A 1996 thriller humanized Black bank robbers against racist crime narratives.

Evidence

Set It Off did what law-and-order and tough-on-crime racism refused to do: it humanized inner-city Black perpetrators of illegal acts, and in the process forced its viewers to reimagine who the real American criminals were. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1157

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the segregationist image of the Black criminal that tough-on-crime policy depended on; shows pop culture as a site where antiracist ideas could be produced against the policy-driven racist ones.