Road To Race Redemption

I really wanted to see the Miracle at St. Anna in the theater.  But it’s kind of hard to coordinate that kind of date with the Misses when there is a two year old to take into consideration.  We kept planning on going to see the flick.  But junior doesn’t go to sleep until eight in the evening and both mom and I are bone tired by the time he goes down.  A date on the town is out of the question and we are more than happy to just collapse in front of a television or pull out a book or fire up a laptop.  Before we knew it, Miracle at St. Anna had come and gone.

When it came out on DVD, we added it to our Netflix account.  When it arrived in the mail we popped it into the DVD player in record time.  I enjoyed it.  Black soldiers in Italy trying to represent their country and not get killed in the process.  I enjoyed it considerably.  It was good to see brothers doing more than just the same old same old from Hollywood.  We run the gamut like everyone else from the brothers who want to do right regardless of the wrong done to him, to the brothers who are selfish and looking out for only him self, or the stereotypical black behavior.

But I have to admit that the acting was pretty flat.  I thought the character Train was poorly executed by Omar Miller could’ve been done so much better.  Mr. Miller’s acting was pretty thin.  But the story was engaging and had me trying to figure out exactly who and/or what the Sleeping Man was.  I think Baba Obatala, the Orisa of the mountains, would have enjoyed it.

There was a scene in the flick that caused me some problems.  We were given a momentary flashback of these Negroid soldiers and their experience with white Americans before they were shipped out to Europe.  Five black soldiers went to a mom and pop café not too far from their army base to get some kind of iced drink or something.  The white owner told the black soldiers to come out back and he’d have them ready.  He said it in an even tone as if that was just the way it was.  Black people got served out of the back door.

The black soldiers couldn’t help but notice the white German prisoners that were eating at one of the booths.  The Germans were being escorted by white military policemen who were eating at the bar.  The soldiers made a comment about black people trying to serve their country and being treated like shit while Germans who killed American soldiers were treated like humans.  The owner pulled out his gun, told the black soldiers that he does what he wants in his place and he’d be damned if any niggers were going to tell him what to do.

The MPs stepped in to calm the situation.  They told the black soldiers to hightail it back to base.  They picked up the German soldiers and everyone left the place.  The store owner turned to his son who looked maybe ten years old and told him that’s how you handle niggers.

The soldiers left.  They got in their jeep and started back to the base.  But somewhere along the way they decided to turn around and get their floats.  The store owner was telling a couple of locals about his experience with the nigger soldiers when all of a sudden four very angry black soldiers burst through his front door with automatic weapons drawn and ready.  The two locals had their shotguns with them.  But the soldiers got the drop on them.  In a not too polite way, the soldiers told the store owner to get the drink order ready.  The store owner was much more compliant.  Suddenly he found the inspiration to address the black soldiers as sir.  The store owner’s wife was there and she was holding their son close to her.  Everyone had fear in their eyes.  The scene ended.  I guess that the men got their drinks.

Now, while it probably felt wonderful to have that store owner submit to the will of those black soldiers, I couldn’t help but wonder about the implications to other black people who might visit that place unaware of what may have transpired.  I’m sure the white store owner felt humiliated in front of his family.  He had to get even.  And instead of separating one black person from another, all black people are subject to his wrath.  The next black person who steps into his store will probably be tortured in a futile attempt for him to get his manhood back.

The two locals with the shotguns, they’ll probably find some black person walking down a road and decide to give a little dominant community retribution.  They’ll probably be more than happy to shoot a black person in the back and run back to the store owner to brag about their own act of trying to redeem their sense of superiority.

Should those black soldiers had left and bothered never to have come back?  Well, all I can say is that I know there are times I wished I could have straightened out someone who treated me like dirt.  And a person who treats me like dirt simply because of the color of my skin is somebody that really does need a good throttling from the Sleeping Man.

But ultimately, I have to admit that using force against that store owner would have only lead to more problems.  Those soldiers knew they were in the wrong when they took their weapons into that café and forced the owner to service them at the front door.  People who have such hatred in their heart just need to be left alone to deal with their own demons.  That store owner and those country locals don’t need any additional excuses to hate black people.  Don’t want my business?  Fine!  You don’t need my business.  He who lives by the sword shall eventually die by the sword.  Besides, now that I know what he’s like, I wouldn’t want to eat anything out of his nasty assed store anyway.