Sho'Nuff!

The Last Dragon - Dwight David (mp3)
Burn Hollywood Burn - Public Enemy (mp3)

Last week, our school held a day where, among other events, seniors organized and led sessions addressing issues of cultural diversity. One of the sessions my students and I attended was entitled "African-Americans in Film: A Retrospective" or something like that. It was organized and presented by two African-American seniors.

They began their session by introducing us to the notion of minstrels and blackface, showing YouTube clips of moments from movies where this embarrassing part of our legacy took place. Very uncomfortable. A reality beyond what these guys understood. Good place to start.

They next moved to Hattie McDaniel's Oscar-winning turn as Scarlet O'Hara's slave Mammy in Gone with the Wind. The presenters said very little other than explaining the general ingredients of blackface and explaining that McDaniel went on to focus her career on roles that were less stereotypical and more empowering. (I don't know if that's true, as her IMDB shows a bunch of "Maid" and "Aunt ___" roles, so I'm not quite sure she experienced some sea change in roles offered to her.)

From there, they went straight to Driving Miss Daisy. I know they only had an hour, but they skipped half a century of film history.

They cited Morgan Freeman as one of the first essential black actors to play major roles in motion pictures, citing his role as Hoke Colburn as a critical moment in the advancement of roles for African-Americans. At which point I swear I heard Chuck D, somewhere in New York City, throw up a little in his mouth.

Driving Miss Daisy and Freeman's role in it, they said, opened up leading roles for African-Americans in film. They then cited The Book of Eli, I Am Legend, Shaft, Remember the Titans and American Gangster. I think they meant the version of Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson, but I didn't ask. They probably wouldn't know Richard Roundtree if he walked up and kicked their young butts like the bad mother (shut yo' mouth) he is.

"And now we would like to show you scenes from one of the first movies to use an African-American as the main actor," they said. Naturally, I'm thinking they might show scenes from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or In the Heat of the Night or A Raisin in the Sun. You know, good old school Sidney Poitier shit.

The credits began to roll, and I heard the music, and I chuckled.

Yes, according to these two well-educated, relatively intelligent young black men, the actor known only as Taimak and making his film debut, who didn't even have another acting part for four years, was the first African-American to take the leading role in a film. In 1985.

If there are indeed 13 ways of looking at a blackbird, then surely there are a few ways to look at "The Last Dragon."

Here's the first way: It's shameful that two boys on the verge of college know so damn little about a subject that did seem of some importance to them.

Here's the second: for boys born in 1991, there's just not that much difference between 1939 and 1989. It's all just history. I remember when I was in high school, I didn't really give much of a crap about the timeline and where Lawrence Welk, Patti Page, Frankie and Annette, and Elvis fit. It was all just old music for old people, so turn that shit off and let me listen to Modern English already!! They're tubular!

Here's the third: Maybe their lack of knowledge is, in an oddball sort of way, a sign of just how far we've come. Perhaps it's accidentally a very encouraging statement for race and progress in America when young and educated African-American boys know so little about the history of African-Americans in film. It's a sign that, for as long as they've been alive and paying attention, inequality in film is a matter of degrees rather than a matter of extremity. They might not even know about Cooley High or Foxy Brown or "Blaxploitation" or, hell, even Richard Pryor. Or maybe they know about all that but don't really know where it plays in the timeline, why those names and words are kind of important when it comes to African-Americans in film.

According to their presentation, America went from blackface to blacks portraying slaves to Driving Miss Daisy to a land where Will Smith and Denzel Washington are two of the most bankable names in the business.

And that's the fourth way to look at it: maybe it's more or less that simple. Blackface to slave portrayal to Freeman's Hoke to I Am Legend, and the rest is just annoying details like Superfly or Lady Sings the Blues or -- one of my all-time favorite movies -- Do the Right Thing. Just details, those.

Except for this little gem of a movie, produced by Barry Gordy and Motown waaaaay back in 1985, in glorious Technicolor (TM), centered around a young black kung-fu stud named "Bruce" Leroy Green, who journeyed inward to his soul, and throughout Harlem, to discover the way to a sublime golden glow and proof that he was The Master.

Although I've hardly achieved a sublime glow when it comes to my level of racial understanding, the Public Enemy song "Burn Hollywood Burn" and Robert Townshend's movie "Hollywood Shuffle" were crucial eye-opening experiences for me as a teenager, slaps in the face about how clueless I was about the issue of black representation in film.