A White Bruce Lee?

A White Bruce Lee?...

(I’m not buying Hollywood’s latest flavor of White Washed Kool-Aid)

By Glenn Peppers   

So its come to this! A White Bruce Lee! What next? A struggling black boxer named, Jack Johnson, played by Nicholas Cage?... In my eyes, all this means to me is that Hollywood is White Washing this man's (Bruce Lee’s) Legacy, just like Hollywood has been doing to minorities since the advent of film, and virtually all forms of media! It's insulting, and it's clearly racist! 

For Asian culture, this has to be the equivalent to that idiot, Al Jolson and his bended knee, “Mammy” singing Black Face, mocking of blacks, and calling it art! When in fact, its demeaning and has absolutely nothing to do with art so much as it does, Control! This production of a movie with a white man, dressed in Yellow Face is Hollywood pushing people’s buttons again. White Washing another's culture, infusing negative or incorrect idioms and stereotypes that hollywood and others behind the cameras want the world to believe about that certain person or persons, or races and cultures! 

Steven Mckee as pictured clearly having no resemblance to Bruce Lee

This kind of portrayal (by actor, Steven Mckee) is the proverbial Foot on ‘whomever's culture, and heritage'  Neck! It's the "We want your Art, your culture, your skills, your looks (and in broader terms outside of Hollywood’s shallow scope,) "We want your land, but we don't want you!" 

To not respect the boundaries of a person's cultural heritage is just as bad as trampling their homestead; the very land in which they live, and intruding into their everyday lives, portraying minorities in a light that shows us as they want the world to see us. Not how we actually are! White america has always been more comfortable with the whole idea of “Non-Threatening” minorities in the entertainment realm, as well as in real life! Through cinema, they can bend our imagery to their liking! With the Native american, and the African american and the Mexican american, etc. We become reduced down to white actors in grease paint going, “We Smoke’em Peace Pipe!” In film, radio and television and on stage, people of color became these non-threatening, A-Sexual unappealing characters that only showed up for comedy relief, and nothing more because that was all the work that they could find!

Steven Mckee

In telling the story of a complex man like Bruce Lee, I believe that no one outside of Asian culture could truly relate, expound and project the pain and dejection that Bruce Lee felt going through those troubled and downed time he had in Seattle during the early 1960’s; battling back problems, as well as battling his own kind within the Chinese community, in order to gain permission to try and teach westerners the martial arts at his Dojo! Bruce’s fight with Wong Jack Man, and with the leaders involved with the Tong who strongly disapproved of Bruce Lee's sharing of Chinese Martial Arts with outsiders cannot be truthfully, and fairly be portrayed by a white man in Yellow Face! 

I repeat! This is Hollywood (Once again) using cinema to alter, water down, and change history to fit their own shallow view of people they believe are beneath them! I assure you, those proclaiming art in Black Face, or Yellow Face wouldn't think it so if a black actor were to grease up in White Face and play George Washington or Ben Franklin in a big budget Hollywood film! There'd be so much heated indignation over that, they’d have to shut the studio as well as the production down! Case in point, white folks in Hollywood and elsewhere couldn't even handle the History Channel portraying the great moorish general, Hannibal as the black man that he actually was! And he was a Moor! 

From Andy Rooney’s Chopsocky bucktoothed stereotyped Mr. Yunioshi's character in the early 1960‘s movie, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” To countless white actors portraying native americans, and Mexican bandits, and scores of asian men playing Asian's like "Ming the Merciless," in Buck Rogers films. Or The Mandarin. Or Charlie Chan. Kathrine Hepburn playing Jade in the movie, "Dragon Seed." You name it!  These images were insensitively paraded to the world as if this was some kind of art form. When in fact all it showed was a Superior-minded, condescending attitude! In some cases it was as if they were saying,  “Let me lower myself to play character." And at the same time, they play someone great in history, and White Wash that person, making them white, instead of a person of color! This in turn would eventually give the world a spin on that character that is unrealistic to culture and possibly region! A negative, or badly cast portrayal of someone of color in history could and quite possibly lessens that person’s achievements, accomplishments, and/or personal life by not telling the whole truth! That first truth being "Who they Really Are!" What some call art is again nothing but the White Washing of someone else’s culture within the media! All around the world, such a thing is looked upon as being highly ingenuous and deprecative!   

In the history of Hollywood portrayals of other people's color or race in film, its all fine and dandy when it's white folks mocking Blacks, Mexican americans and native Americans, or Asians in films. But when and if a black “Male” actor were to be cast as any one of the once served Catholic Pope's in history, within a film. The fervor of anger and hate would be out of control, and you know it! Look what happened when they cast a black child, Danyo OKeniyi

in the role of Rue in the movie "The Hunger Games!" White audiences lost their minds and tweeted some of the most awful things in answer to this casting!

There is such a thing as authenticity! Movies like “The God’s of Egypt” showed not one true sense of authenticity! In fact, it was a self admitted intentional White Washing of cast and characters by director, Ridley Scott! There is such a thing as integrity! Couple this with respect for the person the studio wants them to portray. Respecting that person's cultural strain, and their art. Respecting their fans also!

White Washing cultural legacies by using modern media like, film documentary reenactments, and other dramatizations is the new tool used as an excuse, and as a means to change and infuse a created alternative histories for people of color, anywhere in the world! In turn, propagating an image and a history that may not even exist! A history that over time becomes a carefully crafted Lie that is Believed! Just like Voltaire once said about history. “History is the lie commonly agreed upon!”  This in fact could end up being true my dear friends, that is, “If we let it!”

Glenn Peppers          October 5, 2016

"I need you to Give up your Secrets!"

Click here to see Video

"Black People, Give up your Secrets!"

“Black People, I Need You to Give up Your Secrets!”

(So She said)                                           

By Glenn Peppers                             1-5-2016

                                              

Well great shades of Madame C.J. Walker! You know what! Ain't that a blip! "I need you to give up your secrets!" That ignorant woman said! Well if the woman in that clip had done her homework, she'd have known that if anyone one of us wanted to share what it was, or what it is we do to maintain our hair and skin in recent past years. Black folk did not control not even a fraction of our own retail manufacturing and, marketing processes! 

Nothing as far as widely distributing hair and skincare products for the african american population in america, until very recently!

For many years, all that was available for black folks' hair and skin was Vasoline based products that mainly white folks used. We got the run off products like Royal Crown, and Queen Bergamot, Hair Rep, Palmers, and later around 1971, Afro Sheen products and other afrocentric haircare products featuring Coconut Oil instead of petroleum. 

We used all the white marketed shampoos and hand and body lotions like Jergens, and Vaseline Intensive Care that were formulated for your hair and body types for decades, drying out our skin with those subtle chemicals, alcohols and dyes. Some men and women used Ultra Wave perm kits to straighten their hair, damaging our hair roots and burning our hair and scalp in the process!

We used Ponds and Oil of Olay Because like that lady in the video, these products were all that was available to us! Toxic Petroleum haircare and skin products! 

Sure we had Coco butter back in the day, but not in bulk like it has been sold in recent years by African business people, marketing it along with imported pure African Shea Butter, Argon Oil, and the south american Yucca plant extract. Afrocentric hair shops or beauty supply shops outside of selling Jeri Curl hair goods back in the 80's didn't have access to those butters in bulk like they do now.

Back 25 years or, we didn't have a large amount of African American beauty supply stores in urban areas until maybe the early 1980s. A great lot of us were kept in the dark marketing wise concerning black haircare products, using only what was available on department store shelves, and what we saw on TV commercials, just like you!

Back in the 1950's, '60's and 70's, Revlon was never going to invest in black haircare and skin care products. So when Shea Butter and Mango Butters and Argan Oil's, and Yucca, Coconut Oil and Grape Seed Oil and other natural African hair and body cremes and puddings and botanicals came about. A much better quality of grooming became more readily available to us. 

Black folks in america began to get more in touch with our roots, and started to cling to our natural hair textures, and skin solutions. Better hair and skin products became more widely obtainable to us. Made for us, by us! Putting us back in touch with chemicals our hair and bodies could thrive on! 

As a result. We were free! Free from using chemically produced alcohol and petroleum based products like Prell, White Rain, Aqua Net, and any and all greasy kid stuff like pomades that white men used back in the day like, Murrays and Brill Cream!

And how dare this woman demand anything from black folks as far as how we take care of our hair and skin! These various retail and/or home versions of body butters and puddings are formulations that are designed for african skin and hair. Don't blame us for white industries who didn't buy into the natural butters and botanicals until recently. And once they did, they still found a way to infuse all those damned chemicals into their version of our hair and skincare products.

Thus why so many of us buy our own butters and herbal mixes and formulate our own natural mix of beauty and body products at home, using our own butters, and herbs, and flower extracts, etc! The personalization of our hair and skin products is as personal as our true history! 

This woman has some nerve to demand our secrets unto our good grooming, and personal hair and skin care, just because she says she has a biracial child! Don't blame us for your not knowing the benefits of Shea Butter! Blame Johnson and Johnson for pushing all that petroleum based rot on us, and you!

Besides, like white folks back then ever really cared what blacks used on our hair and skin, outside of those Jim Crow negative images; your relatives thought were funny, and yet demeaning concerning our physical make up! 

You didn't really care about how and what we used to groom ourselves! I once saw (and I hope this was just a parody) an ad for a brand of steel wool named Nigger Boy, and a stove polish from the early 1900's called, "Nigger Head!" 

The cardboard package to Nigger Boy Steel Wool Soap pads had a caricature drawing of a lil' black child (Just-a-Grinning) on the cover of the box with this thick mound of black nappy hair sticking up and out! This was all your ancestors were concerned about as far as products featuring black folks! So don't blame people of color for your not knowing about all the rich natural butters and emollients of the world, and throughout Africa. Grooming items that would heal the skin, and sooth it at the same time!

You need to blame all those hair and skincare product companies that you supported all these years who sold you those products! I find your not knowing about these products, perfect proof concerning who really were the inhabitants of Northern Africa. I think if the europeans would have really been the true inhabitants of northern africa, you or your ancestors would have known something about at least cocoa butter as a means to sooth and beautify dry skin, and Shea Butter to heal and make one timeless.

I say, do what we had to do! Do the homework! We had to! We had to suffer through using your hair care products because we came along in this country not in control of very many hair care companies! We had not the power to ship or import these emollients over to america, and then market them? 

We could barely buy a ticket for a boat trip overseas, let alone become shipping magnets for beauty products abroad! Revlon and Miss Clairol and a small line of Madame C.J. Walker style haircare products was all we had access too most times! 

I remember Posner's, and Palmers, and plenty of coconut oil based products in the 1970's; and that was the best that we had access to sometimes. I say Read! Go to an african American beauty supply store and learn something, and stay out of Wal-Mart! "Give up your secrets!" She said! As if ya'll haven't stolen enough from us already!

Glenn Peppers

Black people Give up your Secrets

Pull your pants up, I can't hear you!

Click Here to hear Fake Rapper

“Pull your pants up! I can’t hear you!”

(Not a Stitch of Talent, and Auto-Tuned Up)

By Glenn Peppers                               12-22-2015

Before you read this article, I invite you to click on the picture above with the Fake Rapper! Although its humorous, within its silliness come a reality!... 

Not that you've seen the video, I'd like to say, fresh out of the starting gate! I’m going to be forthright and honest! Personally, I feel that this is one of the main reasons why our black youth today are drastically becoming lost and hopelessly ignorant! In view of these and many other real-life examples of children following stupidity. Don’t ask why our kids have an interest in guns and drugs and sex, so feverishly! I think the reasons are clear!

A Child with fake gun can be mistaken by the police for a real gun

Although this video clip is a pun, or a joke, I feel it reveals in a spirit of fun some of these idiotic rap video senerio’s that I've seen on most video channels late night, on cable these past few years. This is pretty much what and how people with No Real Talent whatsoever sound like, yet get over and are pushed into the public eye as stars, and are someone for our children to admire and look up to! This clip, although satire, is a reflection of pretty much what has happened to black music, and black culture, as far as our youth is concerned! 

The record industry has strategically and intentionally sabotaged R&B music with this rot, hitting the urban airwaves, and they have taken the rich soul cream off the top of urban soul! Stealing the butter off the R&B buttered popcorn, and draining funk-fueled classic soul music, right outta of black culture! They’re doing this by denying creative black recording artist like, Tyrese and many, many others, fair radio, and media exposure! 

They’re doing this by refusing to promote music of substance, and true expression from most anyone in the black community! Speaking from the peanut gallery section of critical music listeners, and musicians, and singers. To all these record companies who push negative rap and hip hop music on our children. I say hands off! “All black people are not poverty stricken thugs, dope dealers, and Hip Hop infused booty chasers!” 

Hijacked R&B

From the look and sound of things, the record industry has pretty much hijacked Soul and R&B music for young white artist, like Robin Thick, who has basically built his career ripping off Prince's falsetto, and other black artist vocal stylings, such as D’Angelo (whose real name is, Michael Eugene Archer). Robin Thick as most recently been sued in court for ripping off Marvin Gaye's iconic Motown original material, with the help of Hip Hop producer and recording artist, Pharrell). Then there are the Mehgan Trainor’s Hip Hop “All about that Bass” miami heavy bass rip offs. And of course, the ever copying, Justin Timberlake. Who basically in a nutshell has ripped off Michael Jackson as best he can, without growing a Jeri Curl! 

Then there's the Iggy Azalea Hip Hop types. The Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' Rap guys! And the actually, very talented, singing sensation, Tori Kelly! Whose kinda like a bubbly white, pop/country version of Beyonce with a guitar! Great Pepsi commercial though! I like!

Tori Kelly

Beyonce

The record industry now days apparently goes out and intentionally finds substandard black recording acts and features them, in all their gangster glory. And to be honest about it. Most of them now days sound awful! With or without Auto-Tune! 

The record companies will spend millions promoting these lame artist, who as a result, spew pure shit for sound out into the world!  And like the dutiful consumers that they are, our kids eat it up like fruit loops on a chicken wing! 

I've seen some pretty awful, under-produced gangster style videos of black male artist on some of these video channels who can barely carry a tune in a bucket, when they sing. While others couldn't rap if you let them Lip-sync! 

They lay down these elementary, and imperfect tracks, loaded with tons of special vocal effects, in order to hide the fact that they really, cannot sing a lick! The vocal tracks will have Auto-Tune so thick that they sound like Cylon Robots in a Battle Star Galactica TV movie reunion! 

Big label record companies are taking they're brightest and best white artist and promoting them to the public, while taking black rap, hip hop and R&B wannabe stars with no real talent from the streets in our communities, and catapulting them into the limelight. 

This is done mainly to capitalize, and at the same time, belittle and make fools of our culture, and our music, featuring people who poorly represent us as a whole, and make a mockery of our strong musical heritage, and soulful creative skills. 

These are the ones who are most times (yet not all the time), who are sagging, or wearing their pants down around their butts. Cussing on live TV, and drinking and smoking weed at award shows. You name it! 

And then in the same voice, will call you a sellout if you don't support the BS that they offer, or stick up for the rude way that they act in public, or among themselves. All a great many fake out rappers are doing is masquerading as iconic R&B stars! Most are One Hit Wonders, and gone within a year or two! 

Some of them left broke, bankrupt, and owing money to the record company, as they've spent all of their contract signing bonus money on junk. Money largely spent on the typical Hip Hop crowning achievement and glory. A bling'ed out Bentley. Along with one of those cheap, prefabricated mansions (right out of MTV's Cribs) in Atlanta. Don't forget the string of bling-bling jewelry, and the 500 dollar bottles of champagne, spent on the homies, and all those sexy video vixens!

So yes, when I saw this clip. At first I thought it was funny. Then all at once, it made me sad, because as a man who basically knows his way around a recording studio, and plays more than 5 instruments, and can sing pretty well. I know the difference! And so do millions of other people! 

This mess that they are releasing out into the black community is not representational of true R&B or Soul Music... At all! When you can really sing, and the radio stations won't play your music, that's called control! Anybody who knows music knows that, Jill Scott is Music! Tyrese is music! Esperanza Spalding is pure jazz; but I've yet to hear her music played, even periodically on local jazz radio. Barely on satellite, digital or analog! The likes of a powerful soul singer like Miss Leela James goes largely ignored by the industry! Why is this?... You tell me! 

Even the television singing contest shows like Idol, and The Voice always seem to find a way to eventually eliminate most all of the african american singers off it’s shows here of late. 

The caliber of african american singers they pick from some urban areas (not so much find, but pick) are good, but believe me, I hear singers just as good, and even better most nights at any local club, and even some diehard karaoke spots here in Detroit!

Detroit is the hub! It is Motown! The children and grandchildren of Motown (in spirit) are here! And a good many of us (as the slang goes) can SANG!!!! And many of them can even Rap, for real! Poetically and enthusiastically! 

I'm talking people who are so good, they should be making records and performing on stage, but are denied access to national record deals, because of age, work inconveniences or family responsibilities. Or maybe it is because some of us just do not fit the bill as far as the music industry's 22 year old age limit/Perfect size 2, Sexy body requirements. 

Video Vixens

Most real women out here are not, Lip Botox candidates, and do not have butt implant-injections like Video Vixen Queens! Or if you’re a guy, you may not have that pant-sagging, gangster look the industry continues to push on our young black boys, for whatever reason! 

Either way, in the end, its all about airplay! Be it audio or video! Whomsoever controls the airwaves, and television coverage, controls what people will see, hear and eventually listen to! In other words, True, heart and soul R&B music coming out of the black community is being purposely phased out in america! 

So much so that the industry is even willing to place no-talented, common criminals up close and in our children's psyche and ears; pumping profane lyrics over the airwaves, and cable outlets that’s telling our children that it is cool to do things that are illegal, and immoral! 

Some of these individuals that you see, hear and read about, are the same ones who refer to black women as Bitches and Hoes. These are your children’s heroes and mentors! The rap artist who preach gun toting, drug dealing, as well as drug use; and chugging alcohol are now your children’s heroes!

So don’t ever wonder why your young boys want to get their hands on a gun! Or why they play with toy guns, and then on a fluke, get gunned down by rogue police officers, just waiting for a reason to blow you or your children away! 

Do not wonder why young black children will go rummaging through your closets, to find your gun somewhere in the house, and play with it. Then mistakenly kill him or herself while lost in fascination over this death instrument he’d heard told of in a rap record!

A gun without a gun lock on it is like metal to a magnet, for a child! Try listening to what they are listening to. When you do, you will know in part why they want an AK-47! Children (just like we did) will always emulate what they see, hear, and admire!

So as a result. Gone, are the sweet songs that cherishes the love of a woman. Gone are the creative instrumentalist in soul and progressive R&B Jazz! Gone are the future Peabo Bryson's, and gone are the Luther's, and Penergrasses’ and Gerald La-vert’s! 100 years down the road, will Motown eventually be remembered as a company that a white auto worker started, with the help of a black man named, Berry Gordy? Will the Hijack ever get that deep? 

150 years from now, When the promo pictures and the videos of classic black recording artist start to disappear, and the images are stolen away, or become cloudy and fade from age and time! Will people in the future ever get a chance to know who laid the foundations to soul and R&B music for the world to see and hear? 

Will this be the future of R&B music?

Or will soul and R&B in its truest form, simply just die off! Existing only in some ancient sampling program within a broken down computer workstation keyboard, in some inner city digital recording studio. Being performed by Pat Boone type white artist, claiming the original rights to music and songs not earned. Minus the soul and depth, and impact that dynamic soul and R&B had in its creative heyday!

Broken down piano keyboard and computer workstation containing soul archive musical history 

Decades of music, and soul, and creativity, condensed down to being sampled and pirated by fake rappers and singers, and first year, Specs Howard broadcasting school graduates, playing recording engineer; tinkering on his Teac digital recording gear? Just like the hidden and destroyed histories of Egypt, and northern Africa. Will the soul of true R&B music one day fade into oblivion or obscurity?

How long will decent young recording engineers waste their time recording the likes of someone like the guy seen in the video clip? Someone who clearly has no real talent to offer the world, yet a national recording company will actually sign and back someone like him, just to make a mockery of R&B music, as represented by individuals in a modern, gentrified world. A world where all that we as a people have is being stolen and claimed as belonging to anyone but us! 

R&B is dying in the arms of our young, who could care less about musical integrity in sound! The art of true R&B music has been benched and replaced by people who know absolutely nothing about Soul. Our music is being reproduced, repackaged, and portrayed and promoted by those who have no clue what its like to sing a song with soul! They’ll never know what it is truly like to play a musical instrument with skill, and emotion, from the heart, unto soul! 

All most young people want today is to be... famous! And they don’t care what it takes to be famous! They see the videos, and see the various Hip Hop stars sporting bling; and because of what they see and hear, they think that they can be rappers too, no matter how awful they sound. 

Good or bad! They just wanna be famous!... They just want to be, Rappers! And you know. That’s fine!... I say, sure!... Go ahead! Be a rapper! But why not be a Good Rapper! 

Glenn Peppers   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8r9mOxqOhU

“A Wintery Christmas in New York, during the 1940's and 50's”

“A Wintery Christmas in New York, during the 1940's and 50's”

(But what the hey! Where’s all the People of Color?)

By Glenn Peppers                             12-21-2015

When I first saw this painting that a Facebook friend of mine posted on her page, as with many surreal paintings like them over a lifetime. The first thing that popped into my head was “Why aren’t there any black folks, or anyone of color in that painting?” The second thing that popped into my head seemed a little harsh and over the top. My mind told me that “It is all because of Hate and Intolerance!” Hmmm! “How so, you ask?” Well, sort of like today when people feel as if they are being treated unfairly, they rebel. Or there is an uprising!  In other words, a rebellion. 

To come straight out with it. I feel that black people (or any people of color) were not included on that painting depicted in a comfortable everyday white existence in america because it has become, racially-agreeable! It is racist to me because it shows that no one outside of being white has this kind of life! It shows that racism is so much apart of the fabric of america that this kind of painting was and is somewhat of a norm in america, at what looked like the late 1940’s early 1950’s!  

This painting shows that often times that Hate can one day breed an eventual change in a country when things don't always work out peacefully and fair from the start. A change from when only one sector of society is happy all the time, and is actually living this real live Norman Rockwell lifestyle, while the other half of america is being treated awfully, suffering abuse and being discriminated against. Well, its a fact that for those being denied, kept back and oppressed, eventually, one day the powder keg swells, and and then burst! 

But lets go back to the Good old days again! Yes, I remember some of what was thought of as the good old days. My remembrance of such a time and place happened in the early to middle 1960‘s in Detroit, Michigan. As a mostly protected child. I didn't really understand what the deal was concerning those certain places my older sister either didn't go to, or maybe just wasn’t supposed to go to. 

As a child, I didn't really know the difference between inclusion and exclusion! I was one of those post war, Kool Aid kids with a Mattel toy gun in one hand, and a box of Post Super Sugar Crisp in the other! In the commercials on TV, all the kids were like that. Well the white kids were anyway! Unless there was the proverbial token black kid. Always set in the middle somewhere in the ad! Still, despite that subtle racism (of which I was oblivious to as a child) those were good and quiet days. Days of June bugs and Fire Flies and JL. Hudson's dept. store parades in wintertime, and Sanders Bakery and Woolworth's and Kresge! Ah, those truly were the days! But they weren't that way for a lot of people of color! I guess it depended upon where you lived! 

But largely, because certain peoples were not always included in what is thought of as the all around activities of Americana (here in Detroit, and elsewhere, or like in the south for instance). Things became uneasy! No one likes to be talked down to, or treated as if they are less than! No one does!

Luckily, my parents and especially my grandparents shielded and protected me from the reality of what was called lunch counter racism. Something I never experienced in Detroit as a child! The “you can't go here, and you can't go there” thing as a child could have been real for me, had I lived in Nashville! Yet I never really knew that experience, except for the first of two incidences that I remember one cold night in 1964. 

The south had just began to shed some of its primitive Jim Crow ways! I remember getting off the Greyhound bus with my father in Nashville, just after Kennedy was killed, and jumping into my waiting grandfather's arms who came to pick us up in his nice big Pontiac. The one with the orange glowing lady hood ornament on his car! 

After arriving, I wanted a drink of water, and I remember while he was holding me up in his arms, my grandfather telling me not to drink out of this one particular water faucet! It was clean and looked like the ones we had up here in Detroit. almost like the ones in school. There was another faucet on the other side of the one I wanted to drink from. It was dirty and looked as if someone had maybe even pee'ed in it! 

Granddaddy said to me about the clean white basin fountain, "Son, you don't wanna drink from either one of those old water fountains. They got germs all over’em! We've got some good ole' cold coke cola at home." He distracted me. Played and laughed with me, and as we went along, throughout the bus station, evil eyes looked upon us as we walked to the car! I wondered for years why those people looked so mad! Well, years later, I knew!... I knew! I’d had my first off hand experience with hate and intolerance at 7 years old, and didn’t even know it. Thanks to my grandfathers class and candor!

I think that hollywood, and pop culture, and images like those seen in the painting above made it seem as if life in america was one great big “Singin' in the Rain Caucasian Carnival,” devoid of people of color (except of course if there were working, or dancing a jig, while smiling and grinning)! Mammies and Sambo’s included!

The images formed at america's golden age of movies and cinema, and in pop art, during our country’s early entertainment periods sealed the door as far as showing whose who, as far as in-crowd inclusion to america’s privileged! Much like the painting. White Yellow cab riding New Yorkers, strolling in wintery snow covered street scenes, while ice skaters sipped on hot cider, and held hands as Santa Clause granted wishes to children who sat on Santa’s bended knee. All while brief case toting business people sprint through Central Park, over to 5th avenue! 

The problem is not the images in the painting so much. They're beautiful images! Its the fact that America continues to hold on to its flip-side other images of hate and prejudice, onto the brutal control of another entire race of human beings. Continuing to call it good and proper! It is this refusal to let go of those old oppressive ideals and standards that in the long run is destroying america, and is clearly from the start what made things the way that they are to this day! 

Hollywood, as well as many famous pop artist, and other cultural guru's pushed the issue and ideals of exclusion for people of color, and forged the negative images and stereotypes that we see in the media even unto this day. Half-hearted good images and those truly negative bad images! Shameful Jim Crow images and ideals for black folks, and mostly almost always glamourous and beautiful images for the European! 

And all that was and is included in the creative lighting, film screening, and film processing built to highlight, and accentuate white skin! You don’t believe me? Then do the research! Its a Kodak film processing technique! 

So, instead of including everyone in this massive widespread media-mind-screw of infusing images, ideals and stereotypes, and sealing in the hearts and minds of people carefully crafted subliminal typecast’ed characters. The television and film industry was and is designed to depict that Whites will Always Win! They’ll always play the hero, the lover, the intellectual, they’ll always play the dictator, the king (even if that king was an african)! The white man has it rigged where only “he” will ride off into the sunset, and be the guy who get’s the girl at the end of the film!... “Every time!”

All the while minusing out blacks (especially black males) in any kind of a hero and especially sexual senerio! There was an intentional quelling of black women with any kind of sex appeal (i,e Dorothy Dandridge, and Hazel Scott, etc), using only over weight, darker skinned, shabbily and bulky dressed (on screen) black women as A-Sexual black female characters and images. 

Black actors were always the token blacks. The comedy relief! The lazy Step-in-Fetch-it’s, or the Rochester house boy types! No American born black male would play an uncompromising leading role in films as a real hero type until Richard Rountree played Shaft in 1971! “What about Sidney Poitier?” You say! Mr. Poitier has kind of a duel citizenship as far as birth is concerned! He is Bahamian, and Floridian! Yet not an african american as if he were born here and solely raised here in america from descendent slaves! 

Much like Harry Belafonte. A man born of Caribbean immigrants! No american black males were ever allowed to act or star in productions except for the truly exceptional! People who just could not be denied. Guys like Sammy Davis Jr. for instance. And even his talent, and activities were limited to what Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack would let him do! Ask Kim Novak about “that!"

Hollywood made it where they controlled how america thought, and how the world would view and perceive black people, forever on! Taking things a step further to seal those images, Europeans went on to play fake out american indians, mexicans and types like Mickey Rooney playing an truly racist and stereotypical Chop Socky/bucktoothed Chinamen in "Breakfast at Tiffany's!" 

White men even played imaginary african heroes such as, "Tarzan, King of the Jungle." The only blacks in a Tarzan film production were usually, a large cast of black folks dressed as what they made them up to be as grass skirted natives! Natives who were always depicted as unintelligible savages and cannibals! 

And then there was"The Phantom." Another king of the Jungle type comic book and comic strip hero!

As far as art and african americans during the 1900’s. The only thing that came out of the art world as showing what black people meant to white america during Jim Crow were awful de-sexualized images of black women and men in degrading caricature form. Showing black people in completely unrealistic ways! Blacks negative images were paraded on the cover of food products like Cream of Wheat and Uncle Ben’s Rice! Framing blacks as loyal, mainly ugly, safe characters to have within their midst as subservients! This is mainly the art work that lived out of Jim Crow. 

Had it not been for great african american artist and early film makers like, Oscar Devereaux Micheaux. There wouldn't be very many positive images of blacks, anywhere from that early era in the multi media realm!

I feel that if blacks and native americans, and mexicans were allowed to be apart of the forging of the image building process in early american media. America’s views about people of color would be quite different indeed today! Race baiting films like, D.W. Griffin’s “Birth of a Nation” might not have been made. And hollywood would probably have taken a different route with its audiences! 

Had inclusion been apart of the plan in building a strong america, this would have been a much richer nation at heart! Had there been inclusion in the building of america, instead of forced work, and slave labor, america would have seen growth like never imagined; and probably not have seen or experienced any such terrible uprisings, nor any reason to protest about any kind of racial intolerance. 

There’d probably not be much singling out or profiling of folks. And maybe not many marches and such because of discrimination onto protest! 

Believe me, that beautiful wintery painting scene sitting up above this article would have been just as beautiful if everyone, who is apart of this great country had been allowed to be apart of it!     

Glenn Peppers