American Gangster - Why This Movie Bothered Me


In response to all of the hype, I went and watched American Gangster tonight. My feelings on it are a bit split. Looking at it strictly as a film, it was well made. As with any movie starring two Academy Award winning actors like Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, the acting was superb. I thought Ruby Dee (a true legend) was excellent as Frank Lucas mother. Not a lot of scenes but powerful in the ones she did have. The movie is long (almost 3 hours) but if flows well...


The movie left me bothered though.....The movie takes the path of portraying Frank Lucas as a redemptive figure in the end, showing him in a positive light in spite of what he symbolized, which was the spread of death throughout the black community. As much as some will laud him for his "smart" approach to crime (Typical Sicilian mob values such as not showing your money and surrounding yourself with family to insulate yourself), the reality is that this man pushed a product onto the streets more potent than what was already there, and that led to a boom in addiction and all that goes with it.


Furthermore, it was a reflection of the time. The movie covered a period from 1967 to 1973. This was the era of Cointelpro, the FBI's program that investigated and took down what it thought to be "dissident political organizations" in the US. Among these organizations were civil rights organizations, including Dr. King's SCLC and many others. So during a time when there was a groundswell of unity and an activist spirit in inner city black communities, and the government was trying to undermine this movement , along comes Frank Lucas.


We're supposed to believe that a former bodyguard and flunky for Bumpy Johnson (another small time hood), through a family member in Vietnam just STUMBLES by accident on a pure heroin connection worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is able to outsmart the CIA and other federal agencies, and smuggle it into the country for 6 YEARS right under their noses without them knowing anything about it. (All during a time of cointelpro here and a war in the region there).


Yup, I put that right up there with a fat white guy with a beard in a red suit coming down my chimney to drop off presents and a rabbit that lays colored eggs in April.


In my view: This whole Frank Lucas rise happened on the governments watch.....they watched him import enourmous amounts of pure heroin into the black communities to extinguish the black consciousness and civil rights movement of the 60's. Then once things were done and an entire community was sick, down and out, he gets a slap on the wrist (after the fact) and lives out his life in peace rather than dying in prison.


Consider in the aftermath of this time, Afros, dashikis and positive entertainment were replaced by perms and pimp coats glamorized in flicks like "Superfly" and "The Mack". A movement gone...


I know some will try to dismiss this as another "Bringing the black man down" rant (seems like that's what conservative types call any attempt to call the government out on a racial issue.....it is an attempt to group all arguments together and dismiss them). But when you look at the facts, its clear that Frank Lucas rise and fall, and the many people who were addicted and killed during its time, took place on the watch of those who could have prevented it if they wanted to.


Add to that the fact that the movie really doesn't leave enough of a "cautionary tale". Young people who see this will see a man who had a beauty queen wife, money, cars, clothes and a glamorous lifestyle who beat the system time and time again and in the end walked away unscathed. Not the best message at all, especially during a time where I have to read about young people, the people I work with, shooting at each other on a daily basis.


It is what it is....And as much as I can appreciate a well acted movie, the man it portrays and what transpired around his rise sickens me.

The Sickness of a Hate Crimes

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am from West Virginia. I represent my state loud and proud, and I literally bleed Blue and Gold as a Mountaineer fan. However, yesterday something went down in my state that made me feel angry and ashamed.

By now I am sure many of you have seen it. In Big Creek, West Virginia, about 30 minutes from where I grew up, a 20 year old Black woman named Megan Williams was kidnapped and tortured for at least a week by 4 individuals. She was beaten, had parts of her hair torn out and was mentally, physically and sexually abused. These monsters...I can't call them people....Blacked both of her eyes, stabbed her numerous times in her legs, forced her to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet. They raped her. They called her nigger every time they stabbed ger. Thanks to a tip, police were finally able to find and free her.

The question is, what now? These people do not need to ever see the light of day. I cannot even imagine the level of misfortune that would need to come down upon them for Karma to balance this out.

Looking beyond the incident, we must as what can be done to properly punish acts like this so that there can be a deterrant effect. The logical action would be to make it easier for the Federal Government to get involved, which would bring greater resources in prosecution and stiffer penalties, including the death penalty (West Virginia does not currently have the death penalty).

18 U.S.C. § 245 is a federal statute that allows the federal government to step in and prosecute in situations where people by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin. However this law ONLY allows the Federal Government to step in where the person of color is exercising a federally protected right like voting or going to school. It does NOT current apply in situations like this. That means that these monsters can only be tried in state court, before potentially more biased jurors or judges who may be more sympathetic and assign lesser penalties.

In May of this year Congressman John Conyers took steps to remedy this and to get the Federal Government more involved in acts like this by proposing a bill called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007...This law would expand the Federal Government's ability to prosecute local hate crimes in ALL situations and give stiffer penalties for concivtions....It would also devote millions to the investigation of these crimes.

This bill passed the House of Representatives and currently sits in the Senate.....President Bush (surprise, surprise) has threatened to veto it.

In light of what has just happened in WV as well as other situations (The case in Georgia of the little boy named Christopher Barrios comes to mind) this law is needed....People who commit these acts of hate cannot get a slap on the wrist from local authorities...They need to be put away for good or in cases where they kill someone get the death penalty.

Everyone who is shocked by this story should contact their Senator and push them to vote for this bill....Hopefully there will be enough votes to override a veto....It may not help Megan Williams or Christopher Barrios, but it certainly will have an impact on the next young person who has their dignity or life taken because of the color of their skin get proper vindication for the wrongs done to them.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1592

How do you know?


That is the question that has plagued my mind the past few months. How do you know when the time is right to settle down? When you’ve come across the right person to settle down with? You come across and meet a lot of people just being social in the city. You get to know a lot of people through dating. Many of those people have redeeming qualities that draw you to them in some way. But the question lingers…Who is the right one? And when is the right time/


I don’t want to waste my time pouring heart and emotion and effort into something that will not last. When you put in effort to something, you want the pay off of benefiting from it. I also do not want to become too selective and give up prematurely on a situation that could develop into something long lasting. It’s a difficult balance.


It’s causing me to really look at and analyze what I want. It’s not a black and white thing, not as simple as “nice” or “educated”, “fun” or “positive”…..It’s than intangible “it” factor that tells you that someone is right for you. I am wondering if it is ever that clear. If you ever really just “know” like some people seem to believe. I wonder if it isn’t about finding a “one” but rather finding one that you can make things work with…..Do I give up on the soul mate idea for someone that I can “make it work” with or do I hold out for a notion (the surefire “one”) whose validity I am starting to question.


When I look back at the past couple of years, I have been blessed to have met a lot of good women. I made a decision that, to truly give myself a shot at the one, I would open up my boundaries and my worldview, dating across all lines….race, ethnicity, social class….all different types of personalities, different levels of ambition…. Teachers, social workers, corporate types, lawyers, poets, activists, nurses, secretaries…….Phd’s to high school grads…Bougie to regular down ass chick….. I have had some great times, many great conversations, learned a lot about myself, about life. I have benefited from my dating journey. But through it all that elusive, intangible “it” hasn’t manifested itself. I am wondering if the romantic idea I have in my head isn’t some unattainable thing. If it isn’t just the product of fantasy….Screenwriters and novelists fucking with all of our heads by creating some abstract idea that doesn’t fit with reality. I wonder if it isn’t really about just finding someone cool and pushing to make it last. The self-critic in me wonders if I’m not a fucking idiot for passing certain things by, going from selective to unrealistically picky in the process. The idealist and the pragmatist within me at war. I am more of a logical person than an emotional one, which makes it tough. I cant just blindly run with feelings and get lost in them. I have to process and analyze a situation, weighing if it is really the best move.


I feel like, the longer you are single, the harder it becomes to jump back into a relationship. You get so used to your independence and autonomy, and figure that if you are going to bring someone in, they DAMN well better well be worth it. For much of my life I was a serial monogamist. From high school through college, even into law school, I basically was a relationship to relationship guy. I didn’t do a lot of “dating” really. The last several years have been different. I told myself that something had to be “lifelong quality” before I would settle into it. This perspective change was inevitable. I had been married and divorced. Once you get to that point of having that ultimate commitment, you don’t go back to settling for less. Plus, at a certain age and level of experience, you would think that the little superficial connections would cease to be fulfilling. Maturity and depth creates a need for substance, for a sense of realness. So I began to search….and search…..Enjoying the journey yet frustrated at its failure to reach the ideal destination.


I am capable of articulating what I want and what I don’t want in a relationship. There are those benchmarks that are non-negotiable…honesty, loyalty, respect, communication…..But there is so much else in addition to that. I find myself at a loss of where to find it….So here I go….walking down an uncertain path…..questioning what i’ve done, and even more unsure of what’s ahead….

The "DL" Myth and the Damage It's Causing


When the whole "DL" myth exploded on the scene in the aftermath of J.L. King's book, something about the whole thing evoked skepticism in me. Mr. King made the rounds on Oprah and other talk shows, and the "DL" phenomenon was featured in numerous newspaper and magazine stories, including in Essence magazine something like 6 months in a row...Something about the whole thing just never sat right with me. It just seemed too overblown and like just another attempt to further stereotype black men. It's almost like it was the "close out" stereotype.....When more violent, less intelligent, lazy, underemployed, unemployed, unable to speak properly, irresponsible, not-taking-care-of-kids, not in jail/on probation/on parole, not diseased, not on drugs all fail......just throw "must be gay then" on top of it all and it makes every black male suspect in some way. It made the possibility of a good, responsible black man a total myth...that every brother had to have "something" wrong with him.....So when everyone was on the bandwagon, I felt that something about the whole thing was just insidiously racist.....Like Black men were the only ones doing this.....I couldn't believe that they were really doing it in numbers far in excess of others...the whole stereotype seemed harmful but I couldn't figure out how.


Now research has shown just how destructive and inaccurate this is. How the DL phenomenon is really rooted in myth, and how mistaken assumptions about black sexuality are finding their way into scientific research on the spread of HIV, and this could do more to fuel risky behavior than prevent it. Authors of a new commentary published in Annals of Epidemiology looked closely at the issue.


Reports on African-American men who identify themselves as straight but secretly have sex with men -- dubbed the "down low" lifestyle -- first appeared when men who said they were part of this subculture wrote books about it and the media picked up the story, Dr. Chandra L. Ford of Columbia University in New York City, the commentary's lead author, told Reuters Health.


"Part of what has happened as a result of that initial burst of stories reporting the 'down low' is that those stories often tied the down low to high rates of HIV infection among African-American women, which was not supported by epidemiological data," Ford added. "There were a lot of assumptions, there were a lot of leaps of faith that led to that."


Despite the non-scientific source, epidemiologists began doing research based on the idea that Black Men living the down low lifestyle were driving the spread of HIV, she and her colleagues note in their article in the Annals of Epidemiology.


This assumption was mistaken in many ways, they explain. First of all, the practice of straight men secretly having sex with men is seen across all ethnic groups. Also, Ford notes, while Black Men and women have higher rates of HIV infection than other ethnic groups, they also report fewer risk behaviors, suggesting researchers should look elsewhere to understand the disparity. For example, she adds, having a bacterial sexually transmitted infection can increase the risk of both transmitting and contracting HIV, and it is possible such infections may be more common among Blacks than whites due to poorer access to health care.


Research has refuted the claim that Black Men living the down low lifestyle are driving the spread of HIV, Ford said, but the perception that this is the case remains, even in the epidemiology community. She points to a dean at a colleague's school who urged researchers to study "the down low" after seeing a TV segment on it.


The view of black sexuality as deviant and diseased has deep roots, Ford noted, pointing to the way the public and the medical community viewed syphilis in the early 20th century as a disease of the Black Community. Not only could perceptions of the down low drive the men actually pursuing such a lifestyle further underground, making them less likely to get care, said Ford, it also draws attention away from interventions that could be truly effective, such as routine HIV testing of all adults. "HIV- AIDS is a social disease, so that means that there are social phenomena that influence the spread of the disease," Ford said. "We have to be as rigorous about understanding the social phenomena as we would be if we were studying how a microbe influences disease progression."


It shows the impact of stereotypes and negative views of black life in America that people, including a far too many women of color, were willing to scapegoat black men and their alleged deviant behavior as the root of the HIV crisis without looking at whether or not scientific research even backed up the claims. Hopefully more studies come along that paint a more realistic picture of what's going on than the one painted by one author with some books to sell.

For more on this issue, please check out www.jifunza.com.

The Mooninites are coming! The Mooninites are coming! Idiocy in Boston

Look out y'all.....No need to worry about Bin Laden or Al Qaeda.....What we must really fear are Meatwad, Frylock, Shake, Carl and the Mooninites. Yes that's correct, Aqua Teen Hunger Force placed the city of Boston in fear of it's life today. And how this all blew out of proportion just blows my mind.

For years, there has been criticism of our government using fear as a weapon and as a means of control. That in the post 9/11 world, people have attempted to keep the populace in fear for political gain. There is a price to using fear in this way however, as it leads to knee jerk reactions and a failure to use common sense.

The basic story is this: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the Adult Swim cartoon, has a feature film coming out. As part of a marketing blitz, magnetic signs showing one of the more popular characters on the show, The Mooninites, are being placed on various structures throughout 11 major cities, of which Boston is one. Now these characters are normally used to advertise the show...Go to any Target, Best Buy or Wal Mart and you will see them on the cover of last season's DVD. Yet, somehow, NO one managed to grasp this as they saw *GASP* SUSPICIOUS PACKAGES throughout the city (Evidently, cops don't watch Adult Swim). So a whole clusterfuck emerges and a 27 year old art student, hired by Turner Broadcasting to head up Boston's marketing campaign for the movie is arrested. The whole thing was, and still is, being greatly blown out of proportion.

What really makes me angry is how disingenious politicians are in this. They totally play into people's fears rather than using common sense to alleviate them. Because this is essentially a nationwide campaign in a number of major cities, there were already photos online showing the devices being placed. A simple online search would have shown the connection to the devices and a marketing campaign. But that would be too simple. It's easier to fly off the handle, blow the issue up, then have to come back and say it's all a hoax.

The media actually stepped up and did their research. News organizations had information on the Cartoon Network connection to the devices at around 3 p.m. and went to the mayor and others with questions on that issue around that time. The mayor and others KNEW that this was a marketing campaign. Yet in a press conference at 5 p.m., nothing was mentioned about the Turner connection and the lack of danger, as the devices were still being treated as a threat. Basically they played ignorant to the fact that there was no real threat.

This is not to downplay terrorism. It is to criticize scaring people unnecessarily, which is done far too much. To place people in fear over a cartoon ad...when a little bit of research (or asking any 18-24 year old fan of adult swim) would have alleviated any concerns is somewhere between outright stupid and irresponsible and wrong. What it does in my mind is further lessens the credibility of the political figures involved, almost creating a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect.

So....hundreds of emergency crews, gridlocked traffic, a city in fear, an art student facing felony charges, threats of lawsuits..and a half million in tax dollars spent...all over a cartoon character. Really, does this make us feel safer? Oh Common Sense, how I love you so....and how I lament how you our society kills you a little more each day...

Is the standard of beauty changing?

There was an interesting article in The Boston Globe Magazine last Sunday that centered on the changing face (no pun intended) of plastic surgery. For years, plastic surgery has been looked at, and marketed as, something for middle and upper class white women. That factor has dramatically changed in recent years, with women of color opting for cosmetic surgery in rapidly increasing numbers. According to the article, the number of minority patients undergoing cosmetic procedures increased from 300,000 in 1997 to 2 million in 2005. Even factoring in the increase in total demand for cosmetic procedures, the rate of increase for minorities still comfortably outpaces the overall rate.

It’s interesting the selections many of these people are getting. Estimates show that 6 in 10 black women are getting nose jobs, usually choosing narrower nostrils, pointier tips and higher bridges. Second most popular among Black women was liposuction, often centered on the hips and buttocks. More than half of Asian patients are opting for eyelid surgery, opting to create an eyelid fold to give the eye a more wide-open appearance. Hispanic patients are also opting for nose jobs in heavy numbers.

As I read, I found this interesting……Ethnic women were getting procedures done on their most distinctive ethnic physical characteristics and doing it in increasing numbers. Personally, to each his own….if anything it shows how cosmetic surgery has become more affordable and more people of color have ascended into middle class status enabling the, to afford these procedures. This is not a value judgment about the merits or lack thereof of getting cosmetic surgery. But with a trend this dramatic, I wondered what it meant in the overall big picture.

For years, the issue of Black people getting cosmetic surgery has centered around one person: Michael Jackson. People look at the self mutilation that MJ had done and have come to the conclusion that getting cosmetic surgery was an attempt to “look white” (That silly Black or White song didn’t help that perception). I don’t think that is the case at all with the current increase though. When you look at women of color across the board getting these procedures, coupled with Caucasian women also getting them in increasing numbers, it seems that there is a greater trend at work. And I think it all reflects how the standard of beauty is evolving in Western Culture.

Traditionally the standard of beauty has been white, very European features, blond hair and blue eyes. From Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe to Suzanne Sommers and Farrah Fawcett to Pamela Anderson and other cookie cutter Baywatch types, this has been promoted for ages as the ultimate standard of what is attractive. And I don’t think that has completely disappeared by any means. However, I do believe that the standard has expanded increasingly and to a significant degree.

When you look at any list of “Most Sexy” or “Most Attractive”, there are certain names that now always claim the top part of those lists: Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Beyonce Knowles, Lucy Liu, Jessica Alba, Adriana Lima, and Eva Longoria. Women with "darker" features than the blonde/blue norm. Possessing ambiguous features that cause some to wonder “Hmmm just what are they” about their ethnicity. It’s almost as if ethnic ambiguity has become the new, primary standard of beauty. And the trend in plastic surgery seems to show people are out striving for it……It’s not women of color trying to look white, it’s women of color lessening the traditional ethnic features they have to fit into this new paradigm or ambiguity.

People from all races and ethnicities are seeking to adopt some, but not all, traits from others, with everyone striving for the “look”. Black women narrowing their noses, Asian women making their eyes less distinct. Some women getting butt implants, others getting liposuction to make their butts look smaller. Tanning, collagen implants hair extensions all around. All to look not like Marilyn but like Halle or Angelina, to have hips like Beyonce, the body of Jessica, the sex appeal of Adrianna.

What does it all mean? I am not sure, to be honest. I think a widening standard of what is considered beautiful is always a good thing. A small dose of progress away from the one dimensional Eurocentric standard. But does moving that standard towards ambiguity now take away appreciation of people of color with a traditional look? Is there still room at the table for the black woman with the natural and a broad nose or the Asian woman without the eyelid fold when discussions come about as to who is attractive? I guess in the end, beauty is in the eye if the beholder. But let’s be realistic…..We are a culture of followers….And what fashion and the media hold out and celebrate as attractive, the great majority will strive for, want to be or want to be with. I wonder if this trend is part of a greater move towards societal assimilation…..Or if it keeps women who retain traditional features in the same position of being outside what is considered attractive to the mainstream.