"BORN TO BE LOVED; LOVE TO BE HATED!"
His Anger Teaches Everybody Reality!!
It's your boy BOBBEE BEE "THE HATER" aka the trouble maker from the "city of brotherly love" I am an obnoxious, opinionated, third grader whose ego is bigger than T.O.! I am an "odd"combination of Terrell Owens, KOBE Bryant, Rasheed Wallace, and Allen Iverson!
by Eric D. Graham #TheRapProfessor. If you like what you are learning ($JeffreyBarnes)
" We’re a special people. We’re the best and the brightest our ancestors ever produced!” James Weldon Johnson"
By Dennis Kimbro
Who are we? We’re Africans, and we are achievers! We are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, nieces, and nephrews.
We are doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers, and entrepreneurs. We’re Africans, and we are achievers!
We are jet black, blue black, dark brown, brown-skinned, medium brown, yellow, high yellow, light-skinned, fair skinned, light, bright, almost white, redbone, but African to the bone.
We have climbed the highest mountains, scaled the highest heights. We are visionaries, innovators, dreamers, creators, leaders, builders, and doers. We’re Africans and we are achievers!
We made it past slavery. We’ve been hurried and hassled; discouraged and downtrodden. We’re provided an unpaid service to this country by serving others first and ourselves last. Yet we are survivors, overcomers, those who have endured.
Though we’re the last hired and the first hired, we know the meaning of perseverance. We know a setback is a setup for a comeback. We’ve survived the end of the world, and now handle miracles by appointment only.
On a scale from one to ten, we are one hundred! We’re Africans and we are achievers!
Be a part of the TAKE OVER by supporting Bobbee Bee and reading all his books as well as his weekly cartoon on http://www.blackathlete.com/
Too often, we are treated to a view of a romanticized Dr. King in order to fit the man and his struggle neatly within the prevailing political and economic power structures in a largely uncritical and non-threatening manner.
This portrayal of Dr. King has been mass marketed as an accommodationist figure and is now so pervasive in our schools, media, etc. that it threatens to neutralize and placate the most ambitious, daring and challenging of King's critique along with his struggle to confront and organize against not only racism, but economic exploitation and militarism-imperialism as well.
Due to such, SleptOn.com offers "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Struggling Not To Lose Him" as a direct challenge (as he would have it) to the views and practices of those who celebrate a thoroughly pacified legacy of a man who likely would not even be invited to his own birthday celebrations had he been alive today.
Given what he stood, fought and died for during his last years, it's reasonable to assume that he wouldnt eagerly embrace opportunities to share a stage with the very folks he would have vigorously opposed.
King said the following: "With Selma and the voting rights bill one era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isnt enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesnt earn enough money to buy a hamburger and cup of coffee?"
A familiar refrain, as of late, has been Rosa sat, King walked so that he (Obama) could run or some variation thereof. Was that the goal of King's struggle?
Thanks to: Glen Ford Brian Jones Robert Jensen Jared Ball Kymone Freeman Adria Crutchfield Gillian Moise.
NORTH CAROLINA (BASN) — If you have ever seen a Black college half-time show, you know that the most important person on the football field is the drum major.
The drum major is known for his prancing and high stepping routines.
An effective drum major must be a skilled field conductor, who has exceptional marching techniques that is highly responsible and reliable. They also must work well with both the band director and the members of the band, while teaching and assisting other members.
Their vocal commands must be loud, easily understood and inspirational. Therefore, as we remember the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. today, let’s not worship him, or idolize him.
But simply remember him…as a drum major for justice, a drum major for righteousness, and a drum major for peace.
Here is an excerpt from Dr. King’s “The Drum Major Instinct” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Chruch in Atlanta, Georgia on February 4, 1968, which proves my point.
Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator — that something we call death.
We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense.
Every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?”
And I leave the word to you this morning.
If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say.
Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that’s not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school.
I ‘d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question.
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison.
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness.
And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.
And that’s all I want to say.
We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade. … And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.
It is a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be the first in love.
I want you to be the first in moral excellence.
I want you to be the first in generosity.
Yes. His truth keeps marching on.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared on BASN on October 11, 2011
1. Scholarship: The player should first be a good student. Do not neglect your studies. Your first purpose should be to get an education. 2. Cooperation: Everyone should work for the common good of the school and the squad. Everyone should boost everyone else; a disorganizer has no place on the squad. 3. Obedience: The public holds the coach responsible for the team; his orders must be obeyed. He is responsible for the system and the carrying out of the system, not necessarily the winning of the game. 4. Habits: Good habits are only doing those things which help and not doing those things that will harm or hinder. 5. Ambition: Keeping an eye on the future, always trying to improve oneself. Interest and spirit sometimes outweigh natural ability. 6. Attendance: Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Try not to miss a day of school or practice.
7. Earnestness: The desire to make every minute count, always wanting to do the right thing for the team and the school. 8. Morals: A high standard of living and thinking.
9. Sportsmanship: Good sportsmanship means clean and fair play. Treat your opponent with respect. 10. Conduct: Your school, family, town, community and yourself are judged by your conduct; you can make or break them.
11. Unity: Actions on part of every member of the squad for the common good. 12. Service: Students should always consider that they are receiving far more than they are giving. Their best efforts for their school are none too good. 13. Leadership: The willingness to help, guide or direct, in the right way, be example, words or actions. 14. Patience: The willingness to take and profit by the instructions received, although not a member of the first team.
15. Loyalty: To give your best service to the team, school, game and coach. 16. Self-sacrifice: Giving up some of the present things for the future. 17. Determination: The mental quality of strong determination is very necessary to win in the face of strong opposition.
18. Confidence: The belief in oneself, teammates, team and plays. 19. Remarks: Be careful of your remarks about anyone; if you cannot say something good, say nothing. Talking too much is bad policy. 20. Responsibility: Being dependable, the performing of one's duties, the desire to be known as responsible. 21. Concentration: During school hours, think and prepare your studies; they must be of first importance. During practice, think only of playing; if you have studied, you ill not have to worry about your schoolwork. 22. Losing: You can be a hard but good loser. Any coach or team that cannot lose and treat their opponents with respect has no right to win; a poor sportsman generally tries to amuse the spectators with his self-styled clever wit by making abusive remarks, which act as a boomerang by intelligent spectators.
23. Winning: If you are the rightful winner, be willing to take credit for it, but keep in mind that it was only your time to win and that your winning was probably due to conditions or a reward for your sacrifices; a kind word or a handshake goes a long way toward forming a lasting friendship, and does not change the score.
24. The Past: It is history. Make the present good, and the past will take care of itself. 25. The Present and Future: Give to your school the best that you have, and the best will come back to you. Your success in the future depends on the present. Build well.
If you like what you are learning, or hate what you are learning, leave send all comments to lbiass34@yahoo.com
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the w ay to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when the technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Please read all of our children's books which include: "In the Mind of Bobee Bee," "Larry Long Legs," and "A SAD DAY FOR JOSE available at http://www.bn.com/, http://www.authorhouse.com/, and http://www.walmart.com/ . Google Bobbee Bee for the best prices or simply e-mail me at: lbiass34@yahoo.com NEW BOOK coming soon entitled Natasha Name Brand!!!
If you have any comments send them to lbiass34@yahoo.com
BOBBEE BEE: THIS IS HOW YOU CAN AVOID THE SWINE FLU Take these everyday steps to protect your health: Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it. Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
Stay home if you are sick for 7 days after your symptoms begin or until you have been symptom-free for 24 hours, whichever is longer. This is to keep from infecting others and spreading the virus further.
Other important actions that you can take are:Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other social distancing measures. Be prepared in case you get sick and need to stay home for a week or so; a supply of over-the-counter medicines, alcohol-based hand rubs, tissues and other related items might could be useful and help avoid the need to make trips out in public while you are sick and contagious.What is the best way to keep from spreading the virus through coughing or sneezing? If you are sick, limit your contact with other people as much as possible. If you are sick, stay home for 7 days after your symptoms begin or until you have been symptom-free for 24 hours, whichever is longer. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. Put your used tissue in the waste basket. Then, clean your hands, and do so every time you cough or sneeze. What is the best technique for washing my hands to avoid getting the flu? Washing your hands often will help protect you from germs. Wash with soap and water or clean with alcohol-based hand cleaner. CDC recommends that when you wash your hands -- with soap and warm water -- that you wash for 15 to 20 seconds. When soap and water are not available, alcohol-based disposable hand wipes or gel sanitizers may be used.
You can find them in most supermarkets and drugstores. If using gel, rub your hands until the gel is dry. The gel doesn't need water to work; the alcohol in it kills the germs on your hands. What should I do if I get sick?
If you live in areas where people have been identified with new H1N1 flu and become ill with influenza-like symptoms, including fever, body aches, runny or stuffy nose, sore throat, nausea, or vomiting or diarrhea, you should stay home and avoid contact with other people, except to seek medical care. If you have severe illness or you are at high risk for flu complications, contact your health care provider or seek medical care. Your health care provider will determine whether flu testing or treatment is needed
If you become ill and experience any of the following warning signs, seek emergency medical care.
In children emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include: Fast breathing or trouble breathing Bluish or gray skin color Not drinking enough fluids Severe or persistent vomiting Not waking up or not interacting Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough
NORTH CAROLINA (BASN)-While we marvel at Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point performance on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks, cheer Barry Bonds 762 home runs and applaud Minnesota Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson’s 199 yard effort against the Green Bay Packers last Sunday, in which he fell nine yards short of breaking Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson’s NFL regular season rushing record of 2,105 yards, we have failed to recognize Philadelphia’s Germantown Academy’s cross country runner, Cameron Clarke.
Who is Cameron Clarke, you ask?
And, why should we recognize him?
Well, here’s the answer.
Cameron Clarke is an African-American teenager from the “City of Brotherly Love”, who attained a perfect score on last year’s Scholastic Aptitude Test.
That’s right, he scored a perfect score on the S.A.T.
Clarke, in fact, is now part of an exclusive group of only 360 students in the United States, who have accomplished this incredible feat.
Clarke, who is now a Germantown Academy senior, plans on attending Princeton upon graduation after scoring the perfect 2,400 on the college preparatory test.
“He really didn’t want anyone to know about his score, so he didn’t tell anyone at Germantown Academy about it when he got the result in June,” Clarke’s father told BlackAmericaWeb.com,
Despite Clarke’s humility, we, at Blackathlete.com, however, felt that his perfect score should be celebrated and highlighted just like Kobe Bryant’s 81 point performance against the Toronto Raptors in 2006 or Grinnell College’s James Taylor NCAA -record 138 points against Faith Baptist Bible, especially with so much negative press about Black boys underachieving in school on the news.
“I put in a lot of work,”Clarke said. “I took a prep class with some of my friends, and I did a lot of practice tests from a book.
“But that only prepares you so much,”he added. “The difference between getting, like, a 2,400 and a couple of points lower is just focus. “You can screw up or mess up on the smallest of things. And I just feel like on that particular day, I was focused and I got kind of lucky, I guess, that I didn’t make any mistakes.”
If this was an athletic competition, we would simply say Clarke was in a zone.
A test-taking zone.
Clarke’s brilliant test taking skills, however, should inspire other black students, male and female to strive for excellence in everything they do, whether it’s sports or academics.
For the record, Clarke is also the first cellist in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra to attend Germantown Academy. Plus, he is a member of the school’s Math Club and writes for the school’s newspaper.
NORTH CAROLINA (BASN)- One day after Christmas, my brother and I went to see Django: Unchained, a spaghetti Western-style film, starring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington, which was about a freed slave-turned-bounty hunter who sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner.
Despite, all the hype given to this movie, it was the typical damsel in distress love story with an obvious twist, where the slave ascends to become the hero after slaying his adversaries in revenge.
Unfortunately, I must admit, I was highly disappointed, offended and even ashamed during certain parts of this movie.
Were my expectations too high, or was Quentin Taranito’s aspirations too low?
Plus, I know, some people are going to say, lighten up, it is only a movie.
Besides, who really cares if QT tried to alter history in order to make a movie, especially since we have a Black president in the White House and Jamie Foxx gets to shoot and kill a couple of white folks in the end.
But, when a Caucasian like Quentin Tarantino directs a movie about a subject matter as sensitive and sacred as slavery, it rips at my soul when he doesn’t get it just right, even though Django goes on a “bloody” killing spree, Nat-Turner style, during the movie’s climatic finale.
Why? Because, for two hours of this flick, I felt as if I watching a David Chappelle comedy skit on Comedy Central.
Truthfully, the constant laughter was distasteful and some what disturbing, especially coming from white moviegoers.
The Django Moment
Gawker West Coast Editor Cord Jefferson addressed this issue in his great article The Django Moment; or, When Should White People Laugh in Django Unchained? on Gawker.com
Considering that some of the real-life, well-documented tortures inflicted upon nonfictional slaves were much worse than the ones shown in Django Unchained, it’s almost impossible to not feel self-conscious when Tarantino asks you to rapidly fluctuate between laughing at the ridiculousness of Django’s characters and falling silent with shame at the film’s authentic historical traumas. It’s in this disunity that the Django Moments arise. One moment you’re laughing at Mr. Stonesipher’s unintelligible bumpkin drawl; next you’re wincing as Stonesipher’s hounds shred a man limb from limb……And since Django runs close to three hours long, at a certain point you start to catch yourself laughing where you shouldn’t or—worse, even—hearing others laughing at something you don’t find funny at all. Eventually, you begin to wonder if you’re being too sensitive, or if the movie and everyone else around you are insensitive. Then you start to consider whether any of that even matters.
Understand this, you’ll never see a movie about the “so-called” Jewish Holocaust with more laughter than sorrow. Matter of fact, you probably won’t hear any laughing at all, just total silence and tears rolling down people’s cheeks.
Seriously, could you imagine the uproar if a Black director like Spike Lee made a comedy about the Jewish Holocaust, where the “so-called Jews” were telling jokes and laughing before entering the concentration camps or gas chambers before Hitler ‘s Nazi stormtroopers kill them.
It will never be done.
And it will never happen.
But, in the case of our Holocaust, however, it has been reduced to a spaghetti Western or a poor version of Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddle.
Let’s not forget the incident that occurred in 1996 when 69 students from Castlemont High School in Oakland, California, most of them Black and Latino, went on a field trip to see “Schindler’s List.” and a small group of students started laughing when a Nazi shoots a Jewish woman in the head in the movie.
Some moviegoers were so upset by the laughter that they stormed out to the theater complaining, which resulted in the manager of the theater to stop the film and eject all the students.
Therefore, let’s not deny the truth.
Our Holocaust deserves the same type of respect, if not more.
Criticism as hatred
Please, don’t mistake my critique as hatred, there are moments of brilliance in this movie that spark conversation and debate, especially the scenes of Africans in chains, the brutal scares shaped like branches from trees on the backs of the main characters played by Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington, and the torture techniques inflicted on our people throughout the movie.
This, however, can be overlooked by moviegoers, especially young people, who have no knowledge of our past or the African Holocaust.
For this reason, Django Unchained is Tarantino’s weak attempt to make a Black version of Inglorious Bastards.
In effect, in the end, Django, ends up being a cheap version of SHAFT or a 2012 Black exploitation flick with a southern plantation back drop, in which white people get brutally killed to the sound of rapper Tupac’s “Untouchable,”with lyrics that scream “Am I wrong cause I want to get it on until I die”in the background.
Popcorn entertainment
With that said, Django is popcorn popping entertainment and soda sipping fun.
But it also is Quentin Tarantino’s twisted Hollywood fantasy, which allows white moviegoers an opportunity to laugh at our history without having to pay any ‘real’ reparations for the worst crimes committing against humanity in the history of the world as well as the opportunity to utilize the ”N”-word about 135 times without a single real person losing their life in the process.
Writer Annalee Newitz attempted to make sense of this Tarantino’s controversy cinematic blood-splattering fantasy in her article entitled Django Unchained: What Kind of Fantasy Is This? in which she writes:
Django Unchained is a movie that is mostly about black people, but make no mistake — it is a white man’s fantasy. I’m not saying that is a bad thing,the way Spike Lee did. But writer/director Tarantino is a white guy — albeit one who has long promoted and admired black pop culture — and he grapples with this issue head-on by casting German actor Christoph Waltz as Django’s fast-talking mentor Schultz. In conversations between Django and Schultz, you can almost hear Tarantino’s internal debates over telling a black American story using the tropes of spaghetti westerns and exploitation film (at one point, Schultz actually tells Django, “I feel guilty”).
To a certain extent, Tarantino sidesteps this moral quandary by making it clear that a lot of what Django and Schultz are doing is acting. They are partly social engineers, after all, using trickery to get close to their prey. At several points, Schultz urges Django to amp up the acting — “Give me your best black slaver,” he says with a big smile before they go undercover to Candieland. We as an audience are reminded that this is a movie, and these are actors — this movie isn’t so much about slavery as it is movies about slavery. Only a white guy would need to bend over backwards to make this point.
Still, Tarantino doesn’t fall prey to the Avatar trap, where liberal white people fantasize that only white people can save the innocent natives/slaves from oppression. Schultz acts like an idiot and gets killed, so there is no question that Django saves the day — using both his smarts and his gun. Still, this felt to me (as a white person) like a movie aimed mostly at helping white people come to grips with our history in a cool way, rather than a douchey or condescending one.
Tarantino is struggling with another issue, too, and this goes beyond what white people should feel comfortable saying about black history. He’s trying to justify his cinematic bloodlust, and he does it by using his black characters’ victim status as a shield. We see this most clearly during Django’s first bounty hunter kill, when he’s going after the three brothers who whipped and branded him and his wife.
In this scene, Django’s lacy, satin blue pantaloons give him the air of innocence — after all, he is like a child; these are the first clothes he’s ever picked out for himself. Thus his wrath feels all the more pure and just. He is a furious angel, delivering violence that is the only moral response possible in this fallen, white place. It’s testimony to Jamie Foxx’s abilities as a performer, and Tarantino’s as a director, that the foolishness of Django’s outfit is drained away utterly in this scene. You may laugh, but your heart will also be pounding in genuine outraged sympathy for this former slave taking vengeance at last on his oppressors. And this is how Tarantino has, at last, figured out a way to justify his appetite for ethically questionable representations of extreme violence on screen. He’s found a black soldier of justice to act out his gore-soaked fantasies and make them palatable.
With that said, I also applaud Tarantino’s efforts to debunk certain myths about southern slavery, which always seemed to be depicted as clean and wholesome, where all the plantation owners are highly intelligent and flawless, especially in movies like Gone With The Wind.
As a result, Tarantino cleverly yet purposely chose to depict some of the slave traders and plantation owners as unlearned, tobacco spitting hicks, with bad teeth. Hence, his decision to have the bounty hunter as a dentist.
Spike Lee
Despite that, however, I have to agree 100% with movie director Spike Lee, who said he refused to go see Tarantino’s lastest film during a recent interview with Vibe magazine.
I can’t speak on it ’cause I’m not gonna see it,” he said. “The only thing I can say is it’s disrespectful to my ancestors, to see that film.”
After that interview, Lee when on twitter to twit this:
“American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”
While Lee was steadfast on his boycott of Django Unchained, film critic and essayist Steven Boone challenged him instead of complaining, to make a film of his own that tackled some of the issues of slavery which Tarantino attempted to address; when he wrote:
You ask why folks are lavishing so much attention on Mr. Lee? I think because we all know Django Unchained is the kind of film we’d love to see him make, something bold, angry, vulgar, tender, musical and sublime about American Slavery. A Nat Turner Spike Lee Joint. Now that Tarantino has used his clout to initiate a historical subgenre that should have gotten going at least as early as Buck and the Preacher, Spike should tackle his own antebellum epic. Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman—so many of those proud ancestors that Mr. Lee invoked are waiting patiently for beautiful films that honor them.
The best way to honor them is not with tasteful, funereal reverence but some real attempt to measure the dimensions of the stretch of history they occupied. The units of measure are various; whether the storyteller’s measuring tape skews moral, spiritual, political, anthropological, patriotic or mythic, the richness of the fabric always depends upon his regard for people as people. I might have shown a little more love to Spike, given the beautiful moments of compassion and insight scattered throughout his filmography, but I maintain that QT, for all his love of trash and gore, expresses a more consistently generous and soulful sensibility.”
Lee, however, was not the only one criticizing Quentin Torrenito’s Django Unchained:
Ishmael Reed
Acclaimed author Ishmael Reed also was displeased with the movie and offered these words of wisdom.
Tarantino, despite the history of black resistance, apparently believes that progress for blacks has been guided by an elite, which doesn’t explain the hundreds of revolts throughout this hemisphere which weren’t guided by German bounty hunters nor Abraham Lincoln, nor a Talented Tenth Negro. Judging from his letters, the revolt in Haiti scared the blank out of Thomas Jefferson and his friends. Arna Bontemps wrote about the revolt led by the slave Gabriel in “Black Thunder,” but this novel like most fiction written by black males, won’t reach the screen nor will Margaret Walker’s great “Jubilee.” And if these classics did they wouldn’t receive the kind of promotion this movie has received nor did Spike Lee’s movie about the heroic efforts of black soldiers who fought in Italy in World War 11, “Miracle at St. Anna.”
Surprisingly, the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, who viewed the film, had a very different take on Django.
The Farrakhan Factor
Farrakhan, in fact, praised the actors for their portrayal of the characters in the movie and felt they all did a wonderful job during a recent interview with Dr.Boyce Watkins of YourBlack World.com, who also enjoyed the film.
The Minister also thought Samuel L.Jackson did an outstanding job playing the role of the Uncle Tom in the movie.
“Samuel Jackson, he played his part well.” Minister Farrakhan admitted.
“I mean if I were a Tom sitting in the theater — I mean he played Tom to the max — so, a lightweight Tom would want to get out of being a Tom just looking at the way he played Uncle Tom.
The Minister also seemed to like the storyline of a Black man enduring so much hardship and pain in order to rescue his wife. And in doing so, killed all the slave traders, while freeing all the black servants, before burning down the plantation, which was a symbol of slavery in America, and riding off in the sunset with his lady.
Biblical/Metaphysical interperation
In the biblical sense, remember the scripture Romans 12:19, which states: Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Unfortunately, in a Quetin Tarantio film, this scripture is followed by James Brown’s “It’s the Big Payback.”
Therefore, in the art of story-telling and myth-making, Django, metaphysically, represents the Heru or the Hero, which, in fact, is Jesus, or Osiris, or Ausar, who has been battered and bruised and returns, in the Christian traditional, on a white horse, seeking justice against the unjust like a thief in the night.
This is the power of myth-making, in which Tarantino strategically and skillfully interjects into his movie when Dr.King Schultz, who is German, learns that Django’s wife is named Broomhilda Von Shaft.
In learning this, Schultz begins to explain to Django the German and Norse
legend of Broomhilda and Siegfried, where the hero braved a ring of fire to
rescue his beloved from a mountaintop.
This reoccurring theme, which I discussed previous in the article, of a Dragon and a damsel in distress also appears in the Book of Revelations Chapter 12: verse (1-4).
Knowing this, Minister Farrakhan took a deeper look at the film while discussing the violence being depicted in the movie as well as the issue of gun control, which could be heighten by the graphic scenes of a Black man killing white people through out the film along with the recent re-election of President Obama.
He (Django) was killing all these white folk. Well, how does a white person see that? How do white people who feel the guilt of what their fathers have done to us, how do they feel? Do you think that they don’t think that if black folk had a chance to do to them what they had done to us — that’s what the movie is saying — that one out of ten thousand will be like that and maybe more.
Tricknology
With that said, let’s not be fooled, or tricked, Hollywood had to make this movie funny in order to justify the killing of so many white people and especially a white woman in a cartoonish manner in the end of the movie by the hands of a Black man.
By knowing this, Minister Farrakhan said that he “ always try to ascertain what is the motive of the writer, what is the motive of the producer, not what is the motive of the actor…” when watching movies.
And after watching Django, he came to the disturbing conclusion, that Django Unchained was made in order to prepare us for a potential race war in America, especially with the rise in New World Order extremists, doomsday preppers, and white militia, who fear that the government of the United States of America is infringing on their Second Amendment rights to bear arms and are secretly and covertly conspiring to take their guns away and place them in concentration camps.
Hollywood insiders/Historical realities
From a Hollywood standpoint, however, releasing Django Unchained on Christmas day was a financial decision, which paid-off big time for Tarantino and made $32.9 million across 4,100 theaters during its weekend opening and even out-earned the much-hyped “Les Miserables,”featuring Anne Hathaway.
But, from a historical standpoint, on December 25th, through out history, there have always been slave revolts and uprisings in America, Jamaica, and in the Caribbeans Island of Antigua.
The Nation of Islam’s Research Group, in fact, recently wrote a fabulous article entitled What Would Jesus Do? in the Final Call newspaper, which addressed this issue.
On Christmas Day in 1701, fifteen Blacks on the tiny Caribbean Island of Antigua celebrated by rising up and giving the Caucasian sugar planter who enslaved them a present to remember: they hacked him to pieces—killed because of the manner he treated his female slaves. The dead Major Samuel Martin was also the Speaker of the Antiguan Assembly. Their rebellion was short-lived, however; they were overpowered by the island’s well-armed militia. And though their dreams of freedom were frustrated, their spirited yuletide example permeated the colonial Caribbean. Our Jamaican brothers and sisters weren’t waiting for Santa either. In 1831, under the command of a Black “house slave” named Samuel Sharpe,they rose up against the White oppressors. A true believer in Jesus, our Baptist Brother Samuel used his insider position to secretly organize a peaceful Christmas strike among his fellow captives in order to win better working conditions. Word leaked out to the Whites, who violently responded, turning the peaceful actioninto a full-scale Christmas rebellion. Sharpe’s forces grew steadily in number—some say to 40,000—and they traversed the island burning down nearly 160 large sugar plantations one by one.
Along with this Christmas uprising, there was also the 1521 slave rebellion in Hispaniola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic), where twenty African Muslim launched that island’s first slave rebellion as well as the African and Seminole Indian St.John’s rebellion against the region’s sugar plantations (in what is present day Florida), which also occurred on Christmas day in 1835.
Not surprisingly, Harriet Tubman,on Christmas Day in 1854, with a bond of $12,000 on her head, which would be equivalent to $300,000 today, “secretly assembled seven enslaved Africans” and rescued them out of bondage from a Dorchester County, Maryland plantation, while avoiding slave catchers, and bloodhounds, before crossing a bridge at Niagara Falls into Canada, where the law gave Blacks a measure of freedom, according to the Fall Call newspaper.
Watch and learn
After reading all of this, there is no way possible that anyone could be found laughing during Django as if it was some-type of Tyler Perry flick featuring Madea.
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