I agree that Our Lesson in Racism Doesn’t End With “12 years a Slave” An Open Letter to Stanley Crouch: Y2k14.3.5 Dear Mr. Crouch: NOTE: The reason I made this an open letter is because 9 chances out of 10, you will discard it. If someone else is reading this or one of my ex-students, maybe they will take up the call to run with this gift/idea so that all of us can learn from a history we should never repeat. I have a very important “gift” for you, but please read this first. My brother who is a member of SAG and receives screener DVD’s to watch and to vote on, told me that two of his favorite pictures this year was “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “12 Years a Slave.” You contend that many white people who view the latter get so cathartic about the wrenching horrors of slavery that they have seen on screen that some of them may even feel that they have emerged from the theater cleansed of all their “guilt” about the treatment of black people in this country. My brother and I, on the other hand, are Jews. Our grandparents from both sides were immigrants from persecution in their native Hungary. When we view pictures or read literature about the black experience in the USA, we don’t do so out of guilt. We do so because we identify sincerely with the oppression of any human being on this planet. I taught a course that I created myself when I worked in the NYC school system called “Introduction to Movies and Media.” I have a library of close to 2000 titles, including the entire “Roots” also “Malcolm X”, “The Murder of Emmett Till” documentary, “Finding Forrester”, “To Sir With Love”, “Blackboard Jungle”, “Do the Right Thing”, “Boyz in the Hood”, “In the Heat of the Night”, Hurricane”, “A Soldier’s Story”, and “Rosewood” among many others. I showed an edited version of “Rosewood”, “Soldier’s Story”, and “Hurricane”. I also showed my students “Malcolm X” and the entire “Roots”. Yes, I understood, even then, that “Roots”, for example, could have been partially made up. As a teacher of a creative course of study (Movies and Media), I wanted to show as much as I could about the African-American experience while at the same time using critical thinking to analyze each film on their merits. In the end, I felt that showing the films that I did was better than not showing them at all. In all this time, I still understood things from a Jewish point of view. While black Americans were being enslaved and murdered in the New World, my people, the Jews, were being chased up the trees by Cossacks. So when I screen a picture on slavery, I have outrage and disgust but never guilt. A Jew should never have guilt for anything unless he or she betrays their ethics. There are certain areas that I vehemently disagree with you on, Mr. Crouch, but when it comes to your opinions on cinema, specifically, African-American cinema, I must take that very seriously. And this comes to the so-called gift. In Hollywood, ideas can be worth millions. Although my profession was teaching, I have always been a writer. Now that I am retired, I can spend time doing what I really want to. I’ve written one complete screenplay which I hope to sell, but I have many more ideas to work on but am afraid, at 63, that I have much less time to work on these. With that in mind, I want to pass an idea on to you. You are a good writer, and I believe you can write something really great for the big screen. If not, you may know someone who does. After I screened “Rosewood” with my 8th graders, I started to think more about the 1920’s being one of the worst decades, in the USA, if you were black. This idea was reinforced when PBS broadcasted the disturbing documentary, “Lynching in Tulsa.” I found it chilling that both Rosewood and Homewood, the latter, the subject of the documentary, were prosperous black communities existing alongside depressed white ones, and in both cases, the result was the decimation of both communities by their white neighbors that was nothing less than a pogrom, a holocaust, since in both cases, the intention of the rioters was to murder ALL the black men, women, and children of both communities. John Singleton of “Boyz in the Hood” fame directed the gut wrenching “Rosewood” which should be viewed alongside “Schindler’s List” and now “12 Years a Slave” as graphic illustrations of the evils human beings can inflict on each other with the goal of making us more sensitive to the plight of others. I understand that viewing a movie alone may never accomplish this, but some ignorant people out there have to begin their education someplace. People should never assume that Africans all came here as slaves. There are also many cases that we never hear about blacks immigrating to the New World on their own and establishing successful businesses. Homewood, Oklahoma was referred to as the “Black Wall Street”. Yet that still did not change working conditions for blacks on the outside in Tulsa. One day, a black man, on his way down an elevator in order to get to the next door building to use the nearest rest room, innocently bumps into a white woman, and a week later five hundred people or more were murdered by mobs of whites, most members of the KKK and conveniently deputized for the occasion, giving blood thirsty racist bullies carte blanche to rape, to plunder, and to murder. The Tulsa Oklahoma sheriff’s department surrounded Homewood with road blocks. No one could get in or get out. The black residents of the once prosperous Homewood are trapped and targeted for extermination. Before this pogrom is over, the entire town is burnt to the ground. Mr. Crouch, they should absolutely make a dramatic feature about this event, and you are the person that could do it. This is my gift to you, and within a few years, if I see a movie about this tragedy with your name attached, I will smile in gratification that this story was finally told so that it is accessible to all. I have many good ideas up in my noodle. I’ve written on one of them and hope to work on more. In the meantime, the story of the horrors black people had to endure at the hands of the racists and their apologists should not end with “12 Years a Slave”. No, the cinematic dialog should continue more and more to make up for all those years Hollywood helped reinforce the destructive notion that blacks were simply here to serve us, to sing songs, to be lazy, and to be made fun of in all ways in cartoons, and to be used in every way to sell our products. If you don’t think that “12 Years a Slave” did anything to advance race relations, maybe a dose of Homewood will. Gary Perl Ingsoc1984@live PS Additional ideas I wish they would make movies about: Emmett Till, the Last Hours, Disaster at a US Navy Yard: Hundreds of Black Sailors Die” (See documentary on the “Soldier’s Story” DVD), The Dr. Drew Story, The Life and Times of Marcus Garvey, Why Did Richard Wright Have to Leave the USA?, Willie Turks’ Last Days (He was murdered while buying bagels on Avenue X by racist slimeball motherf---ers excuse my use of the pejorative), and Yusuf Hawkins Goes to Bensonhurst to Buy a Car. I have many more and hope to be able to write on them all… Racism is still dangerously alive in this country and must be stomped out all the time and in every way!!! And especially in this era of “Stand Your Ground” code word for “shoot any black person you want to”. As long as racism is part of our civilization, we are still nothing but savages who have no right to continue existing of this diverse planet.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 20:12:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015