“And what you said about humanity. It’s both a tactic and a defense mechanism to look at some people as full human beings and to look at others as not full human beings. You see that with any kind of conflict. You see that in [San Francisco], in the Bay and I see a lot of kids that are involved in [urban] conflicts.

“This gang right here, they have issues with that gang there that’s across the street. And when you talk to these kids about the people they are at odds with, they don’t see them as full human beings. They see their friends and their family and their side as full human beings, but over there, they see them as something else. So therefore, they’re capable of doing things that would classify those people [as subhuman].

“You see that same kind of thing with any kind of conflict, whether it’s the police and the people police see as thugs—especially with black men. There are so many people that don’t come in contact with black men. Whether they live in a homogeneous area that’s mostly white or whether they live in places where they don’t have to come in contact with them.

“So what kind of contact do they have with African-American males? They have the media and that’s it.”

–Ryan Coogler, in The Nation, on his impetus for writing “Fruitvale Station”