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Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

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    Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

    I was mentioning this to Purves Grundy, last night, but couldn't remember the name of it ...and still can't. So can OTF's people-with-memories help me out.

    What I'm looking for (hopefully on Youtube or similar) is a 'public information film' made by (and only for viewing by) the American armed forces in world war 2. In it, a cliched 'ordinary Joe' GI figure (with the aid of 'dramatised reconstructions') informs Americas black servicemen newly stationed in Britain how to properly maintain the 'status quo'. That is, if the quaintly naive British, who are unaccustomed to dealing with black people should invite you round for tea (something which might and apparently did happen ...at least with white GIs) then you should simply invent an excuse not to accept and politely decline. The idea being that the British don't understand that black and white people should be kept separate!

    This was, of course, at a time when America was still fundamentally racist and there were whole separate black divisions in the army and air force (and navy?) - a quite remarkable state of affairs, really, but one which the American armed forces evidently felt may have been sufficiently fragile for British 'naive liberalism' to undermine.

    Anyway, does anyone happen to have also seen this film on any TV documentaries (which is where I saw it) and if so, can they point me to it or at least remember its name?

    #2
    Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

    I've seen the film in an Open U. program. However as I recall it, an old English lady at a railway station invites two G.I.'s - one black, one white - over to her place for a cup of tea, which they agree to do. A talking head then wonders into shot and says something along the lines of...

    "Well that may have surprised some of you, but things are just different over here, it's not unusual for negros and white people to socialize together here".

    I don't remember him saying that G.I.'s should make excuses and not go, mind you, neither does he suggest that the G.I.'s should continue their new found integration when they return to the USA.

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      #3
      Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

      That's the one! ...But I'm certain he said to 'make your excuses'.

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        #4
        Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

        Might want to look around here:

        http://www.archive.org/details/movies

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          #5
          Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

          Of course, racial discrimination in pre-Windrush Britain was simply replaced by class discrimination. I've always thought that a lot of defenders of the apartheid regime in South Africa, or the Ian Smith regime in what was then Rhodesia, made a mental equation between the way black people were treated there and the way they'd been able to get away with treating the working class here before WW2, and wished they still could (in Smith's case of course it was also because he'd done to Harold Wilson what they wished the old elite had done here).

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            #6
            Racist WW2 US army 'information film'

            [never mind]

            (link doesn't work)

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