Colman Domingo Practices Racial Healing Both On and Off Screen—and He Wants You to Join Him

NEW YORK (AP) — Colman Domingo has spent his entire profession implicitly inviting audiences to embark on a journey of racial healing.

The Afro-Latino actor’s depictions often complicate popular depictions of black masculinity. There’s Oscar nominee Bayard Rustin, an underrated gay civil rights leader. Or Mister, the aggressive antagonist of “The Color Purple,” who sheds his misogyny in a final attempt at redemption. His latest film, “Sing Sing,” is in regards to the wrongly imprisoned leader of a jail theater troupe.

Now having fun with a hard-earned highlight for those starring performances and her avant-garde looks, Domingo is pondering more consciously about her off-screen platform. And that decision for racial healing has turn into more pronounced with a brand new partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The nonprofit organization that focuses on opportunities for kids has long focused on anti-racism, according to La June Montgomery Tabron, president. To help all young people thrive, she said, it’s essential to address root causes like racial inequality.

In 2017, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched the primary National Racial Healing Day, which is now observed annually after Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Kellogg leaders hope a “storyteller” like Domingo can encourage year-round racial healing, which the inspiration describes as “the practice of reflecting on personal experiences, confronting past wrongs and present consequences, and cultivating trusted relationships.”

“When we look at Colman and his work, which is about elevating all of humanity and creating an empathetic response to stories, that’s what racial equality and racial healing is all about,” Tabron told The Associated Press.

Domingo recently spoke in regards to the collaboration and “Sing Sing” with AP. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

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Q: Why are you using your platform to promote this cause?

A: The more my platform grew, the more I wondered, “What are you talking about?” I would like to speak out on the problems that matter to me, especially on this National Day of Racial Healing.

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This is how I turn into somewhat more human. This is how we show one another somewhat more grace. This is how we are able to actually do the work of healing: not being offended, not being polarized, but finding more love, more grace, and more dignity in one another’s stories, of their pasts, and getting to know one another somewhat higher.

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Q: In “Sing Sing,” your character tells a brand new actor that “anger is the easiest thing to play,” but “pain is more complicated.” How do you bring that lesson into the strategy of racial healing?

A: That’s something I learned as an actor and I’ve really applied that to my life — to really acknowledge more complex emotions. Anger is the best thing to feel. It’s really only one-way. You cannot heal from it and find other notes. I do know something that I find helpful in my life is to acknowledge every emotion that I feel. Anger is the quickest to feel, but it surely doesn’t aid you grow. All the opposite complex emotions aid you grow.

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Q: How has art influenced your individual journey towards racial healing?

A: It gave me a voice, actually — it gave me more of my place on the earth. And I actually have a job that helps me delve into history, so I actually have a way of my identity and who I’m and who other persons are. I still have a curiosity in regards to the world and its inhabitants, and I believe it’s made me somewhat more of an entire human being.

I do that on daily basis at work, which is such a blessing. I do know plenty of people don’t do that, but they’ll find the tools to do it at dayofracialhealing.org.

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Q: The little bursts of joy in “Sing Sing” are so memorable: the circle dance at rehearsal, the post-audition pirouette. How do you discover joy in that healing process when racism can feel so heavy?

A: Pirouette was a really conscious decision to show who this black man is inside that the world may not see. To see somewhat more complexity and tenderness and really deconstruct their ideas of who this black man is — and who this black man is who’s trapped. No one would ever think that this man has a dancer within him.

For me, it really works as racial healing. You can see the black and brown male in another way. That’s the work that happens on a really subtle basis when people watch our film. They see black and brown men being affectionate with one another, laughing with one another. Even black men know what’s possible after we’re allowed to be free and whole in our experience.