I recently saw a commercial for Lexus that was related to the movie Black Panther. What bothered me about the commercial was the fact that the people in the car spoke with African accents. Once again I felt that for the most part, I could not judge this movie because I have not seen it. But the fact that a company that produces a luxury car would use Black people who are supposed to be African to promote their cars in the United States. Once again Black Americans are being kicked to the back of the bus on the world stage. It’s just a movie why be upset one might ask. When the movie The Color Purple came out I was working in Watts at the MLK hospital. One of the nurses who watched the movie said: “After seeing the movie I wanted to slap the first Black man I saw.”
That statement caused me to wonder why she said that in the first place. I refused to watch the movie for over 20 years. When I did finally watch the movie.Although I could not condone the behavior of the Black man towards his family I could finally make sense of what was happening on the screen. That Black man was degraded by the racial policies of the time. The only way he could vent his rage was on the women who shared his daily degradation. America has always existed as a society where race relations have always been strained to say the least. I do not know what Hollywood wanted to do with this movie beyond making money. It is my humble opinion is that was the only goal.
