@mechajutaro said:

I feel that there are cultural workers in American society who'd like to make the word "Black" in regard to people into a strong pejorative, and it might be that their efforts hurt this film's success

There are definitely folks in America who still spit the word "black" out with sneering disdain. They're usually whites who's only experience with black people/non-whites more generally is limited to their interactions with clerks at Wal-Mart or entry level employees at their own jobs. Whites such as these then go on to associate the pathologies one finds among impoverished humans of all colors with someone being black or brown; I don't say this to excuse the ignorance, just saying what happens. All that said, the words "dark" and "black" also have a negative connotations in many subsaharan African languages. This wasn't solely the work of European colonialists

So, did you have any comments at all about the movie or what?

@mechajutaro said:

@CelluloidFan said:

@mechajutaro said:

I feel that there are cultural workers in American society who'd like to make the word "Black" in regard to people into a strong pejorative, and it might be that their efforts hurt this film's success

There are definitely folks in America who still spit the word "black" out with sneering disdain. They're usually whites who's only experience with black people/non-whites more generally is limited to their interactions with clerks at Wal-Mart or entry level employees at their own jobs. Whites such as these then go on to associate the pathologies one finds among impoverished humans of all colors with someone being black or brown; I don't say this to excuse the ignorance, just saying what happens. All that said, the words "dark" and "black" also have a negative connotations in many subsaharan African languages. This wasn't solely the work of European colonialists

So, did you have any comments at all about the movie or what?

Is Shaka King's first name actually Shaka?

I don't know, but I wondered the same thing. If you turn the two names around, you come up with "King Shaka"... which, I believe, is a reference to the king of the Zulus in South Africa. Interesting.

Or was he born John or Thomas, only deciding to adopt Shaka recently, as part of that all-too-American bid at reclaiming "his roots"? Sorta like white guys who's ancestors have been in the States for over a century, and who've never come anywhere close to visiting Ireland, taking on names like Gawain, in a strained effort to reclaim their supposed Celtic roots

If that's what it's about, it's his business and not mine. But a legal name change is an official name change, as far as I'm concerned.

@mechajutaro said:

If that's what it's about, it's his business and not mine

If he's the sort of fella who renames himself Shaka out of Woke/nationalistic sentiment though, it raises the following question: Shouldn't we be a little more skeptical of the way he's depicted Hampton and The Panthers?

That's a strong point....

@CelluloidFan said:

@mechajutaro said:

@CelluloidFan said:

@mechajutaro said:

I feel that there are cultural workers in American society who'd like to make the word "Black" in regard to people into a strong pejorative, and it might be that their efforts hurt this film's success

There are definitely folks in America who still spit the word "black" out with sneering disdain. They're usually whites who's only experience with black people/non-whites more generally is limited to their interactions with clerks at Wal-Mart or entry level employees at their own jobs. Whites such as these then go on to associate the pathologies one finds among impoverished humans of all colors with someone being black or brown; I don't say this to excuse the ignorance, just saying what happens. All that said, the words "dark" and "black" also have a negative connotations in many subsaharan African languages. This wasn't solely the work of European colonialists

So, did you have any comments at all about the movie or what?

Is Shaka King's first name actually Shaka?

I don't know, but I wondered the same thing. If you turn the two names around, you come up with "King Shaka"... which I believe is a reference to the king of the Zulus in South Africa. Interesting.

Or was he born John or Thomas, only deciding to adopt Shaka recently, as part of that all-too-American bid at reclaiming "his roots"? Sorta like white guys who's ancestors have been in the States for over a century, and who've never come anywhere close to visiting Ireland, taking on names like Gawain, in a strained effort to reclaim their supposed Celtic roots

If that's what it's about, it's his business and not mine. But a legal name change is an official name change, as far as I'm concerned.

Gawain is from the Welsh, not the Irish!

Second viewing notes:

• My real issue with timing has to do with the script. It takes too long to get somewhere... King's direction is fine, but take the scene with the 1st stand-off with the cops -- it loses steam due to a first hour that took too long to build up dramatically.
• What was I thinking about Lakeith Stanfield's performance? It is deep, and clever, and fulfilling. I was too busy taking in the whole of the film to notice how tight his acting is.
• Kaluuya is really strong as FH, too....

@CelluloidFan said:

@mechajutaro said:

If that's what it's about, it's his business and not mine

If he's the sort of fella who renames himself Shaka out of Woke/nationalistic sentiment though, it raises the following question: Shouldn't we be a little more skeptical of the way he's depicted Hampton and The Panthers?

That's a strong point....

I don't think that is a strong point at all. In fact, after all the misinformation and lies that have negatively skewed public opinion about the Black Panther Party out of government bias against them, some positive bias is not only fair but can help provide balance based on more facts coming to bear.

After Black people tried religion as a means to legitimacy, and the feds assassinated the two most prominent leaders (MLKJr and Malcolm X), the Black Panther Party took a different tack - politics.

They fed their communities with breakfast programs, provided free medical clinics, school programs...gasp, the horror! Were they evil, or just organized in their efforts to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps (which is what we're always told to do, right?) and care for Black people?

The NRA has forever stood against gun control. But when the Black Panther Party taught its members that Black people were citizens who were eligible to claim rights - including the right to bear arms - well, all of a sudden, gun control was okay by the NRA who helped write legislation. As white supremacist violence ravaged Black people in response to Civil Rights progress, the Black Panthers organized "well-regulated militias" to patrol their neighbourhoods, to police the police who were little more than foot soldiers in a war on Black people that started at the top, the White House. (see Fear of a Black Gun Owner, The Root).

John Ehrlichman was White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon. In an interview with Dan Baum who was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition, Ehrlichman got something off his chest:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” ... 'The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we DID.'" (Legalize It All, Harper Magazine).

This movie is a dramatization of events leading up to the 1969 "raid of the home" of Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who rose to prominence in the Party after forming the Rainbow Coalition, a "raid" that resulted in his assassination. Read about the Rainbow Coalition - was being its leader a crime worthy of summary execution with no sentence, day in court, or even a charge?

If I am going to be skeptical about the way Hampton and the Black Panther Party are depicted, I'm much more inclined to direct my skepticism towards those with an irrational fear of Blackness and Black awareness, those who presume the status quo is closer to truth, those who think the oppressed are more to be feared than the oppressors, than I will ever be to someone who might have a refreshingly supportive bias to their struggles and efforts.

@NeoLosman

Okay, so, you've shared your view, and I've shared mine. I'm not going to argue with your strawmen or false equivalences or feed into your sealioning - I'm content to let what we've written speak for themselves.

@NeoLosman said:

We moderns love to hurl that term "straw man" around, whenever someone challenges our dogmas of choice

Not as much as the un-wokes who are determined to keep conjuring them in vain attempts to challenge when it won't stand on merit alone.

Let's end this chapter here, shall we?