by Patrick Taggart
With the outcome of the O.J. Simpson verdict still a moving target in the news
– will he or will he not talk?; is he moving to Mexico?; etc. – it’s still too
early to say that his trial and the swirl or controversy surrounding it serves
as a snapshot of race relations in this country. But even if the image is not completely clear, the implications of what we can
see are deeply troubling. The separate reactions to the verdict among blacks
and whites has illuminated the yawning chasm that spreads dark and silent
before us.
Some of us think: What of all those wonderful gains in the Fifties, Sixties,
and Seventies? Denied seats at lunch counters not long ago, blacks are now
Supreme Court justices, mayors, corporate CEOs. A whole bunch of white people
(and not a few blacks) want to see a particular black man, Colin Powell, be
President of the United States.
But the Simpson verdict brought the dirty secret into the sunshine: Deep
distrust and a malignant anger continue to seethe beneath the surface. What the
verdict has told us is that a large segment of the black community believes we
are a long way from a just, color-blind society, and that the most pernicious
sources of racial bigotry seem to be housed in a place called the Police
Station. It also tells us that most whites were totally unaware of these
resentments.
This “trial of the century” (never mind Brown v. Board of Education)
has caused us to reconsider all aspects of U.S. race relations. But long before
O.J. left Rockingham for immortality, a few black filmmakers were attempting to
initiate the national discussion we’re now having.
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is as good a starting place as any, and
might be the best film to serve as anchor for what in the 1990s seems to be a
new Black Cinema. Unlike the race relations films of the Fifties and Sixties in
which white and black were separate, unequal, and definitely not speaking to
one another except at the end when virtue triumphed, Lee’s film finds folks of
all color doing business, living on the same street, chatting it up in a pizza
parlor. It’s an accurate depiction of post-affirmative action Brooklyn, and for
a while, seems to show what we’d all like to see: people of different colors
living reasonably comfortably together.
The calm, of course, turns out to be a thin veneer over smoldering anger and
distrust. The death of a black youth at the hands of over-zealous cops turns
the neighborhood into a fire zone. The fuse was short – just as it was before
the first Rodney King beating verdict. If we have come so far since the 1960s,
as many of us believe, why are we having so much trouble getting along? (Hint:
Look at the Rodney King video.)
Despite his frequent temper tantrums and off-the-mark criticism of other
filmmakers – not to mention some terribly disappointing films of his own – Lee
still commands the scene. Win or lose, his films about black/white relations go
farther into provocative territory than others care to. In Jungle Fever,
which centers on an affair between a married black man and his white secretary,
Lee stopped just short of saying that cultural differences make interracial
marriage impossible.
Lee also takes up issues of importance in the African-American community that
don’t relate exclusively to black/white relations (School Daze, Mo’
Better Blues, Crooklyn). But no one, to my mind, has made a better
film about Los Angeles gang violence than John Singleton’s Boyz N the
Hood. Matty Rich’s austere, heartfelt Straight Out of Brooklyn,
about a well-meaning young man’s dead-end plan to escape a dead-end life, is
raw and pure and one of a kind. Both Singleton and Rich have stumbled in
subsequent films (Poetic Justice, The Inkwell), but they remain
relevant.
The Hughes brothers, Albert and Allen, made a stunning debut with 1993’s
Menace II Society, another sobering, violent, and insightful film about
inner-city life. Their second film, the current Dead Presidents, is
performing smartly at the box office even if it is not as rock solid as their
first film. The story of a likable young man who fights in Vietnam and returns
home to a life of little opportunity and, eventually, crime, is compelling in
its own right.
Beneath the surface, though, are troubling questions. Dead Presidents highlights the disproportionate share of pain suffered by black Americans
during Vietnam, thanks to the draft and student deferments. This pain is
relatively fresh and hasn’t really been addressed in a major film.
Fresher still, and all too much a current topic, is the police racism that is
the subject of Charles Burnett’s The Glass Shield. If the new
African-American cinema of today can be distinguished from that of the past,
it’s that it is direct, frank, and angry. Glass Shield is not so much a
film as it is a polemic, and its heavy-handedness alienates even sympathetic
viewers. But it dares to inspire the question that Americans want answered: How
many Mark Fuhrmans are out there?
Yes, the anger is there, and I’m sorry this discussion can’t include more than
a mention of the comedy efforts – some good, some bad – of Robert Townsend, the
Hudlin brothers, the Wayans brothers. Is the anger misplaced? Probably not.
Polls during and after the Simpson trial showed that we overestimated our
ability to see things without the tint of race. We thought we were
communicating pretty well, but really weren’t. Perhaps too many black Americans
have chosen not to talk about their resentments; too many white Americans have
presumed everything was okay since interracial friendships are commonplace and,
hey – how can we live in a racist society if Colin Powell has a shot at the
presidency?
The trial showed we have a lot of serious talking to do, that we can’t any
more walk on eggshells in our national discussion on race. Some of these films
help. n
This article appears in October 20 • 1995 and October 20 • 1995 (Cover).