The piece below was written by a columnist that I don't always agree with, but in this case I agree with a lot of what he says.
I'm not really sure when Black folks stopped believing that hard work, studying and having a command of language is somehow selling out.
An inspiration, beyond debate
Monday, December 31st 2007, 4:00 AM
Monday, December 31st 2007, 4:00 AM
By Stanley Crouch
Our popular culture has a lot of trouble delivering affirmative feelings about what we once considered good, basic values. Consumed by cynicism, we seem embarrassed by our own goodwill. We leap at every opportunity to dismiss the better angels of our nature as no more than corny - or as the way a simpleton might see the world.
The affliction can be particularly serious in the black community.
In that context, "The Great Debaters" - starring and directed by Denzel Washington, who plays a poet who leads an all-black East Texas college debate team - is an important American film. Set in 1935, it shows that there is a substantial intellectual tradition from which black people come. That tradition was nurtured by the many black colleges that sprang up throughout the South after the Civil War. Those schools were intended to do the heroic job of educating a mass of Americans who had been enslaved for 250 years in situations where being caught reading or learning to read could result in violent consequences.
In showing black people going to college, thinking about books and enjoying rich interior, intellectual lives, "The Great Debaters" refutes the lazy, narrow stereotypes that have become so common in our time. Those reflexes have been reestablished in hip hop, far too much black comedy and the ongoing denigration of black Americans in television and film, where the expected characters are almost always buffoons, knuckleheads or hoochie mamas.
Things have gotten so bad that black authenticity is regularly defined as rude, criminal, contemptuous of education and disrespectful. Any other vision of black American culture is dismissed as "white" or suffering from an overdose of "white middle-class values."
That is the worst misunderstanding of all: White people are expected to have the right information; black people are expected to have nothing more than a lot of foul-mouthed sass and some kind of rhythm. It seems we have stumbled into a valley of stupidity where those at the bottom are told that embracing so-called middle-class values dilutes their "authenticity."
Let's straighten this out. There is no such thing as "white middle-class values." There are only middle-class values - and they can be had by any ethnic group, any religion and anyone else who believes those values fit them. Belief in education, hard work, stable families, hygiene and scientifically proven solutions to our common problems (rather than superstition) should never be color-coded.
"The Great Debaters" just might inspirationally speak to the misled black people among us. And it might speak to others who think that they are doing black people a favor by accepting substandard performance and hostility to subtle expression as parts of "urban culture."
In the film, Washington's character, Melvin Tolson, never gives the impression that books or learning or mastering the English language are worthless attempts to get a pass into another ethnic group. Rather, he inspires his students to pursue the sophistication of an educated inner life.
In other words, he connects them not to the black experience - but to the all-inclusive majesty of the human condition. It should come as no surprise that the film's producer is one Oprah Winfrey, whose career has proven that the particular and the universal do not have to be at odds.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood produced a string of movies that emphasized the glories of learning and the potential across all classes and backgrounds. Those films helped this country understand its possibilities and part of its mission.
"Debaters" continues that tradition. Inspirational stories like it may be one small part of what we need to wake up for the new global economic competition in which we find ourselves. Many predict that competitors like the Chinese will give us no more than a generation before sending us to the back of the class.
Our popular culture has a lot of trouble delivering affirmative feelings about what we once considered good, basic values. Consumed by cynicism, we seem embarrassed by our own goodwill. We leap at every opportunity to dismiss the better angels of our nature as no more than corny - or as the way a simpleton might see the world.
The affliction can be particularly serious in the black community.
In that context, "The Great Debaters" - starring and directed by Denzel Washington, who plays a poet who leads an all-black East Texas college debate team - is an important American film. Set in 1935, it shows that there is a substantial intellectual tradition from which black people come. That tradition was nurtured by the many black colleges that sprang up throughout the South after the Civil War. Those schools were intended to do the heroic job of educating a mass of Americans who had been enslaved for 250 years in situations where being caught reading or learning to read could result in violent consequences.
In showing black people going to college, thinking about books and enjoying rich interior, intellectual lives, "The Great Debaters" refutes the lazy, narrow stereotypes that have become so common in our time. Those reflexes have been reestablished in hip hop, far too much black comedy and the ongoing denigration of black Americans in television and film, where the expected characters are almost always buffoons, knuckleheads or hoochie mamas.
Things have gotten so bad that black authenticity is regularly defined as rude, criminal, contemptuous of education and disrespectful. Any other vision of black American culture is dismissed as "white" or suffering from an overdose of "white middle-class values."
That is the worst misunderstanding of all: White people are expected to have the right information; black people are expected to have nothing more than a lot of foul-mouthed sass and some kind of rhythm. It seems we have stumbled into a valley of stupidity where those at the bottom are told that embracing so-called middle-class values dilutes their "authenticity."
Let's straighten this out. There is no such thing as "white middle-class values." There are only middle-class values - and they can be had by any ethnic group, any religion and anyone else who believes those values fit them. Belief in education, hard work, stable families, hygiene and scientifically proven solutions to our common problems (rather than superstition) should never be color-coded.
"The Great Debaters" just might inspirationally speak to the misled black people among us. And it might speak to others who think that they are doing black people a favor by accepting substandard performance and hostility to subtle expression as parts of "urban culture."
In the film, Washington's character, Melvin Tolson, never gives the impression that books or learning or mastering the English language are worthless attempts to get a pass into another ethnic group. Rather, he inspires his students to pursue the sophistication of an educated inner life.
In other words, he connects them not to the black experience - but to the all-inclusive majesty of the human condition. It should come as no surprise that the film's producer is one Oprah Winfrey, whose career has proven that the particular and the universal do not have to be at odds.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood produced a string of movies that emphasized the glories of learning and the potential across all classes and backgrounds. Those films helped this country understand its possibilities and part of its mission.
"Debaters" continues that tradition. Inspirational stories like it may be one small part of what we need to wake up for the new global economic competition in which we find ourselves. Many predict that competitors like the Chinese will give us no more than a generation before sending us to the back of the class.
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