IPFS
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Frosty Wooldridge
More About: Politics: General ActivismThe movie: “The Butler” with Whittaker & Oprah
Last
week, Forest Whittaker and Oprah Winfrey starred in the “documentary” movie: The Butler. The story begins with a 12 year old Cecil
Gaines working on a cotton farm in the Deep South. He
watched his father shot by a callous boss while his mother (Mariah Carey) looked on in hopeless
despair.
Gaines
runs away until a hotel “server” offers him a job somewhere in North Carolina. He quickly learns the ways of the white man
and distinguishes himself as an outstanding server. Not enjoying the racism of the south, he
moved to Washington DC where his talents quickly moved him to a job in the
Dwight D. Eisenhower White House.
The
key to his success as ordered by his black boss, “You ain’t political in any
way are you?”
“No
sir,” Gaines said.
“Never,
ever speak your mind,” said the boss.
From
there, Gaines served eight presidents with honor and distinction. During his time at the White House, black
servers received 40 percent less pay than the white servers. Gaines suffered rebuffs when he brought it up
to the white boss. In later years, he
enjoyed the ear of one of the presidents who told the “boss” to give equal pay
to the black servers.
My
wife and I sat spellbound by the narrative and the plethora of stars from Robin
Williams to Jane Fonda who recreated presidents and their wives moving through
the White House. Lyndon Johnson proved a
heartless man. John Cusack’s rendition
of the surly and sulking Nixon brought back unpleasant memories for me because
I lived in Georgia during those years.
I witnessed firsthand the discrimination and racism entrenched in the
South.
In
Albany, Georgia, as soon as I stepped off the military base, I ran into
“separate but equal” drinking fountains and bathrooms. Restaurants and hotels would not serve
African-Americans. Segregated schools
dominated. Racism and segregation stood
as the norm in the South. Suddenly, a
preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King marched into towns in Mississippi,
Alabama and Georgia!
Obviously,
King changed everything and a testament to his legacy stands as his statue
overlooks the Washington Mall and we celebrate a national holiday in his name.
As
I sat in my seat remembering my youth and my experiences in Albany, Georgia in
the early 60s, I couldn’t help my deep chagrin as to the black-white dynamic in
America in 2013. While African-Americans may eat, sleep, drink, work and share
in total equality of the American Dream—a huge percentage, perhaps a third,
suffer poverty, illiteracy, joblessness, aimlessness, ghettoes filled with
drugs and violence, 7 out of 10 kids grow up fatherless—and a growing violence
of “Black flash mobs” with black on black and black on white killings-crimes.
Black journalist Orville Lloyd Douglas said,
“I'm convinced these black race films are created for a white, liberal film
audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves.
Regardless of your race, these films are unlikely to teach you anything you
don't already know. Frankly, why can't black people get over slavery? Or, at
least, why doesn't anyone want to see more contemporary portrayals of black
lives?
“The narrow range of films about the black
life experience being produced by Hollywood is actually dangerous because it
limits the imagination, it doesn't allow real progress to take place. Yet,
sadly, these roles are some of the only ones open to black talent. People want
us to cheer that black actors from The
Butler and 12 Years a Slave are
likely to be up for best actor and actress awards, yet it feels like a
throwback, almost to the Gone with the
Wind era.”
Because I taught school in the inner city for
two years, I understand firsthand the impacts of fatherless children,
entrenched poverty, illiteracy, joblessness and cultural displacement.
After Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society,
welfare, food stamps, affirmative action, assisted housing, aid to dependent
children, quotas and trillions of dollars—too much of Black America faces
enormous failures and challenges.
At this point in our history, our
African-American President Barack Obama, along with our African-American Attorney
General Eric Holder and other prominent black senators and House members, which
includes the Black Caucus, need to marshal their intellects, talents and
ideas—to create jobs commensurate to mental-educational abilities of minorities,
welfare to workfare jobs and decent housing rather than high rise projects that
morph into ghettoes.
Unfortunately,
Obama “waits” for “hope and change” when he sits at the most powerful desk in
the world: office of the U.S. presidency.
He must take action instead of talking about taking action. After nearly five years as the most powerful
leader in the world, he fails his black-Latino and poor white constituents.
If our leaders fail, we may find intractable
poverty, illiteracy, enormous welfare birth rates, and crime among poor whites,
blacks and Latinos to such an extent that we cannot solve the problem.
Without solving these glitches, we will
devolve into a third world country that continues to grow its population via
endless and senseless immigration of 1.5 million third world immigrants
annually. It’s already happening at the current 1.2 million legal immigrants
annually. If the amnesty bill 744
passes, we most definitely seal our fate as an overwhelmed, overcrowded,
over-immigrated, water depleted, energy exhausted, polluted and unsustainable
civilization where everyone faces an uncertain life.
Even “The Butler” won’t be able to find a job
in the years ahead.
Solutions:
1. Retract our bases
and military personnel from over 700 bases around the world that costs us
trillions of dollars with no benefit to America. We cannot remain the “policeman” of the
world. We cannot maintain an empire and
hope to survive as a civilization.
2. We cannot
continue forever wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the looming Syrian
debacle—that destroy our best and brightest, our resources and our financial
wellbeing as a country.
3. We must create
new educational models like all boy and all girl schools where academics become
the key aspect of any youth’s life.
4. Stop importing
100,000 third world immigrants every 30 days into America. We cannot educate
our citizens and the rest of the world at the same time. Reduce all immigration to less than 100,000
annually. We cannot possibly employ our
own citizens with the current rates of immigration flooding the job markets
especially with unskilled workers who displace our own unskilled citizens.
5. We must move
welfare and food stamps to workfare and an eight hour day of workfare to get
something done to improve our cities, housing and infrastructure. Use welfare for job training instead of
allowing recipients no responsibility other than sitting home and watching TV
while the rest of us work. We cannot
continue to waste a “welfare” workforce.
6. We must teach and
implement personal accountability and personal responsibility in our
youth.
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