A white friend of mine (yes I have some) wanted to know what all the fuss was about with the movie Green Book winning the best picture award at the Oscars. “I thought it was an excellent movie” he opined, and frankly, I don’t see why African Americans are so upset about this movie winning.”Didn’t it have an excellent African American co-star who won an Oscar for his role?” He asked. Wasn’t it based on a true story about a famous African American musician?”
He was right about the Black co-star winning an Oscarand it being based on a true story about a great African American musician, but he was wrong about the movie deserving to win the Oscar, and that African Americans were misguided for not liking it.
This particular guy is a liberal and he considers himself “woke”. Unfortunately it is always harder for me to have to explain to liberals about their paternalistic form of racism as opposed to the right wing conservatives who pretty much embrace their racist side.
The truth is, the voters in the Academy are all a lot like my friend. To them, this was a feel good movie about racism that made them feel good about themselves. The old Jim Crow South viewed from a racist white guy who got to know a magical Negro and was transformed after being forced to be his buddy. It’s always about them. When those narrators tell you about a “feel good” movie coming to a theater near you, please believe that it’s about making them (White people) feel good. Not us black folks. To us (Black people), it’s about painful memories.
I didn’t watch The Green Book, because I didn’t have to. I know all about Driving Miss Daisy, The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Ghost, and all those other magical Negro movies.
It would have been nice if The Green Book was more about the main character’s experience with actual green books while driving through the Jim Crow- era South. Instead, once again, we got to see racism from the White perspective.
Call me crazy, but I was just hoping that as a country we would be past this by now. I mean Driving Miss Daisy was in 1990 for crying out loud!
I’m sorry, Don Shirley was a brilliant piano prodigy (he was from Jamaica no less) who mastered the standard concert repertory by the age of ten. He deserved better.
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