‘Black Man’s Burden’: Life isn’t like the movies
This past weekend, I admired Forrest Whitaker’s brilliant portrayl of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The Oscar talk is well-deserved (though Ghost Dog is still my favorite Whitaker vehicle), but Amin’s brutality was disturbing. And he isn’t the only African tyrant who is guilty of such abuses.
“Africa has had far too many dictators like that,” my wife remarked as we walked out of the theater.
James McAvoy also did a fine job as Nicholas Garrigan, Amin’s personal physician and “closest advisor”. In the film, Amin turned to Garrigan for advice on dealings with his ministers, his family and with the media.
Ultimately, Ugandans relied on him to tell the story of the despot’s attrocities. A Ugandan doctor tells Garrigan in the movie, “They’ll believe you. You’re a white man.”
And that line reveals the truth, doesn’t it? The character of Garrigan is fictional, created for the book by Giles Foden and adapted for the movie. Was the white man added to the story to make it more “believable”, or is he there to make an African tale more “marketable” to a white audience?
There is no shortage of Hollywood films that describe the white savior giving a hand up to us poor Black folks as Emory University senior Kai Beasley points out in this excellent article.
But seriously, are we as helpless and naive as our characterizations in film portray us? No! Do white people really care about our problems as much as they do in films? No! That’s the reason things are they way they are. If people cared as much as they do in the movies, there wouldn’t be any more movies like that, because society would have changed. But what really grinds my gears is that few movies give black people credit for the things we do for ourselves. In fact, the only thing they do give us credit for being good at is drug dealin’, rappin’ or pimpin’.
Yes, Black folks do a lot of things very well. We just don’t get equal time in the media. This is why it is so important for us to have our own film companies, record labels, radio stations, newspapers and blogs.
It’s true that there are a lot of Black folks who are struggling for various reasons, but no white knight is going to do anything about that. No one Black messiah is going to come along to save us either. In the end, we have to stop putting our faith in crooked politicians, military dictators, self-appointed Black leaders and white folks.
No one is going to save us but us. And we have to tell our own stories, because no one knows them better than we do. No one will tell our truths like we will.
Hollywood Says Only White People Can Save Us
