In the 2007 Denzel Washington directed film The Great Debaters, James Farmer Jr., played by Denzel Whitaker, comes-of-age. He bears witness to violence against African Americans – and Black triumph over Southern Horrors. He sees a Black man lynched, his burned body still smoldering as he falls from a tree limb into a pyre – and he stands with his peers as they, fully human and oh so excellent, emerge from the Texas backwoods as the best debating team in the US.
He also watches his father kill a pig.
In this scene, the happy family, whole and beaming in the glow of uplift, drive along a country dirt road. The family patriarch, James Farmer, Sr., mistakenly hits a hog, and Farmer, Jr, defying his father’s order to stay in the car, watches as his father lowers his eyes, glances fearfully at his wife, and hands over his entire paycheck to a poor white racist too stupid to know what the term “endorse” means.
It is, for the eldest son, A Teachable Moment. The Lesson: Ignorant and poor, funky and crass, the white male (even the young white boy who also witnesses the scene) is superior.
But Farmer, Jr. has another, related teachable moment in the film. When Melvin B. Tolson, played by Washington, is arrested for union organizing across racial lines, the entire Black side of town seems to converge in front of the jailhouse to demand Tolson’s immediate release.
In this scene, Farmer, Jr. witnesses Black activism. He witnesses Black defiance.
Fired by the passion and fervor of Tolson’s freedom, and his father’s elegant role in liberating the professor and debate team leader (and, symbolically, the reasoned, articulate voice of righteous Black manhood), Farmer, Jr. approaches the same white man who emasculated his father over the dead pig. “That pig wasn’t worth $25,” Farmer, Jr. insists, getting all up in the white man’s face. “You owe my father some money.”
It’s a great sequence in a wonderful film; and, if the nation is going to seriously take on Obama’s suggestion that Gates’ arrest is A Teachable Moment in contemporary America, Lesson One might as well start with this movie.
At the jailhouse, Farmer, Sr., a leader of immense esteem in the African American community, is expected to genuflect before a man who, but for his white skin and badge, would have no social power or moral authority over him, he who was the first African American Texan to earn a doctorate and a church deacon.
Farmer, Sr. was born in 1886. Gates was born in 1950. And not much has changed in 2009.
On his porch, Gates, Jr., a leader of immense esteem in the African American community, is expected to genuflect before a man who, but for his white skin and badge would have no social power or moral authority over him, he who is the first African American Mellon Fellowship winner and Director of the DuBois Institute at Harvard.
Just as Farmer, Sr. had to lower his gaze, modulate his voice, move slowly, and carefully negotiate the tricky racial and class terrain on which the dead pig lay, Gates, Jr. is derided by conservative pundits for his arrogance.
Uppity ivory tower negroes indeed.
According to Eric Adams, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and a New York State Senator:
“It is not against the law to be arrogant. Police can’t use their authority because they’re upset. It is not a crime to be arrogant… If I arrested everyone that I gave a parking ticket to that called me out in vulgar language… a whole lot of people would be in jail. What you must understand is, it is not a crime to talk back to a police officer, specifically in your home…”
The police officer did act “stupidly.” He tried to arrest a man he thought he could hassle for what he perceived as disrespect. He just had no idea which uppity ivory tower negro he was messing with.
This is a wonderful opportunity for discourse, a chance for us to cross the great racial divide and share experience, reason. Even debate.
It is not, however, a time to back-step on the tricky issues the media-frenzy has raised. It is not a time for the lowered gaze, a “yassuh” or a “yes, sir,” or a shuffle along. We should, all of us, meet on the jailhouse step, over the dead hog, along the dirt road, online, and around our kitchen tables to get real about racial profiling, physical; emotional; and psychological violence against people of color, and (ahem) the pig(s).
It is a time for coming-of-age. The unlettered ignorance that demands Black subservience will no longer be tolerated. We have gathered to liberate ourselves. And we shall.