feel like why that part of the film is so emotional is because this shouldn't be happening to our children. This isn't something that they should be worried about as kids. They should be outside playing, hanging out with their friends, playing games — sports and video games and whatnot and not worried about being shot just for the color of their skin. It's so important though to have her voice is as a youth and just from that student perspective because a lot of people I've talked to even in making this film believe didn't these situations happen. That kids don't face racism. How many times I was told that my two children that they're too young to talk about racism. But if you don't, then your child is unprepared for situations that might come to them and you don't know how that's going to affect them, how that's gonna affect heart. And that's just speaking for my children. And when you go and you think about white children on the other end, they need to be educated as well so that they can be informed allies to their classmates, to their peers. You know, not talking about racism or just having initial conversations that are age appropriate conversations, not having those conversations is not gonna make racism just go away. So it's very important to put that aspect in there. One thing that has been wonderful out of that, at least where we live, when we have screenings, we have high schools that have brought up student panels and they get to speak about their experiences to a majority of white faculty because that's our demographic here with a majority of white students. We get African-American students to get up and they talk about, 'I don't like it when people come up to me and touch my hair. People come up to me and say, 'What are you?'' Just all these different insensitive things that people do and say to students of color. When faculty can actually watch this movie and then hear from the students themselves makes such an impact. I think that makes probably just one of the biggest impacts than types of other like types of screenings or whatever we do when the students can talk face-to-face because it's really happening. 

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

We'd love to invite audiences to have community screenings, and we do facilitate those. Then you have this community-specific screening and discussion that might move your organization along or the Boulder City government has been showing it, schools, faith communities, nonprofits... We've had this amazing response where it's used as a tool for growth, not just D.E.I. training, but actual growth of a community to look at like, 'Well, who are we as a community? And who do we wanna be? How do we get there?'

The film is so specifically about Boulder, Colorado but at the same time doesn't feel like this is only about Boulder. Is that the same impact you're seeing?

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

We've been at film festivals around the country, and we've also shown the film to people from well around the country, but also internationally. And over and over we get the reaction from people: 'This is just like where I grew up. This is just like where I live now.' And that's gratifying to us because we really do feel like Boulder is not unique. Boulder is in fact emblematic of many communities that are highly exclusive and excluding despite their professed rules or values that are in fact sincerely held. We're not accusing people in this film primarily of hypocrisy, that really we are showing a portrait of communities that are struggling with a legacy of intentional design that is exclusive and excluding. And that creates, as Katrina said, accountability. It is not a source of personal guilt or shame for the people who did not invent these cities, but have been born into them. But it does create a legacy within which each of us has a responsibility to act about what we know. This shines a light on what we know, not only in Boulder but elsewhere.

What this documentary also points out is how racism changes with different generations but is still happening. What are your thoughts on that?

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

You look at Celine's bully — Who taught her? Who taught a fourth grader to do that? Somebody did. I just want to echo what Katrina said, that you can't not teach the kids. They will absorb the dominant culture. They will enact the dominant culture to the detriment of other children. In some ways I find them innocent because they're just learning from the adults or from the older youth. And we have a duty of care to the children to educate them all at a really young age and start those conversations. And I went to a wonderful training once where the woman who was leading it, she said, 'What was the first racial memory you ever had? What made you realize racialism exists?' Because it's a construct — it's a fake construct. But who taught it to you, and what was the message, and what was the impact on you? And I remembered being in second grade and having my first crush and having an adult say to me, 'You can't have that crush' for racial reasons. And I never got over that because I was old enough to go, 'Do I look like I'm gonna get married? I'm seven, you know? What are you talking about?' But that's how early it starts.

What is the emotional journey been for each of you in making this film?

John Tweedy

Editor, Videographer

My emotional journey with this film has been profound. There is a historical and present legacy of colonialism, you might say, in filmmaking. The filmmaker is the investigator, the educated eye who comes and investigates the object of culture from either an objective or maybe a subjective standpoint, but there's a superiority, there's a privilege, there's a colonialism that is inherent in that relationship. We've been making films for over 20 years. And I thought I was kind of sophisticated about these issues — no. I had to completely rebuild my assumptions, my approach, my respect for the subject, my way of connecting with the participants who really we tried to speak to in the most egalitarian person-to-person way we could. And filming in one's own community, requires a re-engineering of who one is as an artist. And that was one of the biggest impacts on me.

Katrina Miller

Director, Producer, Videographer, Narrator

I have always just thought I would purely be a behind-the-scenes person. So, being in the film and then going to speak about it has really pushed me and challenged me to be able to have these conversations. I definitely have a lot of thoughts and convictions, and a lot of opinions. But it's been a matter of, 'How do you get in front of an audience and express that?' Which is something I never really thought that I would do, but I'm up for it because the subject matter is just so important. And I feel that when we come to speak to different groups, that it is making an impact. One thing that I've always really liked to do is just connect people with opportunities that are meaningful to them and that give them joy. And so what's been wonderful is since the film has come out and people are looking for what to do, or 'Who can I have come and lead a diversity workshop? Or who can I have come and do this?' I'm able to pull from people in the community that I know now — there's a wonderful Black therapist here and here's a poet here and here's a musician — so being able to be listened to in that way and to help promote other people that I've just met over my over 20 years living here in Boulder has really been wonderful. I believe that's part of equity, too. So many times people in our community in Boulder end up leaving because they're not able to find that meaningful work or a way to break into whatever career that they're interested in. And so it means so much to have that connectivity and to have that connection, and to be able to connect African American community members to opportunities or events where Black culture here can be showcased. It's really nice to be able to uplift everyone through this film.

Beret Strong

Director, Producer, Videographer

I have a couple of of thoughts — one of them is about who gets to tell stories? And this is true for actors, writers, filmmakers, and really the landscape's been changing, and it's partly an equity issue. Like, 'Do you have the right to tell that story?' And if you do, 'Why do you have the right to tell that story?' Or what's your position? What do you bring to it? And my journey was that I started working harder on educating myself about racial history sort of at the national level years before starting to work on the film. And in some ways the film for me was a culmination of that self-education. I thought I was a good, educated, liberal person and realized that actually I did not know how our federal government engineered poverty among African Americans, not just Jim Crow. It's like the GI Bill after World War II and all the housing discrimination, banking discrimination. And so I started reading and learning, and also reading a lot of Black writers to get their perspectives. But one of the things I felt was that I had been too passive. I thought if I signed this petition or occasionally donated money over here, that was good enough. And I realized it is never good enough. We're never going to really change our society if people like me just sort of go, 'That's good enough.' You can't tackle every issue you care about in the world, but there's a sense of being moved to much more constructive action and to the toolkit we have, which is giving voice, and providing a forum for people to speak and be heard and feel respectfully heard. So that was really a great honor that the film subjects were willing to let us do the work we got to do.

 "This Is [Not] Who We Are" premieres April 20 at 8 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS.

Amanda Horvath is the managing producer at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at amandahorvath@rmpbs.org

Julio Sandoval is a multimedia journalist with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at juliosandoval@rmpbs.org.

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