'Birth Of A Nation' Star Gabrielle Union Pens Powerful Op-Ed On Nate Parker Controversy

Sundance darling and early Oscar contender The Birth of a Nation has been steeped in controversy since 1999 rape allegations against its filmmaker and star Nate Parker resurfaced last month. A screening of the movie at the American Film Institute, which was slated to be Parker's first public event since the scandal broke, was cancelled last week. The discourse is complicated by the fact that the African American filmmaker has been, to quote the New York Times, "positioned as a balm for an industry long criticized for sidelining minorities."

Now actress Gabrielle Union, a rape survivor and one of the movie's stars, has spoken out on the matter, penning a potent L.A. Times op-ed addressing her own anguish and "stomach-churning confusion" over the situation.

"As important and ground-breaking as this film is, I cannot take these allegations lightly," she writes, capturing the sentiments of many. She captures the turmoil of her uncertainty ("Regardless of what I think may have happened that night 17 years ago...I still don’t actually know.") and powerfully recounts her own deeply painful experience of sexual violence, and how it figured into her taking the part.

Twenty-four years ago, Union was raped at gunpoint in the back of the shoe store where she worked. Her character in Birth of a Nation is also the victim of rape, something which she says drew her to the role:

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Union also stresses the importance of affirmative consent, addressing the fact that whether or not Parker may have thought he had his date's consent, "by his own admission he did not have verbal affirmation; and even if she never said 'no,' silence certainly does not equal 'yes.'"

There are no easy answers here, and Union gracefully avoids any pat summations or simplifications. Instead, she asks the reader to transcend the specific incident at hand, and look more broadly at the culture in which it resides:

Union's piece has garnered wide press attention, along with a clamoring of support on social media: