Red Tails: The Movie, The Legacy

As many know, the first weekend that a movie opens is the most critical in terms of demonstrating the value (i.e. money making capacity) of a film to those who fund their production. Don't think it applies necessarily to RedTails, the movie of the Tuskegee Air Men who fought to fight in World War II, made by John Lucas and rejected altogether by Hollywood. I went to see it this weekend anyway.

There were no TV ads about the film. Did radio stations catering to Black people advertise it? I can't say. Emails about it were akin to drumming in generations past -- putting out the word. The theatre was far from full, but not as empty as I have seen it for other noteworthy films about people of African descent that weren't about street life. Today, the day after seeing it I got an encouraging report from my dear friend Valerie, an accomplished writer, valeriewilsonwesley.com that Red Tails was #2 at the box office. Never underestimate the drum!

Black men dominated the cast, apparently a part of the problem for Hollywood. Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding were the brothers I recognized and Terrence Howard was blazing on point. The younger men, whose characters came to life, had faces I've barely or never seen. I could feel them as sons -- raring to go, anxious to display their competency in war, as men, as Black men. It saddens me that war has been a proving ground for many. But then there are many arenas in which Black men and women, 'Firsts,' have risked their lives. The camaraderie among the men in the film was funny and tender, and I cannot imagine the pressure that they and others breaking the color barrier have carried. The pressure of representing the goodness of the race, the pressure to be outstanding and composed in the face of hecklers, doubters, spitters. We stand on the shoulders of so many audacious, brave, and talented people. We cannot fail to carry on in good faith and effort towards enriching the legacy we've been handed, woven with sweat, laughter, blood, creativity, and love, making it more beautiful than we found it, widening its' reach for those coming behind us. So often I find that it is remembering what we know that matters. So much competes for the front row of our attention, and then there is some wisdom we don't even know we have. It is so deep it hasn't been articulated, or it's not so deep, we simply haven't turned inward to ask for it to speak.

There are so many ways to remember things, but art has to be among the best!

The film also reminded me of how seminal Tuskegee was in African-American history, the site that gave birth not only to first Black pilots but also to the 1881 founding of a college by Booker T. Washington and to the innovative research of George Washington Carver.

Finally, seeing Red Tails also made me think back to Valerie's father, Bert Wilson, a tall slender, light-hearted man with exquisite taste, a Tuskegee airman. Growing up I was in his presence time and again and never felt the weight of what he endured as a Black pilot in the 1940's. I hadn't met Valerie then, who was away at college, but her sister Pat and I were close friends. Looking back, I wish I had thanked him, acknowledged him as more than my girlfriend's father, but I take joy in remembering him as a man who loved fine wine, a good swim, and the speed of a Porsche, and most of all, a man alive with his ever lit humor.

Kwanzaa 2011 and the New Year 2012

January 1 is the last of 7 days of Kwanzaa, a celebration of African and African-American culture, a tradition created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga. Its roots have grown strong, nurtured by many who resonated with the idea that we descendants of Africa in the Diaspora are worthy of celebration, along with our culture and our ancestors. Its branches have extended out of the homes where Kwanzaa began into libraries, museums, community centers, schools, and even the media now include "Happy Kwanzaa" to well wishes for other traditions celebrated around the same time. Yet, much of its richness remains untapped, much of its potential fruit, unripened. I speak here of the principles of Kwanzaa, the heart of this celebration. They are at the core of how we have survived as a People, flourished even: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Imani.

I have been blessed to be part of a community of friends and family over the years who have pursued these values in our living and share a commitment not only to our immediate community but our larger community. Each of us in our own way has attempted to add to the beauty of our community, small and large, to add to the healing in our community, mindful that there remain many who live on the margins of survival, of feeling connected and valued, and even of feeling human. We have raised our children to feel connected to and care about our immediate and larger community and to bring that mindset and heart to their chosen work.

I once worked with someone who said to me, "Love is the most powerful force in the Universe."

Over and over, I find it so true. And a communal love that includes love of self and love of the collective can part the fiercest fog of oppression, and dissipate the ugliest of self-destruction. To love is to value oneself, to know in one's marrow that you have a place at the Divine table that is not earned, but freely given, despite all the messages coming at you that it's money, title, brand of sneakers or muscle mass that bestow your worth.

In 2012 it is my hope that the branches of Kwanzaa will reach deeper into our communities with a purpose to empower more of us to resist the mentality of street life, to make a way (as we always have) through and around the brush/the predatory landscape/and the pain of so many losses to something that affirms our value, a deeper love, a wider loving.

In 2012, it is my intent to love with both a ferocity and gentleness as called for, and to open more fully to receiving the abundance of love in the Universe.

Ase.

Reflections on 9/11 and Serena

Yesterday was filled with memorials and testimony to loss on that day like no other, when the scale of skyscrapers and all the modernity and abundance it embodied crumpled. If only it had been walls, computers, and glass alone that had disintegrated.

If only the antipathy back and forth had ended with the sacrifice that day. If only the mind and heart of Americans understood that when Bush said "We are right," he spoke half-truth. We have not always been on the side of freedom and democracy, here or abroad, and there are families all over the globe who have mourned loved ones too, even if they did not occupy tall buildings when dictators we supported and support besieged them. There is so much to grieve.

We can be proud to be American and live in this land without walking and talking righteousness. We can also be humble about our mistakes and the fact that we do not own the corner of tragic loss. I do not agree that the thousands of deaths on that day in 2001 constitute the worse time in our history. That day does not erase all the days of the enslaved, all the bodies on the floor on the Atlantic, nor the Native lives today ending in suicide,liver demise, and despair. All lives are precious.

On the bumper of my car is a sticker that says 'God Bless Everyone. No Exceptions."

The water that flows from the sides of the squares marking the space of the once World Trade Center is a beautiful choice of elements, for water has the power to reconcile and to heal. I will pay tribute in person there and pray for all victims of terrorism, worldwide.

Even as the tenth year commemoration service took place and the media saturated the airwaves with images and stories etched on that day forward, I chose to focus elsewhere, including the Women's Final at the Open. I looked forward to seeing Serena clench the title, having played so fierce the entire tournament, her gratitude at being alive and playing evident, in her voice, her arm stroke, and her fluid feet. I wondered too if she carried a special energy for Venus who had to lay down her racket in the tournament. But Serena didn't have it yesterday. I muted the sound off and on when I couldn't bear it. She has a temper when she feels wronged and I can relate, but I felt so proud of the grace she modeled when interviewed on the Court next to her opponent. I know she wasn't nearly as accepting of her loss as she projected, but she was good enough to smile and be humble, and that let me feel she was far from crushed. It let me feel peace.

In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

My roots and Southern soil are irrevocably entwined. Atlanta is where my mom was born, seven years before Martin Luther King Jr. came into the world in that same city, which has grown so wide since those days. I never saw the strange fruit on the trees but the ghosts of it were around. I think they're still around, glimpses, hints, muffled sounds.
But today, I want to express my gratitude, from that girl from the South, and from this woman and mother, now in the North, to Martin Luther King Jr. and all those who marched with him, and all whose shoulders they stood upon.

The sound of Martin Luther King's voice made me feel proud and at home, a well-educated Black man speaking with the cadence, the intelligence and the intensity of my People. His eyes, those striking deep black pools, could envision the bold, the need for justice to keep rising up to find its place, to insist. His eyes, onyx gems, could witness the brutality and offer his vulnerability as strength. With his voice, his vision and his actions he inspired others to bring forward their power to resist injustice, to use what they had, their feet, their bodies. I didn't like that he led people into being beaten. Malcolm's stance appealed to me much more, yet I respected King for his unwillingness to wait and his courage.

They are faceless, the women and men who walked miles to work day in and out, refusing a degrading bus ride. But because of them, I ride Metro North and no white person can tell me to give up my seat when the crowded train does not afford them one. I thank those Montgomery elders. I thank everyone who walked in fear, in terror, holding onto each other and faith in bringing about change, Black and White. But I am especially indebted to the Blacks because for the most part they lived in that Southern belly, and most of the Whites came from elsewhere. They could leave, though Goodman, Schwerner, and Viola did not. But the local Blacks who marched had to keep breathing through the terror that went on after the marching and voter registration. Sadly, the names of those Birmingham girls bombed to death are not committed to memory even though Spike has remembered them in film. But I thank them and their families for the sacrifice they did not offer but made. To Emmett and his mother, who insisted the world see what happened to her son, I say the same.

I thank all those who surrounded Martin Luther King, his inner circle of Jessie, Andrew, Ralph, Coretta, John and any others who held him up. I thank all those who lost jobs, their minds, their lives in the face of the Civil Rights movement, and their descendants who bear this legacy.

At the time of his murder, Martin Luther King had begun to broaden his focus to challenge economic injustice and war in addition to racial oppression. In one of his not well-known speeches he began to conceive of ghettos as colonies. He had to die. But I thank you Martin for standing up and aspiring to bring living at the highest level of humanity into being.

For Colored Girls

It's been two weeks since two female friends and I went to see Tyler Perry's movie make of Ntozake's play For Colored Girls Who've Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Few men were in the audience, no surprise, I admit.

I am thrilled that Perry brought this work of art from the 1970's into the consciousness of a new generation of women and I hope it will encourage many of both genders to read the original work. I certainly feel the need to do so, unlike when I saw the play on Broadway, years ago. I'm not sure why that is, since I don't recall much about it except when I heard the poetry out of Loretta Devine's mouth...the "trying to take my stuff" lines. That divine poetry resonated where the rest was lost, raising its melodic memory of splendor and sorrow.

Ntozake's play is a sisterspeak. Sisters' wounding and re-wounding in their relationships with men, with each other, and with themselves is where the lens is aimed. It is wide angled to include the tremendous power and majesty of sisterhood. Is it socially just to frame the story here without ensuring that black men are represented more favorably or balanced? I have come to the answer of 'yes' for the most part. Yes, we do not need to have every story of a black woman or man represent the entire complexity of our experience. We do not need to shut down or disparage artistic voices in our community out of fear or concern about how outside voices will respond or make use of material. Dominant outsiders will do what they do. What do we do? I say we look and listen to the stories that come out of the artists in our community and try to address the places of injury and injustice among us, as we also celebrate the beauty that flowers in our midst. I say we cannot afford to look away from the sexual and physical abuse that goes on in our community with claims that its stereotyping to raise it. I say we need to be able to hold to the outrageous magnificence that exists as we also seek to address and redress the places where we fall excruciatingly short. We will not escape it otherwise. Except as a temporary one, a Walt Disney of the mind.

And finally, the acting in Perry's film was phenomenal. It came from talent for sure, but also I believe, from love.

The Costs of Winning

The Monday morning news just a week ago included a segment on 'a weekend of rough hits' in the NFL, and the story of a Rutgers player who has been left paralyzed from the neck down after a game that Saturday. Footage revealed him down on the ground, but more painful to watch were the clips of some of the NFL hits -- the sudden, hard-hitting attack, the heads whipping back, the bodies flattened, frozen. Men doing their jobs. Making effective hits, apparently illegal (using helmets). Taking opponents out with their adrenaline high, their pumping testosterone, that driving mentality to win, dominate. I guess that's why they get paid. But not the Rutgers student.

Eric LeGrand is a 20 year-old junior, and his injury occurred in the process of tackling an opponent, not brutally, but one where the position of his head at the time of impact coupled with their speed and weight left no cushion for his spinal column. An accident of sorts. Just like that, with little more that 5 minutes left in the game, his life as he's known it is yanked. Even if he is able to walk again. Eric's story, and all the others I've heard in recent years involving severe injuries of college football players, move me to pray that these young men and their families are carried by Spirit and the loving support of others through this heartbreak.

I am also filled with gratitude, once again, for my son's decision to give up playing football after his post-high school year of playing. He was an offensive and defensive player, and that year, after scoring two touchdowns, a tackle on him broke his leg. He felt it was a 'dirty' tackle, though I never really understand the logistics of that, but it cost him. Both his dad and I were at that game, watching as he was taken off the field on a stretcher. But he was moving. He never said outright why he decided to forgo the interest of several colleges interested in his playing football for them, but I imagine that the idea of hitting and being hit by beefier guys had no appeal. And I'm sure he did not want to chance being sidelined again during basketball season because of an injury. His decision to give up football did not come easy for him. He took criticism from his dad over it, which hurt him, but he held his ground, followed his own wisdom. I was and am proud of him, as is his dad. I was also relieved.

I am a huge fan of collegiate sports, mostly basketball. At times I may have been too avid in my cheering at my son's basketball, softball, and football games over the years. Once an athlete myself, I am not opposed to competitive play, and understand that risk of injuries is part of playing a sport. But the growing evidence about the long term impact of the concussions that NFL players endure, often with disastrous endings, requires rethinking the practices and policies that encourage men to 'man up' and play with injuries, to 'take out' opponents with brutal hits, or abuse steroids. It requires those of us who fill up stadiums and rock TV network ratings during game time to re-think our participation in keeping these practices going. Money goes far, but only so far when you're left with a damaged brain, a broken body,and millions of spectators who've long forgotten your name.

I watched a recent interview of Eric on his final day of training camp. He was excited about the upcoming season and a couple days of being home with his family. He was looking forward to salmon and rice, a favorite home cooked meal of his mom's. His mom was at the game that day. I pray for a miracle and change.

Photo courtesy of Star Ledger

Thoughts of Omar Thornton and the Families

Omar Thornton, a 34 year old black man who drove a beer delivery truck for a living, drew a line this week that cost the lives of nine people, including his own. It cost more than that because every one, I believe they were all men, had families, who now share in the pain. Omar's pain. Now Omar's pain has inevitably bled into theirs, whether they recognize it or not. His family surely knows that their pain comes from his as well as that caused by his actions. For surely that's how he got to drawing this line in murder. I have not heard from his family of origin, only his girlfriend, who happens to be white, who happens to confirm reports of his racial harassment. Does her skin color make her a more credible witness than say his black relatives?

Earlier today I read a piece on Salon about Omar and comments, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/05/racism_connecticut_shootings/index.html. Most of them discounted the racism issue and preferred to see Omar as simply "a nut," an ungrateful thief, or a disgruntled employee. They seem to reflect reports from the management of his company that in essence indicate they have no knowledge of any racial "insensitivities." Union officials' indication that they received no complaints of racial harrassment seem to bolster the denial. It is reported that Omar killed the person representing him at the disciplinary meeting, whom I presume was an union official.

It is extraordinarily tragic that so many lives were destroyed and families maimed by the rage in his body, the fingers that fired the 9 mm trigger again and again. The pain beneath that rage does not justify Omar's actions. And yet, even if he did steal the beer, does it preclude the occurrence of racial intimidation and devaluation? It may be hard for some to wrap their minds around how things such as the n word or display of 'nooses" and other provocative gestures/comments could lead to such horrific actions, but it is not difficult for me. People get tired of the microaggressions and many of these racial provocations are triggers to a long legacy of cruelty and subjugation that we as African-Americans have inherited. And if you also live with a long history of being on the edge of a financial cliff you are even more tired. You have even less power to change things. You feel like people keep f___ing with you, and you just get to the place where you are going to take control, or so it seems, you are going to go down f___ them up to the max -- that final line in the dirt. It is a lose lose place to be.

I am sorry that Omar arrived at that place. I am sorry that so much destruction of life and family went down that day. But I hope we all open our minds and our hearts to the fact that racism is an assault, it is a trauma, and rage and despair are often a response to it, especially when there are other assaults coming at you as well. Add in the presence of guns and...

May the sacrifice of these lives give rise to some higher good in our minds, hearts, and in our practices.

Photo courtesy of Facebook