richardmurray

MRs. PArkington

Sammy Davis Interview

TRANSCRIPT

0:00
4 scene 22 take 33 psalm 22.
0:13
damn
0:16
[Music]
0:28
went into the army
0:31
you know that that horrible
0:34
that was my first taste really of racism
0:37
you know ever because I never been
0:40
exposed to it being in Show Business you
0:41
know
0:42
you know you'd run into the average bit
0:44
of it but not them not enough to to
0:45
upset you or anything you know or not
0:48
even to be aware because I'm in show
0:49
business so I wasn't aware of it and as
0:51
a kid being in Show Business you I
0:53
didn't learn until later the about why
0:55
we slept in bus stations and why we had
0:57
to go to the police and say where's
0:58
there
0:59
a colored family that you can stay with
1:01
because you couldn't get in the hotels
1:02
and things like that you couldn't eat in
1:04
this restaurant
1:05
but there was a very close fraternity
1:08
between most of the black and white
1:11
performers at that time
1:13
uh that doesn't exist today what were
1:17
some specific examples when you started
1:20
first getting the message
1:21
well I think the the first real thing
1:23
that I got was in the Army when I you
1:25
know and I was in basic training and I
1:28
hadn't even gone to basic training I
1:29
went in San Francisco we went to the
1:31
Presidio Monterey and the third day I
1:33
was standing in line and this is before
1:36
um desegregation came in the Army you
1:38
know uh and I'm standing in line and at
1:42
the at this place where there was black
1:43
and white soldiers and the cat said you
1:46
know
1:47
where I come from [ __ ] you know
1:48
staring in the back or they they ain't
1:50
here I forget the exact line now and I
1:53
had my my duffel bag and I'm a duffel
1:56
bag but you know the thing like use the
1:57
carry of Shaving equipment in and I just
1:59
sundied him you know
2:01
and knocked him down and had cut his lip
2:04
and he's bleeding from the lid and he
2:06
said
2:08
okay you knock me down but you still a
2:09
[ __ ]
2:12
and that laid with me you know because
2:14
that that's that's so
2:17
so venomous it really is you know that
2:20
that's the kind of cat that you ain't
2:22
gonna never reach
2:23
were there some points at which you
2:26
during that time when you had a lot of
2:29
pressures on you almost lost confidence
2:31
in yourself
2:33
oh well I that happened to me but not
2:35
until I made it really because you know
2:37
when you when you're hungry and you're
2:39
trying to get there that's one thing
2:41
because you've got that ambition that
2:43
feeds on and you keep crawling on your
2:46
ambition to get there I got there until
2:48
I lost control of everything
2:51
sense of values uh
2:53
now I've got the doll so wound up
2:56
there was no relaxing there was there
2:58
was no being aware of anything first of
3:00
all there was not much to be aware of
3:01
anyway in those days
3:04
but I mean the nominal awareness that
3:06
wasn't there I was just wrapped up in me
3:09
then then I got scared because I started
3:12
to lose what I thought was the basic
3:14
human instinct that I had had
3:17
and I got too phony I did oh I did it
3:19
all man I invented some
3:21
the ones that in the book I invented
3:23
some other problems you know but
3:26
I you know again to relate to what you
3:29
are I said today and I look back 25
3:32
years ago and I say wow I don't think I
3:35
my head would be where it is now if I
3:38
had not gone through that
3:40
25 years ago all the mistakes being on
3:43
all the time
3:45
emulating in truth emulating the white
3:48
stars not trying to get my own identity
3:52
but because that that was the kick then
3:54
you know that's what you had to do so I
3:58
decided if you got to do it then I'd do
3:59
it better than anybody else had ever
4:00
done it
4:01
you know in other words when I started
4:03
to do Impressions and all of that kind
4:04
of stuff relating to a theatrical thing
4:06
being on Broadway and Mr Wonderful you
4:09
know I wanted to do all that because I
4:11
figured if Donald O'Connor can do it man
4:13
I'm gonna do it
4:14
so in other words I was becoming a black
4:17
Donald O'Connor a black Mickey Rooney
4:19
instead of becoming a black Sammy Davis
4:21
what about the Rat Pack era you and
4:25
Sinatra and let me light a cigarette and
4:27
I'll tell you okay
4:32
I keep thinking uh just a few days
4:36
[Music]
4:38
no longer will it be anything happening
4:40
like it should be the one traffic ticket
4:42
that's the first step to maybe in 20
4:44
years is not to legalize it right now
4:46
when they legalized marijuana
4:50
but I'm just comedically I'm thinking
4:52
when they legalize it they will be back
4:55
to commercials again
4:59
[Music]
5:13
[Music]
5:18
[Music]
5:30
and plus but the most important thing is
5:32
you'd never be able to run through the
5:34
forest
5:41
thank you
5:43
what about the Rat Pack era
5:49
was that a part of your mistakes
5:51
well let me tell you about let me tell
5:53
you about the Sinatra thing
5:56
uh
5:57
if it hadn't been for Frank Sinatra
6:00
I don't I would have never been in films
6:02
really
6:03
because he gave me uh
6:07
he gave me a an opportunity
6:09
in three pictures
6:13
based upon the fact that there was
6:14
nothing to do really except the fact
6:16
that it we got the job because we were
6:17
all friends and buddies and it was based
6:19
upon a camaraderie that we had as a
6:22
bunch of guys as performers that Frank
6:24
said why don't we do all do a picture
6:26
together
6:27
but he so he helped my career
6:29
tremendously again my own personal
6:32
involvement being such that I became so
6:35
involved with that lifestyle
6:38
that again I found myself submerging
6:41
into a lifestyle that I could not equate
6:43
with after you'd leave the party you
6:45
come home and you're going to
6:47
and you say wow man it sure was nice to
6:49
be in the company of all them big names
6:50
and the movie star
6:52
but there was no
6:54
on one hand I I loved being with my
6:57
friends
6:58
but it was submerging me as a human
7:00
being I think as I analyze it now
7:03
and there were Beautiful Moments during
7:05
that period of the 60s the early 60s and
7:08
there was some frightening moments I
7:09
remember walking on the stage at the
7:11
Democratic Convention and being booed by
7:13
the southern contingent you know
7:16
because they had no business the only
7:17
reason they booed me was because I was
7:19
married to a white woman you know to put
7:21
it right where it's at that's why they
7:22
boom boom hits how dare you be married
7:25
to a white woman you know
7:27
but it was
7:28
a part of conversation privately and
7:31
publicly is that uh you were married to
7:33
a white woman how do you feel about that
7:36
how would you advise a young black
7:38
person your son about marrying a white
7:41
woman
7:42
I think a person should marry who they
7:43
want to marry man
7:45
I think that you can be committed to
7:47
your people to the cause whatever you
7:49
whatever the terminology you want to use
7:51
doesn't matter matter who you're married
7:53
to if you fall in love you fall in love
7:55
if you're if you're getting I don't
7:57
think anyone gets married has children
7:59
and the rest
8:00
to do a three cheating job you know
8:03
and uh
8:05
to me
8:07
I feel no thing about it I really don't
8:11
I really don't feel anything about that
8:13
because I think that's so damn private
8:16
man
8:16
that has to do with what I want a cat to
8:19
do if it's a brother on the corner
8:20
whatever it is look at me and say what
8:23
did you do today to help
8:24
don't talk about my private life
8:27
that's mine that if you know if I want
8:30
to marry a dog that's my life
8:33
this is the point whatever I had I paid
8:35
my dues to get it
8:38
and I mean pay them
8:40
in every way you want to talk about but
8:43
what I'm but that's professionally
8:45
that's as a human being on a
8:47
professional level but as a human being
8:48
period I tell my kids Harry who you want
8:52
to marry
8:53
now I know this sure as I'm sitting on
8:55
this floor man whole bunch of brothers
8:58
and sisters don't like me there's a
9:00
whole bunch of white people that don't
9:01
like me why do you feel there's a group
9:03
of brothers and sisters who don't like
9:05
you because there was a whole bunch of
9:07
brothers and sisters that didn't like
9:08
Jesus Christ that's why
9:11
and ain't nobody ever been put on this
9:12
Earth that everybody liked
9:14
they don't kill Martin Luther King the
9:16
only thing he kept singing was we shall
9:17
overcome and love and peace killed him
9:19
wiped him out killed Malcolm
9:23
wiped out everybody man don't you
9:25
understand and some cat hired three
9:29
black cats to wipe out the man who was
9:31
the mother of our time and when they
9:33
killed him he had a half a church full
9:35
of people it wasn't like it was packed
9:37
and jammed because already he was losing
9:42
and he says it himself if you read his
9:44
works that there's a whole bunch of
9:46
[ __ ] that don't like me black folks
9:48
like me but not the [ __ ]
9:51
which is true and three black cat three
9:55
[ __ ] knocked him off
9:57
paid by white establishment that's my
9:59
feeling and I will feel this as long as
10:01
I live
10:02
and it was afterwards at the the
10:04
Resurgence of this man and suddenly we
10:07
became aware of all the things that he
10:08
was saying because as long as doesn't it
10:12
strike you funny that as long as
10:16
Malcolm was preaching separatism
10:20
as long as he was preaching such
10:23
vehemence he never got hurt at all it
10:26
was when he came back from Mecca and he
10:28
said we must all live together we must
10:29
we must ask black people do our thing
10:31
but we must all live on this Earth as
10:34
one blah blah that's when he started
10:36
getting his house bombed
10:38
he got wiped out months later
10:40
same thing with King as long as King was
10:42
hitting the March as they put him in
10:44
jail that was it as soon as he started
10:45
talking about Vietnam
10:47
and the workers and this that and the
10:49
other getting out of his field of
10:52
reference
10:53
really
10:55
heavy too heavy for somebody wipe him
10:57
out
10:59
you know and it's frightening to me so
11:01
that's why I say a lot of people will
11:03
not like any performer and you try to
11:06
relate
11:07
as far I'm not talking about relating in
11:09
terms of oh hi bra and do the Fist and
11:12
whatever it is and hey man right on I'm
11:14
not talking about the words I'm talking
11:15
about in your heart relating to what the
11:17
problems are
11:18
but the society in which we live in
11:19
today it has gotten to a point where you
11:21
cannot do that anymore based upon the
11:24
fact that I must do what I feel
11:26
if I feel that I I want to help in this
11:29
area I try to do it and I try to do it
11:31
Sans publicity not based upon the fear
11:34
that I have for my job
11:36
but I think that sometimes if I want to
11:38
help some brothers who are in trouble my
11:40
lending my name to it defeats the very
11:44
purpose that they're trying to achieve
11:48
but money is money
11:50
heart is heart you should lend your
11:52
heart and your money you ain't got the
11:54
money
11:56
then lend this lend your body man to it
11:59
you know but I'm talking about I think
12:01
that if the performer can be used
12:05
than he should be used
12:08
to put my obligation into black positive
12:11
things I'm not talking about National
12:12
organizations it can be something that's
12:14
happening on the corner a project that
12:16
because I found out and Walter Mason can
12:19
tell you we found out that you go into a
12:22
town
12:23
and sometimes it's as little as a
12:25
hundred dollars because you go to an
12:28
area where this where where some
12:30
projects are and they got a recreation
12:31
center ain't got no pool table ain't got
12:33
no records to play so the kids don't go
12:35
there they hang on the car right
12:37
Jesus you walk in and you look around
12:40
and you say hey well I know I get a pool
12:42
table and I know I can get the record
12:44
player and I'll get reprise at that time
12:47
or my own company to send records you're
12:50
in a privileged situation first of all
12:52
uh I can't help but make an analogy
12:54
between yourself and lean a horn
12:55
I mean the two of you are for lack of a
12:58
better phrase are superstars are using
13:00
to some extent your sense of commitment
13:04
you uh you're evolving a new sense of
13:06
self and most importantly like you're
13:09
going in front of the nation and you're
13:11
saying I'm Black and I'm Proud and I'm
13:13
relating to my people
13:15
I'm not going to use anybody's name but
13:17
I'm sure you won't but where are the
13:19
heads of a lot of the black Superstars
13:21
we don't see them like we see you in
13:23
Philadelphia with the street gangs we
13:25
don't see them saying what Lena said in
13:28
terms of what's happened to her well I I
13:30
think
13:32
I think the phonies
13:34
that's what I think and the bitter irony
13:37
of it all is
13:39
that
13:40
again I have to sit by man and watch
13:44
these people be lauded by our brothers
13:46
and sisters in the streets
13:49
and they and the brothers and sisters
13:50
must be aware
13:52
that they ain't doing nothing
13:54
but it took me a long time to get there
13:55
maybe they maybe my brother brothers and
13:57
sisters who are superstars need that
13:58
kind of time and there are many who say
14:00
I don't want to get involved in it
14:02
but I don't know how you cannot get
14:04
involved in it because they are first of
14:06
all black and they are committed
14:08
whether they want to be committed or not
14:10
the very nature of the skin commits you
14:12
I don't read a script that I don't weigh
14:15
and say I wonder what the brother and
14:17
the con is going to think about this
14:20
how can I change it if it's wrong
14:23
because the black performer again has
14:25
that obligation
14:27
that we are black performers
14:30
and so therefore I'm not talking about
14:32
you gonna come out every time man and do
14:35
a number because like on Laugh-In
14:38
you know I do jokes but somewhere along
14:41
the line I've got to relate to what's
14:43
really happening
14:44
somewhere so that the brother who's
14:47
watching me who may not necessarily buy
14:49
my records
14:50
may not go to my movies may not come to
14:53
the Copa the Sands Hotel lassimi will
14:56
say yeah
14:58
in a bar or in his house yeah
15:01
that's all that's my thanks but the
15:04
black audience
15:06
owes that black performer an obligation
15:08
of watching and supporting him unless he
15:10
turns out to be really the rat of all
15:13
time
15:15
but I mean when I say rap I mean he's
15:17
not doing anything he's doing things
15:19
that embarrass the the black population
15:23
now I know a lot of people don't like
15:24
flips doing the the Deacon I've heard a
15:27
lot of talk about it Geraldine Geraldine
15:29
they don't like uh I now my personal
15:32
things I think geraldine's funny I feel
15:34
a little funny about the deacon
15:36
because I think that's going back to
15:37
something that's so deeply rooted in
15:39
black people
15:40
religiously you know that I think that
15:43
that does this to me but I think it's
15:45
still funny because I'm looking at it
15:46
again through one eye that looks
15:49
in two directions first as a performer
15:52
is it funny is it clever secondly as a
15:55
man we're trying to relate to the cat on
15:57
the corner again you understand what I
15:58
mean because first and foremost I'm a
16:01
performer that's all I've ever done all
16:02
my life
16:03
so I know he's got to weigh it but what
16:06
do you do
16:07
you've got to have the support of your
16:09
people
16:10
but geez I just love saying that number
16:13
one variety show in the country now and
16:16
start in by a black man who is very very
16:20
funny but Amos and Andy was funny don't
16:24
do that to me don't do that
16:27
and Geraldine is funny and uh the Deacon
16:31
is funny but can you move forward you
16:33
know at at the level of the struggle we
16:36
are for Liberation yeah you know came
16:38
before to continually uh entertain white
16:41
people with shows produced by white men
16:44
with a frame of reference of what we are
16:46
I mean that's not defining ourselves and
16:49
the role of the Entertainer
16:51
to some extent has to accommodate that
16:54
relevant I think that the Amos Amanda
16:56
was funny I was embarrassed by it I
16:58
signed the letters too you know but I I
17:00
say that I think at this point now we've
17:02
got more stars than we've ever had
17:04
before that I can afford the luxury
17:07
because in place of Geraldine and then
17:10
place a Flip Wilson I have Don Knotts
17:14
since you both guess no baby I was out
17:17
of town you know I haven't had a chance
17:19
to live a boat here okay so what you
17:21
think of the terrible cat dead man
17:27
we are like
17:29
in one sense limited because we will
17:33
never have the audience of a commercial
17:36
Channel but do you want that audience
17:38
I'd like to have that audience on the
17:40
other hand if getting that audience
17:43
necessitated compromising our principles
17:46
I know they have ten Brothers
17:48
out of the 200 million people in this
17:51
country watch this show yeah then they
17:53
have the 200 million people in this
17:55
country watch the show even because I
17:57
think being irrelevant is
17:58
counterproductive you know and and that
18:00
brings me to the next point
18:02
uh you have a show
18:05
that
18:06
folded
18:09
and that's when I think like what you
18:13
said you were in another era
18:15
you're being very kind yeah
18:18
I was a stone rock and you could be for
18:21
free yeah what would you do I mean I
18:24
don't know but I would I tell you what I
18:26
wouldn't do or maybe by that you can get
18:28
a clue I certainly wouldn't do nothing
18:29
more than I'm doing as an entertainer
18:31
today in other words I ain't gonna let
18:33
them change me last time out I let him
18:35
put me in suits I couldn't smoke I
18:37
couldn't say what I wanted to say and
18:39
though I put a lot of people to work and
18:40
I did a lot of things and all of that
18:42
and I changed a lot of policies at NBC
18:44
you know when they catch and went yeah
18:47
because you know I walked into the
18:48
publicity office one day I didn't see no
18:49
black people I said I don't understand
18:50
this it looks like the Lilies of the
18:52
white Fields you know and that was it
18:54
and the guy went oh he's very bitter and
18:56
I went well the hell with it I am very
18:58
bitter if I got it I gotta surround
18:59
myself with people that I know of and
19:01
we've got capable brothers and sisters
19:02
to do it now you go up there and be
19:04
seeing it's packed and jammed and the
19:05
executives are there you know but the
19:07
only thing that they are
19:11
you know
19:15
the most relevant thing I think I was
19:18
able to do was near the end of the
19:20
series I did a sketch
19:21
with nipsy Russell
19:24
about how brothers treat Brothers
19:27
and I did a very Bourgeois cat going in
19:29
to apply for a job right
19:31
and very Bourgeois with the three button
19:33
code as soon as he found out it was a
19:35
brother
19:36
he took his head on each other
19:39
right and the cat's baggies to send him
19:41
in and the cat walked in he said damn
19:43
hey babe that ain't the way he walked in
19:46
the White Secretary was there seeing he
19:47
said I'm I'm here for the job and I like
19:50
to apply I've been okayed and I went
19:51
through the IBM machines blah blah blah
19:54
talked very problem as soon as he went
19:55
in there instead of identifying and
19:57
saying Hey I want a groove it is to see
19:59
you in this position he didn't do that
20:00
he just put his feet up on the desert
20:02
dead go ahead and sign that
20:05
you know I'm straight
20:08
you know and suddenly here's the brother
20:10
sitting there trying to do something and
20:12
he is not protected and it was a funny
20:13
sketch and we loved doing it I got such
20:16
complaints from NBC you would not
20:18
believe and we never were to do another
20:19
one because I think we went through a
20:21
period where we were just pleased to see
20:23
a black guy there
20:25
yeah
20:26
there we are
20:28
there we are we in there because we
20:30
needed that at that period now we've got
20:32
to go on
20:33
further
20:35
you know what I mean and it's not just
20:37
seeing the black cat there anymore
20:39
you know it's like the guys I will
20:42
believe till I die that when the
20:44
pressure came on the Madison Avenue and
20:46
they said you got to put black people
20:47
into commercials they said we'll show
20:50
them black people in a commercial so
20:51
they put them in the commercials where
20:53
black people look ludicrous in
20:56
you know because everybody has a white
20:58
neighbor
20:59
you very rarely see two black women
21:02
talking
21:03
and if they're black women talking
21:05
they're not the sisters
21:08
it's Bourgeois middle class you know
21:11
straight hair no dues never a dude ever
21:14
never do you know can't look like Gloria
21:16
Foster no chance you know you must look
21:19
like you know the old days of of tan
21:22
confessions you know and that's it
21:24
and I look and I say it on the stage
21:26
sometimes I say it's ridiculous because
21:29
it doesn't relate to anything
21:35
you wearing a free Angela button have
21:37
you had any reaction from other people
21:39
as a result of wearing that button well
21:41
that was a fan of mine
21:43
in the restaurant and uh
21:46
was at the risk around the airport and
21:48
the guy walked up and asked my autograph
21:50
and he was white and he said Jay the
21:53
wife gets a big kick out of here when is
21:55
he on the laughing and all that sign us
21:59
for the kitties you know and I signed it
22:01
and he said I was wondering if and he
22:03
started staring at the button and I was
22:04
wearing you know this but and he was
22:06
going like this and he kept saying I was
22:08
I was and he was trying to focus on it
22:10
because I I was blowing his bubble
22:13
because they have
22:15
an image of me I guess of another kind
22:18
my involvement with Angela is again the
22:22
Injustice of it all
22:24
uh her political beliefs you know are
22:26
her own
22:28
I don't share her political beliefs I
22:30
share her blackness
22:32
and I share the Injustice to any black
22:35
person and there's no way that she's
22:36
going to get the right kind of trial we
22:38
know that
22:39
it's stacked against it
22:41
uh they made her the Most Wanted woman
22:44
since uh Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde and
22:49
I think that if a guy like myself wears
22:51
a button
22:52
that's letting somebody in that crowd
22:54
that I go around with know where my
22:55
head's at
22:57
you're now married to a sister
22:59
is she I didn't I didn't know that
23:04
[Music]
23:09
[Applause]
23:13
[Music]
23:18
and it's so groovy and so nice I've been
23:21
in the hospital five times
23:22
[Music]
23:24
[Applause]
23:30
I think he's trying to tell me so
23:34
I'm absolutely
23:36
you know flabbergasted by the by the
23:39
fact that we as a people almost without
23:42
the underground which they keep saying
23:44
we've got and everything else around the
23:46
ground as a soul underground you know
23:48
don't take no trains or nothing this
23:51
something happens it's it's the same
23:53
thing compared to
23:54
as soon as downtown gets the dance we've
23:57
gone on to another one and nobody ever
24:00
told us that they got it and we didn't
24:03
care about it but when they get funky
24:04
chicken we're into something else
24:06
uh there's something else you know it's
24:08
the thing that we have that ain't no
24:09
other people got in the world
24:12
it's that immediate eye to eye contact
24:15
that says
24:17
jamf
24:19
horse that says
24:21
yeah
24:23
that's that same thing again that one
24:25
word yeah
24:27
and you know and it's not followed by
24:29
he's down right on but really just yeah
24:33
you feel that we can solve our problem
24:34
by having some type of army or some type
24:38
of violent confrontation with whites
24:41
no
24:43
you know ain't no way you can put poor
24:45
Cadillacs against the tank
24:48
two Rusty raises
24:50
you know against an M1
24:52
and the flame throw against a bottle of
24:55
Coca-Cola with a rag in it ain't no way
24:57
you can do that
25:01
how is it that you're free enough uh to
25:04
talk the way you're talking and be an
25:06
Entertainer
25:07
because you know
25:09
the rationale is that if I'm black and
25:11
an Entertainer I can't be too involved
25:13
with black causes and survive in an
25:16
industry controlled basically by white
25:18
people how are you free enough let's say
25:20
to come on black journal and relate to
25:22
the brothers and sisters the Way You Are
25:24
but I I think
25:27
that it's called
25:29
a respect for one's opinion
25:31
because I've had too many white people
25:33
talk to me and say I
25:35
I don't like what you said on the David
25:36
Frost show about something such a thing
25:39
well you but you shared a lot of guts to
25:41
say it
25:44
and the other point is which is very
25:46
very good man
25:48
I really don't care I don't give it
25:52
when I say this is a racist society in
25:55
which we live in everybody knows it is
25:58
that ain't no that ain't no big big
26:00
statement to make it maybe it's shocking
26:03
to hear it from someone that you just
26:04
watched the night before on laughing uh
26:07
but it is man I can't say well how can
26:10
you say that white and black say this to
26:11
me how can you say that man you got it
26:13
made I said I Got It Made because I had
26:15
to fight all of that but I then owe an
26:17
obligation to my brothers and my sisters
26:19
to let them know
26:21
that it existed then it still exists now
26:24
and I've been here for 40 years you know
26:27
I've got the house I've got a wife I've
26:29
got children I've got success
26:32
and now it is time for me to try in
26:36
every way feasible
26:38
to help
26:39
the plight of my people
26:41
and to gain our freedom because I'm see
26:45
the fallacy is man and let's let me say
26:47
this and and I really mean it from the
26:49
bottom of my heart
26:50
money don't make you free
26:52
popularity don't make you free
26:55
don't you know that
26:58
you know sure I live in Beverly Hills
27:00
but I'm Shackled by the same things that
27:01
happen to the brother and Watts
27:06
I've had my bosses say to me
27:09
cats that I work for
27:11
who you know really basically give me a
27:15
Jack Entrada will say to me Sam geez
27:17
that was a little heavy statement you
27:19
said on that I said but it's true ain't
27:20
it Jack he said yeah I know it's true
27:22
but I said Butcher and that's the end of
27:24
that
27:25
I mean that man and my cousin did I say
27:29
it like it is man I've been the last
27:31
five years
27:33
go away
27:39
thank you
27:40
because he's got to respect me it's like
27:42
when a brother comes to me and says but
27:43
man you're a Jew
27:45
you know I look at him and say what's
27:46
your religion and he says I'm a Baptist
27:49
or I don't have one or I'm a Muslim I
27:51
said well our religion is blackness
27:55
because if we ever get to the point
27:57
where we started talking about he's a
27:58
black Jew he's a black Catholic he's a
28:00
black Baptist he's a black Muslim really
28:03
saved for the titles that the papers put
28:04
on people then we're in trouble our real
28:07
religion and the thing that connects us
28:08
all is our blackness
28:10
the religion of Blackness that's it
28:13
God
28:15
[Music]
28:17
[Applause]
28:18
[Music]
28:19
[Applause]
28:22
[Music]
28:23
[Applause]
 

The Problem in the USA/France/China/Brazil/Nigeria/Russia/Ukraine/Italy/South Africa or most governments in humanity  is the spread of the advertised dysfunctional universalism of the USA. I repeat the advertised dysfunctional universalism of the USA.  The USA has peddled since it was created a universalism that  doesn't exist while  has no honest attempt at implementation anywhere in humanity, including in the USA. 

The question is what are governments afraid of? the truth, that humans being are free to hate or dislike equal to love or like. The question is, what are populaces afraid of ? IT is clear many  white people of france have never embraced the non white or non european. Why are they afraid to say it publicly? We tell children to accept themselves, why do we adults have such a problem doing it? Accepting yourself and publicly expressing yourself allows others to know how they truly stand. In parallel, what are non europeans or statians< of the usa> afraid of? IF you know someone doesn't like you but offers you an opportunity better than in your own environment, well... accept both parts of the equation? Live in the white community, go to harvard, but also accept the white children harassing your non white child, accept harvard resisting you as much as possible. I will even use a current film media reference, and say , consequences. Accept the prosequences folks, but also the consequences. Don't complain about you knew walking in.  You don't want those consequences chooe another road, with different consequences, all roads have both.

ARTICLE

Shooting, riots in France show U.S. is not alone in struggles with racism, police brutality
World Jul 1, 2023 8:29 PM EDT
A police killing caught on video. Protests and rioting fueled by long-simmering tensions over law enforcement treatment of minorities. Demands for accountability.

The events in France following the death of a 17-year-old shot by police in a Paris suburb are drawing parallels to the racial reckoning in the U.S. spurred by the killings of George Floyd and other people of color at the hands of law enforcement.

Despite the differences between the two countries’ cultures, police forces and communities, the shooting in France and the outcry that erupted there this week laid bare how the U.S. is not alone in its struggles with systemic racism and police brutality.

“These are things that happen when you’re French but with foreign roots. We’re not considered French, and they only look at the color of our skin, where we come from, even if we were born in France,” said Tracy Ladji, an activist with SOS Racisme. “Racism within the police kills, and way too many of them embrace far-right ideas so … this has to stop.”

In an editorial published this week, the French newspaper Le Monde wrote that the recent events “are reminiscent” of Floyd’s 2020 killing by a white Minneapolis police officer that spurred months of unrest in the U.S. and internationally, including in Paris.

“This act was committed by a law enforcement officer, was filmed and broadcast almost live and involved an emblematic representative of a socially discriminated category,” the newspaper wrote.

The French teen, identified only as Nahel, was shot during a traffic stop Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Video showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield.

Nahel’s grandmother, who was not identified by name, told Algerian television Ennahar TV that her family has roots in Algeria.

Preliminary charges of voluntary homicide were filed against the officer accused of pulling the trigger, though that has done little to quell the rioting that has spread across the country and led to hundreds of arrests. The officer said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel attempted to flee, a prosecutor has said.

Officials have not disclosed the race of the officer. His lawyer said he did what he thought was necessary in the moment. Speaking on French TV channel BFMTV, the lawyer said the officer is “devastated,” adding that “he really didn’t want to kill.”

Nahel’s mother, identified only as Mounia M., told France 5 television she’s not angry at the police in general. She’s angry at the officer who killed her only child.

“He saw an Arab-looking little kid. He wanted to take his life,” she said.

Police shootings in France are significantly less common than in the U.S. but have been on the rise since 2017. Several experts believe that correlates with a law loosening restrictions on when officers can use lethal force against drivers after a series of terrorist attacks using vehicles.

Officers can shoot at a vehicle when a driver fails to comply with an order and when a driver’s actions are likely to endanger their lives or those of others. French police have also been regularly criticized for their violent tactics.

Unlike the U.S., France does not keep any data on race and ethnicity as part of its doctrine of colorblind universalism — an approach purporting to see everyone as equal citizens. Critics say that doctrine has masked generations of systemic racism.

URL

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/shooting-riots-in-france-show-u-s-is-not-alone-in-struggles-with-racism-police-brutality

TWO QUESTIONS OF INDEPENDENCE SIDE PHENOTYPE

If the colonies did not win against the british empire does chattel slavery in the usa end? I give my opinion

https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10381-the-4th-of-july-2023-celebrations-why-should-we-celebrate /?do=findComment&comment=61613

Many Black people who succeed in the USA suggest they are pragmatic while black people who don't succeed are not, but I don't concur to that.  I think all are pragmatic the key is in what way.
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10358-dosers-and-being-african/?do=findComment&comment=61612

My thoughts to the article below

I quote < “The other show is kind of mean and too grown up for me.”
 > 
her son said a show is to grown up for him:)  How does a child know what  defines grown up when many grown up don't. Know if he would had said what his mother will not like,that shows honesty.

I quote < what does it say that it is so much easier for my son to find wonderfully crafted television shows and films featuring talking animals than it is to find shows about kids who look like him? >
It says that Black people with money aren't willing to spend their money to make cartoons for black people. It says that Black people had less money in the past and white people financed cartoons to be made for white people, which is perfectly acceptable. It says that Black parents need to focus on books with rearing their  kids as a ton of content has existed that has human black characters. It says white people around the world who may be asian or muslim or latino is a larger market and satisfactory. It says Black people need to tell their children they are willing to suck a white persons penis or lick a white persons vagina for opportunities but opportunities are not meant to be shared or made universal. It says that Black people from black countries like Uganda didn't use their control to make media in Uganda or other black countries that black people globally need. 

I quote < “But where are the cartoons, Mom?” he asked. “And why does the story have to be so sad with people dying?” > 
What the author of the article the black mom was unwilling to simply say is white people wrote most of the films, live action or television, that she cites and sequentially, their themes. But, again, a Black one percent exist, they are billionaires or millionaires. She needs to tell her son, rich black people aren't spending their money on financing black cartoons. That is why ? and asking non blacks to make media for black people is unwarranted, and non blacks don't have to care about blacks. 

I quote < Where are the happy carefree storylines for young Black kids that white kids get? Where is the diversity of storyline and personality and genre representation that white kids get? > 
Pick up a book, they are out there.  And again where are the black rich. Where is Oprah's money? where is Tyler Perry's studios? 

I quote < I find it very telling that the first animated Disney movie featuring a Black woman main character and the first animated Disney movie to feature a Black man character as leads are written in such a way that both of these main characters spend a large part of their respective films in bodies that are neither Black nor even human. > 
Yes, White people finance media for white people. As DW Griffith said, when the NAACP boycotted Birth of a nation, anyone can make whatever film they want. The NAACP wouldn't spend money on making a film as a rebuttal as if teh white jews who financed the organization would do that. But, Oscar Mischeux made films in reply. So where are the Oscar Micheaux Black directors. Comprehend, Spike Lee tells similar stories of Blac plight than disney so...

I quote < What does it say to Black kids watching when the world’s biggest children’s entertainment company cannot give them even one animated film that features a Black person that stays a Black person throughout? What does this say about Blackness to kids who are not Black? About whose life is being portrayed as mattering? And whose does not? > 
It says to Black kids their Black parents are stupid telling them white people will change by black merit. It says to Black kids  their Black parents don't have the power, money isn't always power, to provide them with what they need. It tells non Black kids how impotent the black community is wherever they live, which is the truth. It tells non black kids to make sure they emphasize their non black community so that it isn't like the impotent black community. It says to Black kids their black parents are lying when they talk about a human family. All humans are human but that does mean all humans are family and that is ok. 

I quote  < When will Disney make a film with Black characters played by Black characters? Why is this so damn hard? > 
Maybe never and that is ok. Disney was started by a white artists as an independent company. So when will Black artists who are fortunate enough to get financing for films do likewise. Black people did create BET which was a black owned media outlet but sold it to whites. So, why complain about Disney? when Oscar Micheaux proved independent movies can be made. B.E.T. proves Black people with money undercut their own community. Disney is not obliged to give concern to black people. Why are Black people with money financing what the Black community need so damn hard? It isn't like Black people with money only send people to traditional black colleges so...

I quote < Or does Disney’s refusal to create an animated movie with Black characters who stay Black characters go beyond these three films that traffic in stereotypes and erasure and speak to larger institutional issues regarding perceptions of Blackness that behoove attention? > 
Institutional issues? no. Disney is a white owned firm that is free to sell to all phenotypes. If non whites absorb or dream of disney , they are the fools. Don't blame disney for black people pushing disney on black children or not rearing black children better, better meaning to media that has black created content, which has always existed.

I quote < It matters, where imagination begins in the mind. It matters whether that mind can imagine full Black personhood, or if that imagination is still constrained by unconscious bias and internalized stereotypes.> 
Yes this is true, but film is a collective project which starts with the financier and white people have more money or power than blacks and are not beholden to satisfy black needs. Black people can take care of ourselves and if our leaders: black people with money or influence, are unwilling to lead positively or lead negatively, well such is life.

I quote< There are a few future things in the works that I am hopeful about. Disney is set to premiere Ironheart on Disney+ in the near future, and is creating a TV show featuring Princess Tiana in 2023 with (hopefully) an eye to a less stereotypical portrayal than the earlier film. The Disney partnership with South African film company Kugali to produce Iwaju in 2022 looks promising as long as it doesn’t turn into a repeat of the single representation story, and diasporic wars where African, Afro European, and Black American creatives are pitted against each other.  > 
Well to be fair to Black people. White tribes have wars with each other. Black tribes have wars with each other as well. And to be blunt, because Black communities the world over usually lack power, and have to beg from whites, we tend to have bitter fights cause all the communities are based on begging.

I quote < In the meantime, my son has stopped asking to watch television. He told me the other day that he understands why I have always avoided TV and read to him instead. It is not just the wonder of imagination and language that books rather than TV provide. It is not just the vibrant storylines that inspire his own creations. As my Black son looks at his bookshelves he can see row after row of books whose covers shine with characters who look like him, whose pages are full of joyful stories about characters who look like him living their lives in full Black joy instead of the shapeshifting and death embedded into so much of mainstream American television entertainment engaging with Blackness for kids.

My son knows now, like many Black kids in America do, that if you try to look for yourself onscreen all you will see is erasure, sometimes stereotype. He knows to look for himself on the page instead. You can find some beautiful things there, if you try. > 
In my view, this passage should had been the whole article. All this about what white man isn't doing for Black people is for me worthless. Yes, Whites don't like Blacks. Blacks don't like Whites. And just because the financially wealthiest Black people are reared to cater to whites doesn't mean the financially poorest Black people want to. 
 

Disney's Disembodied Black Characters

March 23, 2021   •   By Hope Wabuke

ONCE A YEAR, from the first year of middle school until I graduated from high school, my orchestra would board the yellow school district buses along with our instruments and drive the 45-minute winding route through the San Gabriel mountains from Arcadia to Anaheim, California, to perform at Disneyland. After 30 minutes of rehearsal and another 30-minute performance, we were given free rein to wander the park until closing, when the busses would drive us home.

I knew even then that what we had was not usual; it was a privilege to experience what we experienced growing up in that tiny southern California town, miles and years away from the tiny black and white missionary TV screen in Uganda where my parents had first spied the Disney movies that had made them imagine America a wonderful, magical place. 

What we had in Arcadia, home to one of the top public school districts in the state, were the perks that went along with that education. But what we also had to go along with it — being one of the first Black families to move to that city, and usually the only Black student in my class — was the racism: being followed in stores, ordered to pay before dining in restaurants, being told we were the color of “poop” by teachers, and never seeing anyone who looked like us in the books we read in school. This is the Black experience in America when your hardworking Black parents are determined to get you the best education they can. It’s an abundance of opportunity, but only if you learn to survive within the boundaries of acceptable racism.

¤

My wealthy non-Black classmates loved wandering around the grounds of Disneyland, a place they were familiar with from regular family visits throughout the year. I was not. With the price tag at $100 per person, my family of eight people had been to Disneyland only once — with family friends from out of town when they came to visit. To prepare for the $1,000 excursion, my father had put our family on a budget for half a year, and we had packed backpacks full of lunch and dinner. We were warned there would be no souvenirs so we shouldn’t even try it.

As someone unaccustomed to its scope, Disneyland was big and overwhelming for me. But as performers in the student orchestra — both guests and employees, to some extent — we were privy to the back lots and back entrances of the park that regular visitors didn’t see — the backstage bones of the glossy stages and rides, the stacked up piles of recycled parts of shuttered amusements and worn-out characters. We were forbidden to take pictures here — it was not public Disney; it did not hold the myth of Disney perfection and magic. But I liked thinking that we alone had this secret knowledge of a place that was familiar to so many. We were part of the select few who saw what was denied public view.

Once, I was told this same story about the man himself, Walt Disney: the reason that most of  the candid photos of Walt Disney throughout the park showed his fingers shaped in a V was because he smoked cigarettes and didn’t want to be seen doing so. But this private truth did not align with his desired public image; the cigarettes had to be airbrushed out.

¤

In the middle of last summer, trying to understand the new balance of homeschooling and remote working in the pandemic, I gave in to my seven-year-old’s requests and let him have half an hour of screen time in the evenings. But being a Black parent who was once a Black girl and well aware of the horrific absence and equally horrific stereotypical and token representations of Blackness on television that I have seen, I told him that he could only watch a TV show if it had a main character who looked like him. Within that guideline, he could choose whatever age-appropriate show he wanted. He wanted cartoons, and so he began his search with those constraints. But within five minutes, he came to me in tears. We had subscriptions to am*zon Prime and Netflix, and he had searched both for Black characters in kids shows. He had found nothing.

I sat down, pulled him onto my lap and cuddled him until his tears eased. When he was soothed enough, I picked the remote up from the floor and typed in “Black kids cartoons” on Netflix. The only thing that came up was Motown Magic, which he had already seen. I tried “African American kids cartoons.” Nothing else. “Black kids shows,” “African American kids shows” had nothing else in his age range, but a couple of live action shows aimed at the tween and teenage crowd.  I tried am*zon Prime, which was even more of a desert. Searches there brought up Orphan Black and Black Mirror instead.

My son was growing impatient. “Mommy, isn’t there anything?” he called, tears eased and now bouncing on his trampoline. “Not yet,” I called back, scrolling through endless titles of movies without any Black characters in them. And then I recalled a passing conversation about the launch of Disney Plus with a fellow mom friend.

“Doc McStuffins!” I exclaimed loudly, remembering the patron saint of Black parents everywhere, as I ordered Disney Plus. Among the little Black girl doctor and her talking toys, my son was happy for most of the year. I thanked God for Chris Nee, McStuffins’s wonderful creator, every day of 2020. And then, just in time for winter break, he asked for something else.

“Did you finish Doc McStuffins?” I asked.

“No, I just want to watch something else for a while,” he said. But we couldn’t find any other cartoon show on Disney Plus that featured Black kids as main characters. So we watched an episode of Vampirina, another of Nee’s creations, this one about a vampire family living amongst human neighbors in contemporary Philadelphia. But I was uneasy at the danger made cute, uneasy with Nee’s portrayal of the mythical bloodsucking vampire-as-monster-as-outsider equated to the outsiderness of the Black girl as outsider.

Networks are so proud of each of their few Black kids shows, it seems, that they forget two things:

That kids will watch the show and then want to watch something else.

That Black kids have a diversity of tastes, and, beyond that, they grow up. One show can’t appeal to all Black kids from age three to 16. And why should we expect it to, even if it could?

Searching further on Disney, we found Moana, which my son watched because Moana was brownish like him he said, and Elena of Avalor because she was also kind of brownish and went to school with a brownish kid who looked kind of like him.  

But nothing else.

“What about these ones? I said, selecting the 2009 animated feature The Princess and The Frog and The Proud Family.

“I already looked, Mom. The girl isn’t really there; she’s a green frog most of the time,” he sighed. “The other show is kind of mean and too grown up for me.”

I searched and searched the network. Nothing. Finally, I had an idea.

“Animals!” I exclaimed. “You can watch a show if there are animals.”

My son’s face brightened. He returned to Netflix and selected Octonauts, a delightful show about animals from diverse regions of the world who work together to help other animals, teaching science along the way. Then there were Puffin Rock and Peppa Pig. And, of course, the entire Disney collection of talking animal content. The animal cartoons were fascinating and endless in their diversity and skillful edutainment. My son has yet to run out of new animal show options on the streaming services we have.

But I wonder: what does it say that it is so much easier for my son to find wonderfully crafted television shows and films featuring talking animals than it is to find shows about kids who look like him?

¤

Last fall, when the studios and networks rolled out their kids holiday fare, it was more of the same: the absence of Blackness. The most promising of the offerings was Netflix’s Jingle Jangle, which is quite lovely and which my son enjoyed. He appreciated the live action musical magic in the tradition of Disney’s own Mary Poppins.

“But where are the cartoons, Mom?” he asked. “And why does the story have to be so sad with people dying?”

I thought about my son’s questions. I had no answers, only the same questions about entertainment for Black adults, and the saturation of images of Black pain rather than Black joy. The heaviness I feel in my soul when yet another studio markets its slave film (or other narrative of historical Black oppression) as the “Black movie” release of the year is the same heaviness in my son’s soul at these kid’s movies that traffic in Black sadness and Black death.

True, films like Netflix’s Jingle Jangle and Disney’s The Lion King and the Princess and the Frog are in line with the loss-of-parent narrative that’s part of the blueprint for this kind of children’s storytelling, harkening all the way back to Disney’s Golden Age. But the impact of that loss-of-parent narrative resonates much more loudly when looking at animated Disney films with Black content because of the very small number of animated films and television that feature Black protagonists at all.

You see, all animated Disney films featuring Black protagonists have either a dead parent or the death of the protagonist as a plot point; however, there are many animated Disney films with non-Black characters where parents and protagonists escape this deathly trope simply because of the sheer numbers of Disney films made with non-Black protagonists. This lack of representation creates a single story of Blackness, predicated on death and sadness.

And, because of history, because of the way race and power work in a society where we are already saturated with images of Black death and anti-Black violence — consider how many times the deaths of unarmed Black children like Tamir Rice and unarmed Black men like Eric Garner and George Floyd were replayed across media channels versus the genteel blurring out of the death of Ashli Babbitt, the white woman insurrectionist who died while storming the Capitol in January 2021 — the death of Black parents in Disney films operates in a much different way than the death of non-Black parents in Disney films. Simply put: for every death of non-Black parents depicted in Disney films like Frozen, there are many, many other Disney films with non-Black protagonists in which the parents do not die, in which death is not a major plot point; in which the non-Black characters are allowed happiness and joy. And when that death does occur, it is not amplified in the real world by the media’s disregard for the sanctity of Black life.

Where are the happy carefree storylines for young Black kids that white kids get? Where is the diversity of storyline and personality and genre representation that white kids get? Whiteness gets multiplicity — of storyline, genre, medium, a multiplicity of films and television shows that speak to a multiplicity of age ranges and interests — all represented by white characters. Snow White. Cinderella. Beauty and the Beast. 101 Dalmatians. The Flight of the Navigator. E.T.. How to Tame Your Dragon. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. The Incredibles. Kim Possible. WildKrats. Toy Story. Frozen. Frozen II. Inside Out. Tangled. Brave. Sarah and Duck. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Peter Pan. Pete’s Dragon. Alice in Wonderland. Sleeping Beauty. The Little Mermaid. The Sword in the Stone. Robin Hood. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Pete’s Dragon. James and the Giant Peach. Hercules. Doug’s First Movie. Recess: School’s Out. Return to Neverland. Treasure Planet. Meet the Robinsons. Enchanted. Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue. The Cat in the Hat. Sofia the First. Boss Baby. Masha and the Bear. Johnny Test. The Lorax. Dennis the Menace. Ben and Charlie’s Little Kingdom. The Magic School Bus. And on and on.

Blackness gets Doc McStuffins.

¤

My freshman year of high school, our annual performance at Disneyland coincided with a live recording session of a Disney film soundtrack. Because we were members of one of the best high school orchestras in the state, the staff said, we were to be given a special treat: a walk-through of the recording soundstages. Quiet, in the audience, we stood and watched the musicians’ bows rising and falling across their strings in unison. Onscreen, the young lion I would come to know as Simba was roaring his pain at the death of his father. I would, of course, also come to know the film as The Lion King, Disney’s first modern foray — however anthropomorphized — into engaging with Black culture on the big screen. The Disney orchestra soared. So did I.

The story, of course, since it engages with Blackness in some way, was about family disintegration and death. But still, I remember the crackling energy pervading my childhood home in the days preceding the film’s release, the excitement of going to see it in the theatre with my whole family, so starved for representations of Blackness, let alone Africa in film. I remember my African parents’ happiness and pride in seeing something like home shining across the screen.

The hunger for representations of Blackness in Disney films was not just felt in my family, but in families across the world. To date, The Lion King is the highest grossing traditionally animated Disney movie of all time. But back in 1994, Disney couldn’t imagine that this success could be repeated by making more Black stories, perhaps even with people, rather than animals. Instead, the studio just made more Lion King. We have seen The Lion King as Broadway musical, as a touring production, as a television show, as a live action remake starring the voices — but never the Black bodies of course — of the nation’s most iconic and brilliant Black performers.

Indeed, it would be another 15 years before Disney made another feature based on Black culture — and the first Disney film ostensibly to revolve around actual Black characters. But Tiana, Disney’s first Black animated protagonist, would be onscreen for just about 40 minutes. More shockingly, she would be drawn as a Black woman for just 17 of those minutes. Most of the time, as you probably know, Tiana is a frog.

¤

Some of us, like I am, are old enough to remember the public call for a Black Disney princess throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s that pushed a reluctant Disney into making The Princess and The Frog in the first place. However, the representations of Blackness in Princess Tiana’s world were problematic from the beginning. Set in the 1920s South — the height of the Jazz Age, but also Jim Crow — Princess Tiana, accounts of that time report, was originally conceived as a servant character with strong echoes of slavery in characterization and naming. Indeed, her original name “Maddy” sounded very close to the Mammy slave stereotype applied to Black women.

Although Tiana’s character was rewritten as a waitress rather than a servant, this original vision is still evident in the opening scenes of the film, when Tiana’s mother pays little attention to her daughter and focuses all her attention and dialogue in caring for Tiana’s white girl friend. Here, too, in this opening, Tiana’s white girl friend is introduced before Tiana and dominates the first scenes of the film with verbosity and energy. Tiana is silent and ignored in the background.

The dynamic is clear: here is the centering of the white character and the depiction of Tiana’s mother acting as a mammy character to the white child, while ignoring her own — a stereotype of Black motherhood that was set during Jim Crow but has roots embedded in American slavery.

But it is not just the opening racial dynamics and cinematic choices of the film that sets Tiana’s portrayal differently than any of Disney’s other non-Black princesses, or even main characters. Nor, again, is it just the fact that the Black body of Princess Tiana appears so little in her film: 17 minutes out of the film’s 98 minute runtime.

It is that so much of Tiana’s film is created through a white gaze that looks to diminish, rather than celebrate the beauty of Black womanhood, or even Blackness in general. Instead of the expected cute and cuddly Disney animal character that always accompanies a Disney hero, there is only the worst of the buck-toothed minstrel stereotypes in the firefly that adopts Tiana; instead of a magical and charming fairy godmother there is only the worst stereotypes of the bugaboo African witch doctor; and everywhere, everywhere is the ridiculing of the Black body with the obsessive attention to all the characters’ overexaggerated buttocks, a stereotype used to portray Blackness since Saartje Bartmaan was kidnapped from South Africa and exhibited onstage in European zoos in order for white audiences to gawk at her physiology. It’s not just a question, in other words, of Tiana’s relative visibility as a Black princess; it’s about the whole swamp she’s got to wade through in order to be seen at all.

¤

Soul, Disney’s ethnic animated kid’s film for this winter season, is unique among animated Disney movies in that the central characters are adults rather than children, with children sprinkled sparingly throughout the film. Also of note is the much more adult subject matter of the film: the inciting incident of the narrative is that the main character dies. Soul follows what happens after that death. More typical is the message of the film: the classic cinematic stereotype of the Black male character desperately trying to save the life of a white woman, the character 22 played by Tina Fey, to the point that the Black man sacrifices his “life” doing so. And the other message of Soul? Accept that you are going to die and don’t try to fight your fate. Yet neither of these themes seem particularly uplifting to children in the style of the Disney brand that exists when dealing with non-Black characters.

Like The Princess and The Frog, Soul begins as a promising premise showcasing some brilliant Black actors. However, like Princess Tiana, Soul’s Joe Gardner is immediately characterized by a burning desire to work. Even the character’s last name is a type of job. Tiana and Joe, unlike other non-Black Disney characters who are given other motivations — falling in love, self-discovery, or saving the world — are only represented by the labor their Black bodies can provide, another stereotype of Blackness.

But the most damaging representation is this: like The Princess and The Frog’s Black protagonist, Soul’s Black lead spends a good deal of the movie not in a Black body, but represented as a blue ghost object without the Black ethnic facial features that characterize the him when in his physical form. And then, Joe Gardner’s Black body is inhabited by 22, the spirit of the character voiced by white actress Tina Fey. Joe, on the other hand, is put in the body of a cat. In other words, the Black body is colonized by whiteness while the Black character’s “soul” is put into the body of an animal — because it’s Disney and Black people are only equal to animals — before eventually choosing to sacrifice his life for 22, the white woman.

I find it very telling that the first animated Disney movie featuring a Black woman main character and the first animated Disney movie to feature a Black man character as leads are written in such a way that both of these main characters spend a large part of their respective films in bodies that are neither Black nor even human.

Green, blue — Disney has no problem with characters that are different colors, it seems, as long as that color is not brown.

¤

What does it say to Black kids watching when the world’s biggest children’s entertainment company cannot give them even one animated film that features a Black person that stays a Black person throughout? What does this say about Blackness to kids who are not Black? About whose life is being portrayed as mattering? And whose does not?

This is how bias and harmful stereotypes are created and perpetuated in society. This is how whiteness protects whiteness and thus a system of white supremacy through media representation: by normalizing itself as human and othering Blackness through erasure and dehumanization. Whether conscious or unconscious, this bias and adherence to white supremacy and Black erasure and dehumanization is real and damaging.

And no matter how much I try, I still cannot understand why Disney — a groundbreaking company predicated on reveling in the imagination, a company whose creative products are so well-known for their tremendous ability to invest animals with human characteristics and deep wells of pathos in order to center intimate storytelling against epic themes — does nothing but relegate Black characters to animals and objects, mining stories of Black suffering and death when Black kids deal with enough violence, often based on race, in the real world.

When will Disney make a film with Black characters played by Black characters? Why is this so damn hard?

¤

In 1937, Walt Disney Animation Studios released its first full-length animated film: Snow White. As the film’s cost grew to $1.5 million over its three-year production period, Walt Disney mortgaged his house to put up the remaining financing. His financial gamble worked: Snow White was an artistic and commercial success. Disney’s groundbreaking form of storytelling captured the hearts and imagination of children and adults alike and grossed $8 million in revenue at the box office, the most money ever made by a film up to that time. Snow White was quickly followed by Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, the films now known as Disney’s Golden Age.

One of the cornerstones of the Disney entertainment phenomenon is the understanding of how an irrepressible visual imagination and sonic landscape are vital in creating lush children’s entertainment that draws viewers in and has them humming songs from the films afterwards. By the mid 1940s, the Walt Disney team had perfected this structure, setting a bar that has led the industry for decades.

Simply put, Disney stories and Disney songs are iconic in our culture.

So as we think about questions of representation, this includes looking not just at how few films with Black characters are made by Disney, but also looking behind the camera at the creative team. Who are the creatives involved in these projects? The writers and composers trusted to create for the Disney brand?

For Soul, the sonic landscape of the film was created by the wonderfully talented Trent Reznor, best known for his band Nine Inch Nails, who, along with Atticus Ross, composed the score. Black American musician Jon Batiste was brought on to provide the singing “voice” of Joe Gardner’s piano, the same way the luminous Anika Noni Rose was the “voice” of Princess Tiana. This was considered progress from The Lion King’s casting of white American actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas to play the young version of the Simba, the African hero, and white American actor Mathew Broderick to play the adult version. White American actress Moira Kelly was the voice of Nala, the female African lion who is Simba’s love interest.

As with Soul, for The Princess and The Frog, Disney again tapped another white male composer to head the team in Randy Newman. And for The Lion King, we remember Elton John’s and Hans Zimmer’s glorious soundtrack, an art object in its own right.

These artists are brilliant. That is unquestionable.

The question is this: Despite the stunning reputations and work of these white composers, with all the Black jazz and soul musicians out there; with the invention of rock, country and jazz music by Black artists, the erasure of Blackness and co-option by whites of the first two art forms; with the financial imbalance in which white artists and labels took advantage of Black artists, whether predatory contracts in the 1960s and 1970s or Black soul musician Lady A getting her name stolen by the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum this past year; with this history of marginalization of Black creatives and in this political climate, doesn’t this sonic whitewashing just seem like there is so much potential for diverse representation, wasted?

Or does Disney’s refusal to create an animated movie with Black characters who stay Black characters go beyond these three films that traffic in stereotypes and erasure and speak to larger institutional issues regarding perceptions of Blackness that behoove attention?

One wonders: if the very accomplished white writing team of John Musker and Ron Clements, who after criticism about their treatment of race in the film, brought on the gifted Black writer Rob Edwards to help pen The Princess and The Frog, had also included a Black woman on the script about the first Black woman Disney protagonist, or an eye that valued Black woman the same way white women are valued in our society, would we perhaps have seen a less stereotypical representation of the first Black Disney princess that was more in line with the value and care shown to the other lighter-skinned Disney princesses in the Disney story canon, for example? Or, if the creators had thought as intentionally about Blackness before creating this story as they did with the creation of Moana’s Oceanic Story Trust, could there have been a different result as well? Or if a Black creator had been allowed to imagine Tiana and her world from the ground up, rather than slapping a Black perspective on the film as a hasty afterthought — a quick fix band-aid to solve the racist undertones of the film when the problems were not just skin deep?

And if Soul, too, had also begun with a Black writer creating a storyline rather than white screenwriters Pete Doctor and Mike Jones again bringing on a Black American writer (this time Kemp Powers) two years into the project to add authenticity and perspective of character to a fundamentally problematic idea, could Soul have been a more positive representation of Blackness without unconscious bias and stereotypes?

It matters, where imagination begins in the mind. It matters whether that mind can imagine full Black personhood, or if that imagination is still constrained by unconscious bias and internalized stereotypes.

“We quickly came across this idea of a story about a soul who doesn’t want to die meeting a soul that doesn’t want to live,” said Mike Jones in an interview with Awards Daily from February 2021. “I think the very first version, he was an actor, and he had gotten his big break on Broadway. He was going to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, and we thought that was just so clever but we just didn’t feel it. As soon as we came up with the idea that he should be a jazz musician, the idea of wrapping jazz and the improvisational nature of jazz was just so electric that we decided to make him a jazz musician. And let’s make him a middle school band teacher who aspires to something greater. That naturally led to the idea that he should be a middle-aged Black man, and that’s when we brought Kemp Powers in.”

Because of the complexity of the Black experience in America, stories that may read as neutral with a white main character can become, like Soul, problematic when the race of that character is changed from white to Black and the narrative is not rethought accordingly. For example, take Soul’s idea of putting a white character into the body of a Black man. Or Soul’s idea of a Black man’s soul being put into an animal. Where whiteness in America does not have a tradition of being violently colonized and enslaved, Blackness does. Where whiteness in America doesn’t have a racially loaded history of being compared to animals in a dehumanizing way, Blackness does. And suddenly, a plot point that seemed innocuous when envisioning the character as white, becomes part of a larger tradition of whiteness violating and dehumanizing the Black body, begun with American slavery.

It is not just enough to change a character’s race; when changing race, the narrative has to be re-envisioned accordingly in line with a character’s positioning in society. For Black folks in America, race informs so much of our experiences in life; to ignore this when creating a narrative of Black life is to practice a white-centered misconception of “colorblindness” that denies the full humanity of our personhood.

And nothing makes this misrepresentation clearer than Soul’s animation, which erases Joe Gardner’s Black ethnic features in the afterlife, effectively saying that the default representation of human, of a soul, is whiteness.

¤ 

There are a few future things in the works that I am hopeful about. Disney is set to premiere Ironheart on Disney+ in the near future, and is creating a TV show featuring Princess Tiana in 2023 with (hopefully) an eye to a less stereotypical portrayal than the earlier film. The Disney partnership with South African film company Kugali to produce Iwaju in 2022 looks promising as long as it doesn’t turn into a repeat of the single representation story, and diasporic wars where African, Afro European, and Black American creatives are pitted against each other. Mama K’s Team 4, a Zimbabwean cartoon, is set to premier on Netflix in 2022. And our most promising discovery: the Kweli TV app, which curates Black content from around the world with shows like Bino & Fino, a cartoon featuring two kids from Nigeria who, my son says, look exactly like him.

In the meantime, my son has stopped asking to watch television. He told me the other day that he understands why I have always avoided TV and read to him instead. It is not just the wonder of imagination and language that books rather than TV provide. It is not just the vibrant storylines that inspire his own creations. As my Black son looks at his bookshelves he can see row after row of books whose covers shine with characters who look like him, whose pages are full of joyful stories about characters who look like him living their lives in full Black joy instead of the shapeshifting and death embedded into so much of mainstream American television entertainment engaging with Blackness for kids.

My son knows now, like many Black kids in America do, that if you try to look for yourself onscreen all you will see is erasure, sometimes stereotype. He knows to look for himself on the page instead. You can find some beautiful things there, if you try.

My son’s basket of to-read books contain his current four favorites: Dragons in a Bag, Hi-Lo, Obi & Titi, and The Adventures of Mia Mayhem. In these books, like the others on his bookshelf, Black joy and Black life are embraced. And any of these would make amazing television or cinematic content.

Take Dragons in a Bag, the first book in a series about Black kids and dragons in Brooklyn written by the wonderful Zetta Elliot. Or Hi-Lo, Judd Winick’s alien robot who saves the world with his best friends — a Black girl with magical powers and an Asian boy who breaks gender stereotypes to spread love rather than violence. Or Obi & Titi, O.T. Begho’s tales of a Black boy and girl racing through magical adventures in Nigeria. Or the Mia Mayhem series, Kara West’s thrilling adventures of a Black girl superhero in a long lineage of superheroes. These books are amazing, well written stories with nuanced representations of character. And guess what?

No one Black dies in these books. And no one Black turns into a frog, a ghostly blue object, or anything else that is not Black for some corporation’s bizarre mindset that still believes that seeing Black faces onscreen for 120 minutes is too much.

They stay Black kids the whole time.

URL

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/disneys-disembodied-black-characters/

Title: cover art parable of the sower
Artist: paul lewin

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Many people in the usa are complaining about the supreme court's rulings as if the supreme court didn't make rulings that upended centuries of prior conditions. Making rulings that upend fifty years worth of rulings isn't as devastating. 

But the key here is state power. The future USA will be based on gangs of states in its fold. Those who try to fight that coming reality are fools. 

Withces Pendant 3d 

Witches Pendant details

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Witches-Pendant-3d-969563615

Coloring page

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Witches-Pendant-coloring-page-969562032

the original inspiration

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Necklace-20-Witchtember-2022-930260353