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This SHIT is DOPE
By Miko Peled
....The reality in Outta Compton is far removed from the injustices Whites find digestible like slavery and Jim Crowe. It is raw, current, every day, deep rooted, hateful injustice. The young artists portrayed in the movie, Easy E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and other brilliant artists express the pain of the voiceless. The pain of Black America that is victim to systemic, brutally violent racism. Cops on a beat in Black neighborhoods drive around like Israeli soldiers in Palestine, enforcing the occupation, not like servants charged with keeping the streets safe. Beating and arresting Black kids for being Black, with no regard for their rights, their property or their lives. It is a reality White America wishes to know nothing about. Like Baltimore and Fergusson and Chicago and other Black communities around the US, spheres that Whites avoid at all cost, the argument of “we made progress on race” just doesn’t cut it, and where Black lives don’t matter.
The artists portrayed in the film are a sample of the unique abilities of Black America: A society that has contributed far more and has influenced far more than its relative size and under conditions few could survive let alone create and thrive. The volume and quality of writers, thinkers, scholars, artists, athletes and courageous leaders that Black America has yielded over the years cannot be over stated, proving that this is a community with tremendous inner strength and unlimited talent. Presidential candidates are courting Black voters now, or at least the Democratic ones. It was reported that Bernie Sanders had met with Rev. Al Sharpton in a café on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem. A white candidate sitting with a Black celebrity millionaire in Harlem, how progressive is that! Will Bernie also go to Fergusson and Baltimore and Chicago or maybe even Compton and sit with local Black leaders there? One can only hope.
Straight Outta Compton reminds us how White America was shocked by these young artists at the time. White America was enraged, claiming that these brave young artists glamorize drugs and violence. Glamorizing it? They were the voices of the victims of the drugs and violence, who, being Black and poor were otherwise voiceless. Law enforcement and public figures were condemning them for their voice, for their brutal honesty and for portraying a grim reality that is directly connected to the racist attitudes of the White establishment in America. In one scene we see Nancy Regan on television calling for people to “Just Say No” to drugs even as her husband was pumping drugs and weapons into South Central LA in order to fund a war in Central America. In another scene Easy E says: “The drugs come from Colombia, the weapons from Russia and we don’t have no passports.” These guys knew what was happening and they were telling it like it is. They were not glamorizing the violence they were pointing a finger, a middle finger, at the culprits of the violence, those who profited and continue to profit from the violence. Their only crime was that they were making Whites very uncomfortable. Isn’t that what art is all about?
The democratic presidential candidates are now talking about Black incarceration, thanks no doubt to Michele Alexander’s book “the New Jim Crowe.” They are both quoting figures that show that a disproportionate number of Blacks are incarcerated in America. Close to half of the entire prison population in the US is black, that means about one million Black men incarcerated, even though Blacks are only thirteen percent of the population and drug related crime is higher among Whites. One has to be impressed that the Democratic candidates finally noticed this, what an impressive learning curve! At the same time we may safely expect that unless they are forced to act, as soon a one of these candidates gets sworn in, if one of them is elected, this issue will be pushed aside....
The artists portrayed in the film are a sample of the unique abilities of Black America: A society that has contributed far more and has influenced far more than its relative size and under conditions few could survive let alone create and thrive. The volume and quality of writers, thinkers, scholars, artists, athletes and courageous leaders that Black America has yielded over the years cannot be over stated, proving that this is a community with tremendous inner strength and unlimited talent. Presidential candidates are courting Black voters now, or at least the Democratic ones. It was reported that Bernie Sanders had met with Rev. Al Sharpton in a café on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem. A white candidate sitting with a Black celebrity millionaire in Harlem, how progressive is that! Will Bernie also go to Fergusson and Baltimore and Chicago or maybe even Compton and sit with local Black leaders there? One can only hope.
Straight Outta Compton reminds us how White America was shocked by these young artists at the time. White America was enraged, claiming that these brave young artists glamorize drugs and violence. Glamorizing it? They were the voices of the victims of the drugs and violence, who, being Black and poor were otherwise voiceless. Law enforcement and public figures were condemning them for their voice, for their brutal honesty and for portraying a grim reality that is directly connected to the racist attitudes of the White establishment in America. In one scene we see Nancy Regan on television calling for people to “Just Say No” to drugs even as her husband was pumping drugs and weapons into South Central LA in order to fund a war in Central America. In another scene Easy E says: “The drugs come from Colombia, the weapons from Russia and we don’t have no passports.” These guys knew what was happening and they were telling it like it is. They were not glamorizing the violence they were pointing a finger, a middle finger, at the culprits of the violence, those who profited and continue to profit from the violence. Their only crime was that they were making Whites very uncomfortable. Isn’t that what art is all about?
The democratic presidential candidates are now talking about Black incarceration, thanks no doubt to Michele Alexander’s book “the New Jim Crowe.” They are both quoting figures that show that a disproportionate number of Blacks are incarcerated in America. Close to half of the entire prison population in the US is black, that means about one million Black men incarcerated, even though Blacks are only thirteen percent of the population and drug related crime is higher among Whites. One has to be impressed that the Democratic candidates finally noticed this, what an impressive learning curve! At the same time we may safely expect that unless they are forced to act, as soon a one of these candidates gets sworn in, if one of them is elected, this issue will be pushed aside....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44203.htm
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