Birth of a Nation; Black is Black Ain't

So I just had to pull out my good good friend Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His essay on freedom is one of my favorites! To paraphrase in the most simple succinct way, freedom is not continually choosing what one is NOT. This book Phenomenology of Perception is one of my favorites! So think about Birth of a Nation, and then try to think about only being able to define yourself by only selecting what you ARE NOT out of the depictions of the stereotypes portrayed. It is mind boggling for me to understand the POWERLESSNESS of not even having a voice in selecting the stereotypes portrayed as the starting point for defining what I am not.