Somebody Doesn’t Always Have To Do It

There is a theory that minstrel shows are rooted in the enslaved black people’s ridicule of white people. In order to vent their frustration on their mistreatment slaves would return to their quarters and entertain each other by imitating the supposed to be civilized, high society behavior of white people. The portrayal of the white people would satirize the slave owner’s aloofness and overall inability to comprehend the simplest of things. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this form of humor would appeal to people of African descent.

But white people seeing black people’s lampooning of typical white behavior and the success it generated took the satire a step further. White people became imitators of black people who were imitating white people. This satire of the satirist became a synonym for black people’s inability to understand civilized society. Black people joined in the white man’s parody of black people in order to make some very good money. I’m sure there were black people who did their shucking and jiving with a smile on their face but a very caustic, bleeding wound in their soul. But then there were other black people would don the costume of ignorance and simple mindedness without a care in the world. Too often these people justify their collaboration with five little words; somebody’s got to do it.

Somebody’s got to do it is a particularly insufficient and woeful defense for anything. Sir, could you tell us why you had to murder everybody in that family? Somebody’s got to do it. Uh…yeah…let’s just go ahead and get that electric chair charged up right now, okay? Ma’am, could you tell us why you ran your car off the cliff and into the ocean with both of your children inside? Somebody’s got to do it. Okalee dokalee, would you like northwest pine or fresh baby powder for your visit to the gas chamber?

Obviously the excuse that somebody’s got to do it just doesn’t cut it. But ask a black person why black people choose to buck and jive on the silver screen in modern interpretations of yesteryear’s minstrel shows and inevitably the answer will be somebody’s got to do it.

Why does someone have to do it? Why can’t black people as a collective make the choice to not stoop to buffoonery and hold out for the sake of their dignity and the dignity of our community? If we didn’t have so many black people willing to sell their souls and the souls of our black children in order to be portrayed as some white person’s patsy we wouldn’t have so many black people standing in line to become the next patsy for white people. Why doesn’t a black celebrity step forward and say enough of this endless cycle of loud mouth idiocy and colorful stupidity and demonstrations of senseless silver screen subjugation?

Before anyone can write a comment saying white people portray themselves as clowns as well it should be noted that the buffoonery portrayed by white people on the silver screen is more than adequately countered by the heroic image of the noble white people coming to save the day in nearly every story captured on film. Even the white bad guy has some dignity to make his character at least somewhat respectable. But the black, wisecracking sidekick is so two dimensionally underdeveloped that anybody watching their portrayal is wishing the character would get a bullet right to the frontal lobe. Somebody ought to do it.

Black actors are just as good as their white counterparts. This opinion isn’t based on the number of awards and certificates sitting or hanging in their trophy room or some other lame statistic rooted in white people’s opinion of black actors. Who cares about Academy Awards and Tony Awards and other acting achievements based on popularity and other intangibles? Who would’ve guessed Halle Berry would get an Oscar Award for her pitiful portrayal in Monster’s Ball when an actress like Cicely Tyson, Ruby Dee, or Angela Bassett can go their entire lives without such recognition?

The opinion of black actors comes from watching films where black people were allowed to display the gamut of emotions and conditions of the human experience from an African American perspective instead of the tightly controlled African American acting opportunities of today that, generally speaking, are a stereotypical portrayal of black people from a white perspective or a generic portrayal of a character without any identifiable relationship to an African American ancestry. It is rare to see believable African American portrayals rooted in the African American experience.

Denzel Washington’s portrayal of John Quincy Archibald deserves recognition as a black man with inadequate health insurance trying to save his son’s life while white people who have all the power in the world to save him choose not to. How many black people feel that they can relate to that type of an experience? How about some props for the entire ensemble of Soul Food and the story of a black family’s struggle to stay a family and together after the death of their matriarch? Lackawanna Blues is another story about the black experience of a kid growing up in a boarding house in Louisiana.

But for every one of these excellent portrayals of the African American experience we will have hundreds of portrayals of the European American experience in such movies as Steel Magnolias, Sleepless in Seattle, The Da Vinci Code, The Breakfast Club, Grumpy Old Men, Mississippi Burning, Something About Mary, Amityville Horror, Poseidon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Full Metal Jacket, As Good As It Gets, and many more. Just like the European American’s history, emotions, stories, and dreams runs the gamut, the African American’s experience, dreams, and whatever you may have covers the spectrum as well.

A wider variety of role models are needed for our young and impressionable people of African descent. Not enough of our black entertainers who have the attention of the community and are in the position to make a difference are stepping up to the plate and giving our black youths the inspiration they need to form better opinions of themselves. But somebody’s got to do it.