LOS ANGELES — Sitting in a booth at a Hollywood coffee shop across from LeVar Burton, there’s no denying the passion in his eyes when he talks about literacy and how reading is not only a tool that unlocks doors to success but also a civil right.
Burton is one of the executive producers behind the documentary “The Right to Read,” directed by Jenny Mackenzie. The movie, which premiered last weekend at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, follows NAACP activist and educator Kareem Weaver, first-grade teacher Sabrina Causey and two American families that are all fighting for public school curricula based in the science of reading.
Burton boarding the movie was “fate,” say Mackenzie and Burton. As the host and executive producer of “Reading Rainbow,” the educational PBS children’s show that premiered in 1983, he influenced generations of young minds. Burton also portrayed Geordi La Forge, who affected a different age group with “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and Kunta Kinte, a defiant slave in “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.” Burton, and these characters he’s synonymous with, embody literacy, the future and freedom to many. These tenets, and the drive to be a champion for kids, continue to fuel Burton.
“We need to give all kids an opportunity to navigate their way out of their circumstance, whatever that circumstance is. It could be one of privilege,” he says. “It’s not in the case of the kids that we’re talking about, but that is a scenario that is dominant in this country. But for our kids, for kids of color, for marginalized kids, they have at least one strike against them because it’s challenging. We talk a lot today about diversity and inclusion, but inequality and exclusion is baked into the DNA of this country. And we have done precious little to address it.”