Question - Is Red Tails worth supporting....REALLY?

SO all over my FB wall are posts about the movie RED TAILS. I am a strong advocate of supporting films with black actors in general, and i don't even hate on George Lucas cuz I like the original Star Wars trilogy :) Yoda is a life philoshoper...lol..


but I have serious reservations as I've been on a hollywood ban of any story about black people or people of color that insists on promoting either black subordination or white hero syndromes (Avatar, Blind Side,The Help, Precious, etc).

But the different opinions on this i've seen have been pretty interesting...As a student and teacher of AFAM history, I am particularly interested in our racialized understanding of not only that time in history but hollywood today...


This note is a reply to one FB post about Red Tails.

He posted:

"EXTRACT RACIAL PRIDE FROM THE DISCUSSION AND "RED TAILS" IS JUST A MOVIE ABOUT MEN KILLING PEOPLE."



part of my reply =

Context is EVERYTHING, and there is NO extracting from it. while i honestly do appreciate your humanist bend, ignoring "race" (which is a social construction) in a totally racialized world and history is not the answer. one of the reasons there was racial pride in the Tuskegee airmen = Jim Crow ruled at home and lynchings were commonplace....remember those? and trust me RACE MATTERED in lynchings. So black folks of that era lived in a context where their skin could truly be their sin still. so for you in one flip remark to say that folks should not feel pride in the history they have endured and still [I] rise above it all (literally for red tails )speaks more to your issues than theirs. The only reason you can now talk all the shit you talk so freely is because of SACRIFICES of PROUD BLACK PEOPLE that came before you that endured pain you'll never understand because of an "unreal" thing such as race that had very real consequences for their lives.

personally, i wasn't planning to see Red Tails because i don't need to see any more hollywood movies that insist telling stories of our history by throwing in white main benevolent characters to make it "marketable" and palatable to "mainstream" audiences...read white.


There is a movie i just watched (again) that is of the same era and gives you a great sense of why race matters...The Great Debaters.Whites played the roles they should have played in that story...as subjects in black life: as oppressors, as authorities (sheriffs), as fellow community members that they lived amongst in the South (sharecroppers) but there was NO white hero...no significant white character. And unlike Red Tails, Black women were represented.


But even more importantly, a serious message was conveyed...and lynchings, organizing, and civil disobedience were the juxtaposition of that message. On the one hand, it showed the efforts to organize sharecroppers (white and black together) into unions in the 30s...class consciousness. It also showed the reality of college students in the south, well accomplished and affluent but still powerless when it came to Jim Crow. Coming upon a lynch mob with a black man's burning body hanging from a tree...all they could do was hide in their black professor's middle class car and hit reverse before they suffered the same fate.



And upon reflection of that lynching event at the final debate in the movie, the youngest debater in defense of civil disobedience explained that there is no justice to depend on for a black person in the Jim Crow south. As black people we have chosen to try to excel in the system (like these debaters and the tuskegee airmen) or fight it through words and civil disobedience (like Frederick, Martin, Malcolm, SNCC etc)...The young man recalled the lynch mob they came up on, seeing the black body (strange fruit) hanging and having to run away before they were next, powerless to help that brother came to the conclusion that...AMERICA SHOULD BE GRATEFUL THAT WE CHOOSE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AS OUR MEANS OF PROTEST...that's the truth no one is ready for...but the reality of our humanity shines. you should show due respect for that humanity.



From the Great Debaters

James Farmer Jr.: In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.




Recommendation for the week: (Re)watch The Great Debaters.

The Miseducation of a Nation: Unveiling the Illusion of History

As always, I'd like to begin by offering peace and respect to all that honor humanity in words and deeds. The struggles of daily life often create distractions, and I like most become a victim of life circumstances, but as long as we are living, we must keep striving for higher ground. To do that, we must first accept that history is a matter of perspective (place, space, and time), but truth is universal and transcending. Perception makes it difficult to recognize truth. One’s perspective is based on one’s experience. People cannot understand of what they have had no experience. This is understandable and in many ways hard to argue against. I can’t fault my students for not knowing material I have not taught them…but if I teach them a lesson, they are then expected to know it.

White Delusion, Black Disillusion

The history of the United States is one of multiple experiences depending on place, space and time. For white Americans, it has been a history of struggle but opportunity. They believe the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution even if their actions often contradicted the ideals. For African Americans, the same history has been a war between ideals and a very different and cruel reality. Frederick Douglass expressed this best in his speech about the different meaning of the Fourth of July celebration for whites and blacks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb_sqh577Zw

In reality, what the vast majority of Americans (and all people globally) have in common is a history of hard labor. The vast majority of people worldwide work hard and have very little to show for their efforts. Despite this truth, many have been taught to believe the lie that hard work pays off – meritocracy exists. While it is easy to accept how one’s experiences shape perception, how can we explain perspectives that run counter to our experiences? How does this happen?

Perception coupled with power creates frames that the masses will accept as the truth despite the evidence in their lives to the contrary. The result of this power has been white delusion, black disillusion, and a history of mass illusion. We need to lift the veil of history to reveal the face of reality. James Baldwin said it best: “We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and we arrive where reality is.”

To illustrate, here are two examples of how powerful and dangerous ideology can be:

1. Whites in this country have nothing in general...but white supremacy has veiled that reality...so they allow corporate capitalists to convince them that their interests are best protected in status quo...health care for profit for example..but as long as you can convince the people to NOT believe their reality you can continue to manipulate them.

2. On the left, many look at government programs as "help" ex...social welfare programs, etc. But the motivation for these programs is NOT to benefit communities in need; it is to keep them dependent and most importantly, complacent...bad off but surviving...in many ways, any “top down government assistance” is given to avoid the REVOLUTION that would come.... from a PEOPLE with nothing to lose.

The world for a sociologist is one big science experiment. Wasting away hours on Facebook, reading through the chatter of numerous internet sites and blogs, or watching the propaganda of cable news provides a plethora of data to analyze. The conclusion I reach time and time again is that most are living an illusion, busy with daily distractions, manipulated by powerful OR ideological interest groups on all sides of debate. Most approach the world experiment through a veil of perception instead of reality.

It explains why a Latina woman from the Bronx who graduated from elite universities and became a Supreme Court nominee can be called a racist, but a system that has had 108 white men Supreme Court justices is “color blind”.

It explains why health care for profit benefits someone who can’t afford to pay for it and not the entities that profit from it, but public health care for all hurts those that will be covered (many for the first time).

It explains how a white cop who arrests a black professor for talking shit is not expected to apologize but a black president has to (for calling said cop stupid). It makes it possible for white and blacks to see the same situation completely different. Most whites believe the cop was in the right; most blacks believe that if the professor had been white, he would not have been arrested in his own home…no matter how much shit he talked.

It explains why corporate interests can decry government regulation but accept government funds for bailouts.

It is explained by rising racial violence in a supposedly “post-racial” world.

It is explained by leftists who criticize Obama for compromising to get things done in Washington, but never question the compromises they make in their own lives (jobs, habits, actions or…more correctly inaction).

It explains how if you say 9/11 and Saddam Hussein in the same sentence enough times you can create the illusion of a connection that will lead to an endless war that kills, maims, and displaces hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and kills, maims, and mentally and emotionally scars, thousands of young GIs.

It is framing. And it is THE true threat to reality and humanity. Chuck D was right…Don’t believe the hype! Take off the veil…be it your ideology, perception, or miseducation. There is a truth out there…and it is universal. We reap what we sow. No need for intentions, explanations, rationalizations, or repudiations; just actions. First plan of action: Seek the truth.

Transcending Race: The Pitfalls and Possibilities

Lessons to learn from a Bi-Racial World Leader and a Post-Racial World Icon

Michael Jackson’s death was a shock. The racial dialogues that followed were not. Obama’s landslide election was surprising. The racial undertones of his presidency are not. Both men are seen as transcending figures, breaking barriers and bridging divides. Obama will forever be known as the first African American president of the United States. Michael Jackson will forever be known as the most popular global figure of the past century (but discussions about him will be about his image “transformation” over time as much as it will be about his music). The paradox of being defined fundamentally by race while being seen as a transcending figure reveals the pitfalls and possibilities that surround our racial reality.

Race: the Power of an Illusion is a PBS documentary I recommend all view, particularly part 3. It explains race as a social construction (no “real” thing as race). It describes how we all believe we “see” race (in physical characteristics) when what we really “see” are social and political categories that we have created that have real consequences in people’s lives. There is no need to “transcend” race because it is something we have created for social and political purposes. What we must transcend are the social and political advantages/disadvantages we have attached to “race”. How we do that is through social justice and the only path to social justice is to embrace the humanity in us all. Short of that acceptance, we will never solve the problem of the color line.

I have heard there are many stages of grief; denial is the first, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. The problem of the color line will never completely be addressed until we grieve properly for a nation that never was the United States of America.

Race has haunted this nation from its founding and to its foundation. Many want to believe that our racial nightmare is a thing of history books, but current events suggest otherwise. For a nation supposedly post-racial, it seems I can’t escape stories with racial frames every time I turn on the news or surf the web. If you've been reading this blog, you know I said a violent backlash to an Obama victory was more likely than if he lost. Well the evidence is clear that assessment was correct. Hate crimes are rising. Racial tensions in some towns are exploding. Assassination threats against the president are at highest level. Reading comments on YouTube serves as a reminder that racial hatred is very much alive and well…so much for post-racial.

It is ironic that something that is not even real holds so many imprisoned.

Some are imprisoned by denial. They deny a legacy of white supremacy and white privilege. They deny contemporary institutional racism. They deny the past and the present, and in doing so, affect future possibilities.

Some are imprisoned by anger. Blinded by rage for the wrongs committed against them that they are unable to recognize the gifts bestowed in life’s journey of trials and triumphs. They are unable to forgive, and because of that, they are not able to live, love, and grow.

Others are imprisoned by rationalizations and qualifications. Knowing the truth about race in their conscious, but unwilling to accept it. So they bargain to keep the world they know instead of having the world that should be. They choose the devil they know (status quo order) over the unknown, a world where all people are valued.

Some give up on humanity completely. They have been hurt one too many times, and no longer trust anyone, including themselves. Instead of living, they exist. But life is not meant to be lived this way, so depression takes root and motivation to change this existence becomes a heavy burden.

But there are those that accept the humanity in all, regardless of race, class, religion, or ideology. Obama’s ability to be open to all points of view make him a political frustration for ideologues on the right and left, but it helped him organize a grassroots campaign that shocked the world. Michael Jackson provided the soundtrack of humanity and love, and for his gift of this music, he became one of the most beloved human beings the global community has ever known. Social and political solutions may yield some progress, but pitfalls and setbacks will no doubt remain. We will never be able to “transcend” our history, physical differences, or experiences that shape our lived realities. But we can accept the humanity in us all, and if we can do that…accept without categories, accept the past, and accept the truth, the possibilities are endless.

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