African-Americans
survived and prevailed in America because they fought for what they wanted through
thick and thin. And that struggle didn’t start in America but in Africa with
slave raiders, throughout the middle passage,
during slavery, during reconstruction, during Jim Crow, during civil rights
moment, and to the present. If there’s anything that defines African-Americans
better, then it’s grits, survivalism
and the coveted capacity to endure
and forgive.
While we can agree that
America has changed for better for African-Americans, it’s equally true to
argue that contemporary sociopolitical, sociocultural and socioeconomic
realities which African-Americans struggle against are a neat transmutation of
the past ills. African-Americans still, except for the lucky few, reside at the
periphery of society. They are at the mercy of the European-Americans owing to
their economic marginalization. Their proverbial alterity has remained the same
since the first African landed on the American shores.
While this struggle is something
that has to be continued – for the manner in which oppressive realities are
portrayed has changed—there has to be a noted change in regard to how struggle
has to be executed.
And this brings me to the planned boycott of
88th Academy Awards by some African-American actors and actresses.
Among these actors are Spike Lee, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, among others.
Justifying their boycott of the Oscars, Spike Lee has this to say:
"We cannot support
it and [I] mean no disrespect ... But, how is it possible for the second
consecutive year all 20 contenders under the acting category are white? And
let's not even get into the other branches," Lee wrote on Instagram.
"Forty white actors in two years and no flava at all. We can't act?!
WTF!!"
It’s true that, for the
last two years, the nominated actors have all been Europeans or European-Americans.
Given the history of America and what Donald Trump is bringing back to America,
it would be naïve not to feel for the likes of Lee and the Smiths. Anyone who knows
the history of America, its moral paralysis—what James Baldwin called the
search for ‘Moral Identity’—will understand the noted concerns.
Reminding us of
history, Lee quoted Kings that “There comes a time when one must take a
position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it
because conscience tells him it's right.”
I’m totally with the
actors for their stand and I applaud them knowing what America is becoming with
the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The noble conservativism (socially that
is) of Ronald Raegan is now being replaced by the bigoted, idiotic conservatism
of the likes of Trumps, Christies, Cruzs etc.
However, my main
concern is what Lee and the Smiths hope to achieve. Simply boycotting the
Oscars brings to mind what I call the paradox
of solidarity. This is the situation in which you stick together with your
own but you don’t want others to stick with their own. What one fights is other
people’s solidarity, which one fights with one’s own solidarity.
If African-Americans
stick together, then why can’t European-Americans stick together too, would be
the question (I know this sounds like something you can only hear on “Fox &
Friends”). How about European-Americans saying “well, there’s nothing worthy of
Oscars, but let’s give them a lame token to shut them up!”
Well, I know a movie like “The Beast of No Nation” is worthy of Oscar nomination because of the
stellar performance of the young Abraham Attah. However, boycotting the Oscars
trivializes the grievances. Deep, racial concerns need more than avoiding an event. But when did America ever change because the proposed changes are good for minorities? America only changes if and only if there is a vested interest in the proposed change to the European-Americans.
It would have been a
good idea for the boycotters to voice theirs concerns of the Europeanization of Oscars but still
attend the 88th Academy Awards.
With no doubt, there has to be a
change in the manner in which grievances are shown because the way in which ‘peripherization’
is now exercised has been cleverly disguised. Using old methods to fight new
challenges is ineffective. The boycott will be in the news for a few weeks but
then fades away. I don't know what that change in strategy would look like, but there
has to be another method of community empowerment.
Wealthy African-Americans
complain about what ‘whites’ are doing, but what concerted efforts have they
done to bring respect to the community of crime-destroyed youth? Any disrespect
to the community stems from historical misinformation, distortion of facts, and
the contemporary socioeconomic position of African-Americans. Oscars to a few
individuals will never change the general view of the community. It’d only be
regarded as the achievement of the exceptional few.
