The 2017 thriller Get Out, which won Jordon Peele an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, has been praised for its ability to demonstrate the insidiousness of racism. The movie highlights the idea that even racial “tolerance” is sometimes only thinly-masked fetishism and appropriation. While the movie is new, the sentiment is not. In fact, Phillis Wheatley, the famed African American poet of the American Revolution, has a lot in common Get Out’s protagonist, Chris Washington.
