This is Us: Deconstructing Race, Identity and Sexual Trauma in Jordan Peele’s “Us”

by Max S. Gordon

“I think these cases…underscored that kind of disparity, the two-tiered society that we lived in. The notion that these lives weren’t as valuable….the phrase that people used for so many of these kids, they were throw-away kids. Literally. Kill them or throw them in the underbrush and nobody will know or care.”

Vern Smith, Former Newsweek Atlanta Bureau Chief
The Atlanta Child Murders (2019 documentary)

“Encourage her to draw, to write, to dance. Anything to get her to tell us her story.”

- Us

(This essay contains the entire plot of Us and Get Out.)

ONE

Any serious conversation about Jordan Peele’s film Us must begin with the protection of children — specifically young black girls. Peele’s timing as a filmmaker is impeccable: in February of this year, singer R. Kelly was indicted on sixteen charges of sexual abuse of black women, including allegedly video-taping himself having sex with a minor. (Kelly was acquitted of child pornography charges for a similar crime in 2008.) Earlier this month, a four-hour documentary on Michael Jackson’s alleged abuse of minors, Leaving Neverland, premiered on HBO…