American Promise

With shades of Apted's Up series and Linklater's Boyhood, documentarians Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster follow their son Idris and his best friend Seun Summers from the age of 5 to 18 as they navigate their way through school and growing up. The kids are black and go to Dalton, a predominantly white private school, so we get insights into what it means to be the "other" and having to code switch, but we also get things common to many childhoods, the various triumphs and disappointments.

Despite the obvious intrusion into deeply private moments, I loved how natural and organic this felt. The film is also unflinchingly honest even when the parents aren't on their best behavior themselves, struggling with what they perceive as apathy in their children, having to push them, and dealing with significant educational bumps in the road (Idris: ADHD, Seun: dyslexia). The tragedies that take place in Seun's life are absolutely heartbreaking, and there is a real story of perseverance here, but it's told with restraint.

The boys are great kids, thoughtful and amiable, which was one of the reasons this film had me engaged for its entire runtime. I also identified with the parents, who while juggling everything else in life, balance instilling a work ethic with genuinely caring for their kids, "tough love" with recognizing the challenges they face. Great stuff, and I was very happy to read later that after graduating from Occidental, Idris went on to career that's included Google and a company he's co-founded called Kinfolk, and that after graduating from Fredonia, Seun went on to work at CBS.

I loved the documentary. It gave me a better insight of the struggles black males have in fitting in; be it in there community or at school. I have a daughter and we have been at an independent school since she was three. We are an American family and we attend a French school. Believe it or not our daughter was discriminated against her nationality, not by the color of her skin (there are quite a few girls of color at her school but they are from francophone countries i.e., Haiti, Morocco). When she was in first grade she came home and announced she was the only one in her class from North America! All of North America? You are telling me there are no French Canadians in your class?! and she was right. After comforting her, I chuckled and explained to her that her French school is a little pea in this great big pod called America. At one time she wanted to be anything but American. In the film its heartbreaking when one of the stars of this film also wanted to be something different than what he was. Now with the maturity of my daughter's classmates and us teaching her to be proud to be an African American she realizes that she has been very fortunate in being exposed to an immersion school; becoming fluent in French, understanding the culture and an appreciation of another country and their history. Elementary children just want to fit in. With great guidance from parents and good teachers; by Jr. high they seem to come into their own. In this documentary you see the struggle that the parents also go through trying to understand the culture of the school, what is expected of their child, helping them with their studies, and understanding why only the kids of color are appointed a tutor. It is a must see for anybody that is a faculty, staff member,a teacher or a parent at an independent school.

For me this documentary was not only about problems in school based on color even though its an important part of the movie. But more so about the objectification of kids by the school and by the parents. Even grief is not allowed cause you have to do good grades or you're more or less worthless. Its to much about status and grades and to little of what the kid really like and encourage that. Especially one of the kids are the parents status symbol and he have to represent the parents own imagined greatness (and when he can't match expectation life gets really hard for the kid ..who is kind of lost)

When a kid wants another higher education than the parents had in mind, its obvious that the parents could just stop helping him, and they nearly do that in the documentary just cause its not the education they wanted their child to have (status and so on). It shouldn't be like that young people need help from the government and it shouldn't be expensive to study. Its not a good start in life cause higher education should be a way out of your home and being more independent. If your parents control you with money they could seriously influence you to take negative choices for yourself.