"12 Years a Slave" is a gripping, mostly well-made, but basically false film. To say it finally shows the brutal truth about U. S. chattel slavery just proves how blind opinion-shapers are about U.S. racism, past and present.

Was the main outrage of slavery really that it could engulf a cultured, free black individual? That's what the hero suggests when, speaking to a sympathetic white, he protests the injustice of HIS captivity. As an afterthought, he also observes that slavery in general is unjust. Several of the other slaves with whom he interacts are inexplicably well-spoken and the camera lingers repeatedly on their faces to remind us of their stoic nobility.

The filmmaker shows keen understanding of psychological nuance in the relationships between masters, other whites, and slaves. He evidently meant to evoke viewer empathy with victims who seem to be a lot like "us." This film is meant to make liberals feel good about "our" distance from that world. It predictably has outraged some reactionaries who don't like exposing the warts of U.S. "democracy."

The main truth of U.S. slavery is not the story of extraordinary individuals either as victims or avengers but of ordinary people brutalized and traumatized, accommodating and finally resisting the private appropriation of their persons and their labor. The film that tells this truth won't be made until all those who labor, black and white, start speaking for themselves.

Rita Freed