PBS NewsHour
‘Raising Bertie’ paints portrait of hope and hardship for three young men
When I was growing up in the Bronx, New York public housing, I didn’t think I was poor. I had a roof over my head and my parents made sure that we had food and clothing. They sacrificed to send us to Catholic Parochial School. You played in the streets because that’s what you did.
It wasn’t until my teen years that I became aware of the differing levels of poverty. There was working poor and there was damn poor. There were families, our neighbors, that were visibly more poor than us. Then, there were the pictures and newsfilm (precursor to today’s news video) that showed the extent of poverty in urban and rural communities across this country. That’s not the picture we wanted to see of America during the 1950s and 1960s. While there has been great progress in lifting generations of families out of poverty, there’s still many who have not been touched. Worst, in this 21st century, there are many sinking deeper into poverty; betrayed by the disastrous 2008 recession and the growing inequality in American Society.
PBS NewsHour presented a report on “Raising Bertie”, a documentary by filmmakers Margaret Byrne and Ian Kibbe. They spent six years following the lives of three young African-American men in rural North Carolina. Reporter Jeffrey Brown spoke with the filmmakers about the documentary that examines how the young men navigate school and generational poverty.
