Black-Asian tensions and the uncomfortable truths behind them exposed in new documentary ‘Blurring the Color Line’
- Actress Crystal Kwok’s new documentary digs deep into her family’s past to see where the Chinese fit into America’s black-and-white race narrative
- One of the biggest discoveries Kwok made during the project was learning that she had black relatives
In America, conversations about race usually revolve around the black-and-white narrative.
Crystal Kwok – who was born in the United States but worked as an actress in Hong Kong for years – was curious as to where the Chinese immigrant sat in that picture. So she made a film about it.
“The Chinese experience has always been shoved aside, reinforcing the image of Asian-Americans as the quiet ‘others’,” says Kwok via Zoom from the US.
In her new documentary, Blurring the Color Line, Kwok asks some difficult questions about anti-black racism and the deeply rooted structure of white power and Chinese patriarchy.
And she does it through a personal lens – by digging into the history of her grandmother’s family, who owned a grocery store in the black neighbourhood of Augusta, in the US state of Georgia.