I think everyone in this country should be aware by now that our race relations are at an all time low. It seems every time we hear the news another black citizen has been shot by the police or police have been shot by someone angry about these shootings. It cannot continue. We as a nation cannot keep going down this road.
I have always sympathized with Black Americans. In fact as a Scot and Irish American I have always sympathized with anyone who ever got pushed around, starting with Native Americans, Asians, Jewish immigrants, women of any ethnic group, Hispanics from any country.
I also sympathize with the people who are tasked with law enforcement. It’s a tough job. I had some training in that area. A couple of years ago I was hired by a Security company and was trained in unarmed, and armed, uniformed security. I surprised myself by shooting very well at the gun range to get qualified to carry a firearm. But it was not a good fit. That gun hung heavy on my belt. As soon as I started wearing that security guard uniform I started getting feedback, negative feedback. The uniforms I was issued could never have been mistaken for real law enforcement. But I got negative feedback anyway, lots of it.
So I have always been emotionally effected anytime I see a white person doing the right thing in a movie towards a person of another ethnic group, including Black Americans, Native Americans or any other group.
Here are ten of my favorite such moments, although Hollywood has included many such scenes in many movies.
- Red Tails 2012
The true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, black pilots with college degrees (there weren’t many in the 1930s and 40s) who trained to be fighter pilots during World War II. The USA needed all the help they could get in World War II, and the Government, and the military, reluctantly, very reluctantly allowed Black Americans to train in all the services, including being pilots in what was then called the Army Air Corp and later the Army Air Force. These pilots, it has been said, fought a war on two fronts, first against the Germans, on whom they unleashed all hell due to their frustration at living in a segregated country, and also against the white Military establishment who was, mostly, convinced that Blacks could not fly and shoot a weapon at the same time. The bigots were proved wrong, the Tuskegee Airmen, also known as Red Tails due to the distinctive markings on their planes, had the best record of any fighter group in the War. They never lost a bomber, which was their task as a fighter squadron, to protect bombers on their runs into Germany, their record was impeccable and they were highly decorated.
In one heart wrenching scene they are approached in the street by a white pilot, who calls them “colored boys” the Red Tails expect a fight, instead the white pilot renders them some respect, including a hand salute and invites them into a bar for a drink. The tension level rises in that bar but it is left unspoken that the Red Tails are there at a white officer’s invitation. Oh so briefly the color line is forgotten as white and black pilots, fighting the same war, have a drink and discuss their role in the biggest combat event in history.
The Tuskegee Airmen correct the use of the term “colored boys” and state that they prefer Negro. One of the black pilots advises the whites that white people “turn red when they are angry, green with envy or yellow when cowardly and have the nerve to call us colored people!”
The Tuskegee Airmen were so good at their task the bomber pilots asked for them to cover their back on bombing runs, the highest compliment I can think of.
- My Favorite Year 1982
In one of the best comedies from the 1980s, or any decade really, the early days of television are recreated on a show that appears very much like the Sid Caesar show. A young man named Benji (Mark Linn Baker) a writer and would be comedian and hopeless movie geek (based on Mel Brooks the producer of the movie) is tasked with taking care of the week’s guest star Allan Swann, a washed up alcoholic Movie Star baring more than a passing resemblance to Errol Flynn as well as the actor portraying him, the legendary Peter O’Toole. (Although O’Toole denied he was anything like Alan Swann, yeah, right!)
At one point Swann accompanies Benji to the apartment he shares with his Mother, Lainie Kazan and her second husband, a washed up Filipino boxer named Rookie Carroca,(Ramon Sisson) a character whom no one seems to respect. Until the moment when the Big Shot Movie Star comes swaggering into the little apartment and focuses all his attention on “a lethal bantam weight named Rookie Carroca”! He even pronounces his name right, the only time it happens, it brings tears to my eyes every time! He even recalls a night he saw Rookie take Sailor Donovan down in San Diego in three rounds. No, “in two,” Rookie corrects him.
Swann renders that over the hill Filipino boxer some respect, something he doesn’t seem to have received since the night “Manny Serpa turned him into guava jelly at Madison Square Garden.”
Trust me on this, Filipinos are good people, I served with a good many of them during my time in the Navy (there he goes again!) And we don’t see many of them in our movies, and that is a shame, but what a great moment!
- 42 2013
The true story of Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player to get into the major leagues, this story is all about trying to get past skin color. Robinson played himself in The Jackie Robinson Story in 1950, a pretty good version on its own. In 42 Chadwick Boseman gives an incredible performance as a man who was tasked with “not fighting back” when every vile racial insult was hurled at him daily, probably hourly.
Many of his own team mates did not want him there, at first. It is a powerful moment when Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) puts his arm around Robinson in front of a stadium full of Redneck Crackers shouting every kind of abuse. Captured in a famous photograph it is a great moment.
Robinson is so good at the game that eventually the other players come around to respecting the rookie who broke the color line.
But much more heartbreaking is the moment when Robinson and his wife (Nicole Beharie) are approached on the street by one Redneck looking character (William Flaman) who ominously advises that he “has something to say” to Robinson. He then states that he “is pulling for you. You got the goods and any man with the goods deserves a fair chance. And a lot of people around here feel the same way I do!”
He even tips his cap to Mrs. Robinson as he walks away leaving Robinson and his wife looking as if they cannot believe what just happened, for that matter neither can we!
- The Magnificent Seven 1960
An American remake of a Kurosawa masterpiece (Seven Samurai) The Magnificent Seven is pretty damn good in its own right. A once in a lifetime cast including Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson team up into a group of seven gunfighters who stand up for a village of Mexican campesinos who get raided periodically by a group of bandits led of Eli Wallach.
The Magnificent Seven is one of the great western’s in movie history, still a hell of a good show and has one of the best, most epic soundtracks ever, by the great Elmer Bernstein. All the actors are good, you expect good work from Brynner and McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn but this may be Robert Vaughn’s best performance ever. But it’s Brad Dexter, of all people, who steals the whole show, wraps it around his gun hand and sticks it in his hip pocket in his death scene.
As good a Western adventure as The Magnificent Seven is it’s the idea of a small group of Anglo Americans standing up for a village of dirt poor Mexicans that makes it really something special. These guys are Magnificent and they, and the movie, treat the Mexicans with utmost respect.
- What’s Love Got To Do With It? 1993
The crown jewel in movies that feature Nicheren Buddhism (a subject for a different Top Ten List) What’s Love Got To Do With It? tells the true story of how Tina Turner (Angela Bassett) hit rock bottom and put her life back together by chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (try it some time, it works!)
In a key moment Tina Turner not only gets the courage and strength to fight back against Ike Turner she runs away from him the night they are set to play a gig. She runs off with just the clothes on her back and very little money to a nearby hotel. Visibly beaten she runs in and asks for the manager. One hell of a Red Neck looking character (O’NeaL Compton: Attack of the 50 foot Woman 1993, Nell, Nixon, Deep Impact ) comes to the front desk. Tina explains who she is, that she has very little money but pleads for shelter. Tina, and we the viewers, fully expect to hear this guy say something along the lines of “Get this Negro wench out of my hotel!” Instead, when Tina starts to remove her jewelry to pay for a room he says “Miss Turner, that’s not necessary, don’t worry we’ll take care of you! It would be an honor!”
He tells one of the bell hops to “get Miss Turner a room and a Doctor!” It’s been said that great acting is when you can tell what a character is thinking. Compton (who has made a career out of playing country types, sheriffs, truck drivers and what have you, can be seen clearly thinking “if I ever get my hands on Ike Turner!” You can feel the rage, Compton is on screen for all of three minutes but this simple act of kindness by a white man towards a black rhythm and blues singer leaves a lasting impression. This was the turning point in Tina Turner’s life. And a great illustration of how Nicheren Buddhism can change a person’s life for the better. Check out SGI-USA on line if you want to learn more.
- Invictus 2009
Invictus is a movie full of white people, living in a country famous for its official racist attitudes, pulling their heads out of their ass and doing the right thing.
Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) spent most of his life in prison in South Africa, because he did not want to live under South Africa’s miserable system of “apartheid” , which is actually pronounced “apart hate”. South Africa has a white minority, mostly Dutch, some English and Germans who kept the black majority, Native Africans, as a second class of servants and living in dire poverty.
After the end of apartheid and Black South Africans gained full citizenship Nelson Mandela became the first native Prime Minister of what had been one of the most racist countries on Earth. The first thing he did on being released from prison was to forgive his oppressors. After becoming Prime Minister his dream was a South Africa where all its citizens were on the same page.
The white minority fully expected to be either driven from the country or slaughtered, as happened in the Belgian Congo and other African countries after the end of colonialism. Did not happen, Mandela was more than aware the country could not function without the white minority, they knew the economy, the government, the bureaucracy, the new South Africa needed them.
As a means to bring all its citizens together Mandela asked the South African Rugby team to win the 1995 Rugby World cup. For South African whites Rugby is the national sport, black South Africans supported soccer, what the rest of the world calls football.
Mandela asks Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) captain of the team to win that cup. Pienaar has his doubts, his team has one black player, the only player black South Africans know and recognize.
The team visits the prison where Mandela spent most o f his life, they visit some of the black townships and view firsthand the wretched poverty.
They vow, as a team, to win that cup. Mandela’s security group enlists, reluctantly, the aid of the white security crew from the previous administration. Slowly but surely, black and white South Africans come to actually know and respect each other.
When the world cup game arrives, against New Zealand’s team, it is exhilarating to see that their team is fully integrated. Well over half the team is native Maoris. Their team does a Maori war dance before the game begins. Like Native Americans, Australian Aborigines or any other Native culture, it is a great honor to dance with the Maori.
In the stands White South African youths cheer when Mandela enters the stadium. Of course South Africa’s team wins, causing a lot of excitement for the whole country, just what Mandela had wanted. And we are excited as well, with the idea that if South Africa can make some effort to overcome its racist past, maybe we can too.
- Race 2016
Another true sports story Race details the triumph of Jesse Owens (Stephan James) at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, known as the Nazi Olympics for Hitler’s faith that his Aryan youth athletes would dominate the games. Owens had the same struggles as other Black Americans in this same time period. Other athletes did not want him in the locker rooms, just getting him to the games was a problem. Even some Black Americans did not think he should go to those Olympic Games.
Improbably a German runner Carl ‘Luz’ Long (David Cross) openly befriends Owens in front of stadiums full of National Socialist true believers, Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary cameras (her documentary of these games is well worth seeing) and most wonderfully of all, in front of Uncle Adolf Hitler himself.
Owens put the lie to Nazi ideas of a “master race” and oddly enough Owens did not do so single handed. Other Black American athletes’ went to those games and some of them won medals. NPR did a nice story on that but for simplicities sake, as Hollywood often does, the movie’s focus is on Owens.
Carl Long’s insistence on treating Owens with respect and dignity back fired on him, as you would expect, at the film’s end we find out that Long was “enlisted” in the German Army and died on the Eastern Front.
- Cool Runnings 1993
Another Hollywood movie about Black athletes going to the Olympics Cool Runnings is the Disney version (a VERY Disney version) of Jamaica’s unlikely goal of sending a bobsled team to the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988.
John Candy is a disgraced coach enlisted to try and get a bobsled team together in a country that has never seen snow. Good casting, by the way, Candy being Canadian would know quite a lot about winter sports.
Overcoming one set of obstacles after another the Jamaicans make it to Calgary, they don’t win any medals but they do manage to finish their run. Of course they are disrespected, wouldn’t you know, by the German team! Although virtually every one at those games, athletes and spectators alike, thought the Jamaicans’ presence very odd indeed.
When they manage to finish their run the German who has given them the most grief insists on shaking hands with one of the team and declaring “you did damn good Jamaica! We see you in four years, yah?”
I have worked with Jamaicans’ and have asked them about this movie, every one of them told me the same thing, virtually none of the movie is accurate about what happened, but they appreciate that the movie exists, at all! They also appreciate that Disney thought enough of the film to have its world premier in Kingston, Jamaica.
- Schindler’s List 1993
The great epic of one white man doing the right thing, Oscar Schindler made a lot of money off the Nazis during WWII and at the same time saved the lives of a great many Jewish people who were in line for the gas chambers. One of many masterpieces on Steven Spielberg’s resume and filmed in immaculate black and white Schindler’s List is tough to watch, I have spent my life trying to get my head around the Holocaust, ever since I read the Trial of Adolf Eichmann when I was 12 years old.
And what a pity that there are some people who insist on denying it ever happened, despite museums full of evidence that it most assuredly did happen. When I was working as a security guard a couple of years ago I started at the St. Petersburg Holocaust museum and spent my first day touring the museum just to get the feel of the place. My museum habit has always been to read as much of the material posted at each exhibit as possible, since I had all day I read everything. There were many other saviors of lives besides Oscar Schindler. Our Holocaust museum has two walls dedicated to saviors including Raoul Wallenberg.
I would love to see a movie about Mr. Sugihara, a Japanese career diplomat assigned to the Japanese Embassy in Lithuania. A great many Jews managed to get there. Mr. Sugihara defied the Germans and his own government and wrote over 6000 visas by hand which got that many Jews out of Lithuania. His punishment? He was fired and sent home, he died peacefully in Japan in 1986. He is named Among the Righteous by the Israeli government for his actions, the only Japanese who is so honored. He deserves his own movie, as much as Oscar Schindler did.
- Cookie’s Fortune 1999
Robert Altman has many masterpiece films in his career. Cookie’s Fortune was one of his last and best. A rich white woman, Jewel Mae “ Cookie” Orcutt (Patricia Neal) in a small Mississippi town commits suicide, for reasons of her own a relative(Glenn Close) wants it to look like murder. The only possible suspect is a black man, Willis Richland (Charles S Dutton). The only problem? None of the white people in town can believe he did it, not the Sheriff, not his deputies, nobody. All of the white people in town come to this man’s defense, and it’s believable! In the modern day south it’s easy to imagine such a thing happening. Not so long ago the black citizen may have gotten lynched just on a rumor of wrongdoing.
Especially fun is that Willis is, reluctantly, put into a cell, and the door is left open, local law enforcement knows he is not going anywhere. The white people in town bring him a tv, a comfy chair, homemade goodies, all very funny but also, again, it very well could happen.
I have to make several honorable mentions. Driving Miss Daisy 1989 for showing the friendship between a cranky old Jewish woman and her black driver and how they come to depend on each other. The Body Guard 1992 for presenting a romance between a white man and black woman without once mentioning race. Virtually all of John Sayles movies have white people trying to do the right thing especially Brother From Another Planet 1984 and Matewan 1987.
Monster’s Ball 2001 also deserves credit for presenting an interracial romance between two damaged people who really do need each other. Although I have talked about this movie with black friends who point out how easy it would be to fall for a black woman, who is Halle Barry! Also Green Mile 1999 for presenting a whole crew of white people trying to do the right thing for a black man condemned to “walk the green mile.” I like the movie but will always feel that a man like John Coffey, with what he is accused of, would have never went to trial in the 1930s, he would have been lynched on the spot.
And I have to mention Black Snake Moan 2006 a movie with the audacity to suggest that White people might actually learn something, especially life lessons, from Black people! Featuring an incredible performance from Samuel L Jackson (we expect no less at this point) Christina Ricci truly is amazing as about the nastiest little skank you could ever imagine, who somehow is still sympathetic and, yes, lovable. The music is great too.
In television a groundbreaking series was I Spy 1965 – 1968 which presented a duo of a black and white man functioning as a team and again, without making a big deal of race, at Bill Cosby’s request. Also Star Trek, which presented a multicultural crew of an intergalactic star ship, working in close quarters, in deep space, with no mention of race. This during the 1960s when race was very much a hot button issue.
I remember very well the civil rights era, I have always sympathized. I have told immigrants to this country my personal feelings about Black Americans, they are Americans, with all the rights of citizenship. And we are lucky to have them, for at least three major reasons. I am not a sports fan but obviously our sports teams are the best because of black athletes. American music is the best in the world, because of black musicians; I don’t want to think about a world without Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix or Niki Minaj. And the American sense of humor is both Black and Jewish. Some of the greatest comedians we have ever had come from both groups.
And they are just as good at the jobs all of us do, I have worked with Black police, administrators, machine operators, call center representatives, every job I have ever had I have worked with black people who do the job as well as anybody.
To sum up I thought we were finally getting beyond all this racial stuff that has plagued our country from the very beginning. I thought the election of Barack Obama to the Office of the President meant we were finally moving forward, no we took two steps, maybe more, back.
We are sliding down a very slippery slope. We very much need to learn to live with each other, respect each other, and yes, love each other, and I mean everybody, across the board, or we are in deep trouble. We really don’t have any other options.
