Race, Segregation, and Sectarianism in American Cinema
Due to the capitalistically orchestrated scourge of illiteratization and the machinations of the mass media, only a small percentage of Americans understand Washington’s penchant for launching illegal wars of aggression, and with the exception of the Gaza genocide and the Vietnam War the overwhelming majority of the population seldom has any understanding of what their army and intelligence services do abroad.
Even less understood – and this is a global phenomenon – is that while Washington delights in stoking sectarianism in Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Syria and Iraq they are equally fond of stoking ethno-sectarian hatreds at home. This is because a key pillar of post-Cold War American imperial strategy has been to relentlessly pursue the ancient Roman tactic of divide and conquer, which the deep state pursues in Los Angeles and Brooklyn with the same relish as they deploy these tactics in Damascus and Baghdad.
In addition to the deplorable political ignorance of the general population, which presents a huge obstacle in bringing some semblance of sanity to US foreign policy, is the fact that workers in the United States are preoccupied with fighting each other. Ultimately, these plagues of tribalism and sectarianism threaten the liberty of the American people precisely as they threaten the sovereignty of countries that fall within the empire’s inexorable crosshairs.
This pitiable state of affairs is addressed in the following nuanced and thought-provoking films.
* These reviews may contain spoilers.
Tyson, directed by James Toback (2008)
In Tyson, James Toback has given us an exceptionally well-executed film about former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, but it is much more than that. For this nuanced and poignant documentary is above all about the defeat of the Civil Rights Movement and the perpetuation of the infernal institution of segregation in America.
Tyson grew up in the Bedford–Stuyvesant and Brownsville sections of Brooklyn, both segregated and crime-ridden ghettos, the latter particularly so. Abandoned by the state, many children in these neighborhoods are condemned to grow up in a war zone bereft of a functioning public school system and a nurturing environment with which to develop into ethical and learned human beings.
As Toback vividly illustrates, Tyson is fashioned from the bloody clay of an extremely violent world, where guns and drugs are the norm but literature and the rule of law are absent, and he is wholly and indelibly a product of this environment.
If any child, regardless of ethnicity, language, or religion were to experience their formative years in an anarchic crime-ridden neighborhood devoid of books yet saturated with gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes it is highly probable that such a child will end up dead, in jail, or strung out on drugs, and this is precisely the fate that befalls the overwhelming majority of Mike Tyson’s childhood friends.
Drunk on The New York Times and CNN, liberals have betrayed their once unshakable belief in integration, and if we are to survive as a society it is vital that we return to the ideals and principles of the ‘60s integrationists. Indeed, these values, which have been abandoned by white liberals and black nationalists alike, must be restored if we are to have any future as a nation. As Martin Luther King once said:
“There is no such thing as separate but equal. Separation, segregation, inevitably makes for inequality, and I think that is the first reason why segregation is evil, because it inevitably makes for inequality.”
Often speaking with integrity and perspicacity, Tyson explains how terrifying it was growing up in inner-city Brooklyn, and how he was forced to learn how to defend himself. How can we call ourselves a democracy when the only thing we teach so many of our young people is how to be a gangster (both in and out of uniform) and beat people up?
A modern gladiator, this child of war embodies a nation that was born in violence, gorged itself on violence, and has become addicted to violence. Raised in such a cannibalistic vortex, Tyson comes to represent the personification of this crucible of insatiable, voracious, and seemingly never-ending violence.
Hemingway once wrote in A Farewell to Arms that “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.” The dangerous streets that molded Tyson into an explosive and ruthless boxer also deprived him of a childhood with safe streets and a good education, breaking something inside of him forever.
Ultimately, Tyson tells the story of a man forged into an almost indomitable boxer, but who is simultaneously grievously debased and dehumanized by the scourge of racial segregation, an evil once acknowledged by all liberals as immoral, indefensible, and the quintessence of racism.
Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock, directed by Marc Levin (1994)
A harrowing journey into the gang ravaged world of Little Rock, Arkansas, in the early ‘90s, Marc Levin unveils an almost post-apocalyptic wasteland where society has disintegrated, a significant percentage of the teenage population has joined gangs, and where disagreements are settled with neither words nor fisticuffs, but with bullets.
We travel with Steve Nawojczyk, the county coroner, as he visits some of the gangs and pleads with them to end the violence. Showing these unruly adolescents photographs of deceased gang members who have lost their lives in a fusillade of bullets, he is granted safe passage, allowing him to meet with various factions of Bloods, Crips, and the Hoover Folk gang (the latter interestingly, being multi-racial).
Undoubtedly, many of these kids hail from broken homes. All are a product of broken communities, a broken education system, a broken economy and a broken society. They join gangs in part out of a need for protection, but also for the same reason people join cults: out of a deep-seated yearning for community, identity, and a sense of purpose. Having been raised in a destitute, nihilistic, and deindustrialized wasteland with a paucity of books and an overabundance of guns and drugs, these are children that have devolved into a feral state.
Abandoned by the government and raised with a lack of spiritual and intellectual guidance, demonic rap lyrics have replaced Shakespeare; and the gun, the pen.
Their English emblematic of a reversion to a preliterate primordial state revealing an absence of logic, foresight, connection to the written word, or a moral tradition.
The ruthless nature of their business practices serving as a microcosm for the behavior of multinational corporations, these gun-slinging adolescents defend their turf at all costs, while simultaneously seeking avenues of expansion into new hunting grounds.
So shocking is the dehumanization of these morally debased youths that there are times when the documentary seems like a striking example of the found footage genre – and a terrifying one at that.
Gran Torino, directed by Clint Eastwood (2008); starring Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her and Christopher Carley
One of the great films about segregation and tribalism in multicultural America, Clint Eastwood has given us a work of considerable cinematic power. Set in a Detroit suburb, we see how the former industrial powerhouse has degenerated into a zone of deindustrialization, poverty, and a withering of collective memory leading to the rise of black, Mexican, and Hmong gangs. (There are no white gangs, as that would be “racist.”)
The embittered protagonist, Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), has witnessed all of his American neighbors either dying or abandoning the neighborhood due to the city’s socioeconomic decline along with more and more Hmong simultaneously moving in, to the point where he not only finds himself a minority, but in many respects an actual foreigner in his own backyard.
His bitterness is also tied to painful emotional scars from the Korean War of which he is a veteran, and he is haunted by some of the terrible things he did in that conflict.
The wisdom of Gran Torino is how it underscores the fact that no matter how much multiculturalism and identity politics foment division and ghettoization, in the end good will seek out good and evil will gravitate towards evil. Indeed, just as anti-Zionist Jews and Zionist Jews despise one another, and millions of Sunnis will resist, sometimes with force, Takfiri groups such as ISIS and Al-Nusra Front, Hmong are at war with Hmong within this Detroit Hmong community.
(Tens of thousands of Hmong were trained by the CIA to conduct military operations against the North Vietnamese Army and the Pathet Lao. Following the communist victory many were forced into exile, with hundreds of thousands eventually finding their way to the US).
Estranged from his family and angry over his state going to hell in a handbasket, our ever cantankerous protagonist ends up forming an unlikely friendship with a Hmong family that lives next door. The newcomers are predominantly peaceful and law-abiding. However, the neighborhood is being terrorized by a Hmong gang, and Walt, in what is vaguely reminiscent of a Western, takes a stand to defend his town from these ruffians.
As his friendship with the Hmong family evolves, Walt takes the young Hmong American Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) under his wing and teaches him to survive, as it can be very difficult for immigrant kids to navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood without an American adult to advise them. Walt’s mentorship of Thao helps the neophyte to more properly integrate into American society, acquire a profession, and avoid the dangerous gang culture. Hence, out of the ashes of a national conflagration brought about by offshoring, deunionization, and identity politics a new American is born.
In a sense this internecine Hmong conflict mirrors Walt’s alienation from his own family, as the rise of the multicultural society has winners and losers, and invariably impacts Americans in radically different ways.
Of great significance is Walt’s language in contrast with his actions. While neoliberal cultists devote enormous amounts of time and energy into policing language while simultaneously backing educational policies that make Americans of color and immigrant youth as illiterate and dehumanized as possible, Walt’s language is unabashedly politically incorrect, yet he repeatedly saves the life of Thao, and in cowboy-like fashion defends the community from a malevolent and rapacious entity.
As vividly portrayed in Gran Torino, the rise of ethnic gangs is deeply emblematic of an unraveling of the social fabric, destroys malleable youths and their families, and unbeknownst to these brigands of unchained capital, bestows unprecedented powers on the oligarchy.
Boyz in the Hood, directed by John Singleton (1991); starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Morris Chestnut and Ice Cube
A moving film about life in the American inner city, Boyz in the Hood gives a compassionate portrayal of the tribulations of black inner-city youth who grow up in an urban wilderness which, aggressive policing aside, has essentially been abandoned by the federal government.
Set in the Crenshaw district of South Central Los Angeles, this godless cemetery anchored within the shadow of a financially teetering America, is prevented from completely flatlining economically only because of the illicit drug trade which traps the locals in an environment of lawlessness and the ever-present threat of violence. Rival gangs compete for territory and regularly engage in shootouts with one another, and as evidenced by the police helicopters incessantly droning overhead, this pervasive criminality gives the authorities an excuse to place the neighborhood under de facto martial law.
Locked in a state of ghettoization and cut off from the rest of the country, the rule of law has been usurped by the law of the streets. Public schools that dumb down to the lowest possible level, gun and liquor stores on every corner, and gangster rap exacerbate the crisis. Growing up in such a neighborhood is not all that different from growing up amidst a civil war, and it is likely that many of these youths develop PTSD due to living in a heightened state of fear for prolonged periods of time.
Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr) is the film’s protagonist, and in many respects the story is seen through his eyes. Sent to live with the redoubtable Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne), the education he receives from his father is intellectually limited and tainted with black nationalism, yet he at least has someone to lay down certain rules designed to keep him out of jail and from being shot, parenting which many of the other children in the neighborhood do not receive.
While Tre’s journey from childhood to adulthood serves as the film’s foundation, John Singleton (who grew up in this very neighborhood) fashions a particularly tragic character in that of Doughboy (Ice Cube), who grows up with neither a father nor an education, and whose entire identity revolves around loyalty to his brother and their close-knit group of friends, an extreme form of tribalism tied to unfettered privatization and a dissolution of the nation state.
Ignorant not only of geopolitics but of life outside his neighborhood, Doughboy also grows up under the roof of an abusive mother, the result of which is a young man with a damaged psyche and a contempt for the opposite sex. Prone to numbing his rage through hard liquor, he harbors an obsessive desire to defend his posse from a rival gang, and this places him on an inexorable path to brutality and destruction.
When most people think of sectarianism in America they tend to think of violence erupting between Americans and immigrants, or between blacks and whites. Yet as Boyz in the Hood demonstrates, the ruling establishment’s lust for instigating tribalism is unquenchable, the apogee of which is on full display here with the killing of black men at the hands of other black men.
Why, one might ask, does Washington not do more to stop this grievous gyre of bloodshed? The answer mirrors the question as to why they fail to do more to stop the violence in Syria, Libya, or Palestine: they do not want to.
(The Trump administration would like to stop the violence in Ukraine, but only so that they can buy time to reconstitute Banderite military capability).
That the American ruling establishment manages to come up with around a trillion dollars a year to spend on the military industrial complex and the maintenance of over 800 bases around the world, yet not a single dime for Doughboy and his friends to be taught literature, history, music and art in a safe environment devoid of guns and drugs underscores the unmitigated depravity of contemporary American society.
How many Doughboys are in America, youths kicked to the curb like stray dogs, forced to grow up in a state of unrelenting terror, and bereft of moral guidance, education, and love?
El Norte, directed by Gregory Nava (1983); starring Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, David Villalpando, and Ernesto Gómez Cruz
A superb film about the inextricable connection between barbarous US foreign policies and Washington’s centuries-old love affair with cheap labor and pitting workers against one another, El Norte tells the story of a family of Mayan Indians destroyed by one of many murderous Guatemalan juntas propped up by the American ruling establishment during the blood-soaked decades following the fateful CIA putsch that ousted Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.
The story revolves around the trials of two siblings, Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) and Enrique (David Villalpando), whose village is annihilated by death squads that hunted Indians and socialists like the Nazis hunted Jews and communists. Two of the only members of their village to survive the massacre, they decide to flee north – to the land of milk and honey – or so they naively believe.
After a dangerous journey through Mexico they finally arrive in Los Angeles and end up living in a slum with fellow undocumented migrants. The Luciferian call of the God of Money beckons mesmerically beyond the sickly lights of the urban wasteland testing the bonds of these green and hapless siblings. At particular risk is the childlike Enrique, as he proves to be particularly impressionable in this strange new land fraught with dangers that he cannot even conceive of.
Due to their poor English and nonexistent knowledge of American politics and culture the newcomers are ripe for exploitation, and do not understand that they are being used to depress the wages of struggling Americans.
Reminiscent of black-on-black violence, the authorities pit Mexicans and Central Americans against Mexican Americans, underscoring the brutal dog-eat-dog world that is the modern American workplace. Indeed, the entire sordid human trafficking business neoliberals happily turn a blind eye to is laid bare, replete with coyotes who deliver their charges over to an illegal alien headhunter in exchange for remuneration, who in turn farms out these disoriented individuals to restaurants, construction companies, and sweatshops.
While the ’54 coup was a bonanza for American companies that did business in Guatemala and for Guatemalan oligarchs, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans went on to lose their lives in the decades of brutal repression that followed, an oft-forgotten genocide engaged with wisdom and compassion in this seminal work.
And yet these Latin American dirty wars also enriched American plutocrats at home due to the waves of immigration that inevitably followed, although during the years of the worst Guatemalan human rights abuses it was difficult for the refugees spawned by this carnage to enter the United States. Undoubtedly, this was tied to the fact that Washington wanted to keep Americans in the dark about the particularly ghastly bloodbath they had unleashed – even by their standards. Consequently, Rosa and Enrique are forced to constantly lie and say that they are Mexicans to avoid summary deportation.
With an elegant cinematography and heartfelt acting, El Norte encapsulates the horror of what can unfold when oligarchs of the global south and the Western elites join forces to defend their economic interests without regard for either international law or basic human morality.
Not content with destroying their village and forcing such tender souls into exile, satanic oligarchic forces then seek to morally degrade these vulnerable human beings by luring them into a diluvial wasteland drowning in materialism, consumerism, careerism and atomization. Tragic, heartbreaking, and unforgettable Gregory Nava has bequeathed us a work of breathtaking and timeless cinematic beauty.
Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee (1989); starring Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
Regarded by many as Spike Lee’s magnum opus, Do the Right Thing tells the story of an entirely realistic and believable race riot that takes place in the Bedford–Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, NY, (also known to New Yorkers as Bed–Stuy). Lee uses local slang to create a distinctive rhythm to the dialogue, and a musical screenplay anchors this iconic work of cinema.
One of the most intriguing films about contemporary American race relations, Do the Right Thing was released the same year as the US invasion of Panama and a year prior to George H.W. Bush’s attack on Iraq (i.e., “The Gulf War”). Nevertheless, due to the destruction of the public schools and relentless race-baiting by the ruling establishment, the characters in this tragedy are oblivious to these more pressing problems.
Denied a working knowledge of the humanities and manipulated by an unseen hand, they are unable to intellectually process Washington’s imperial bloodlust, the return of segregation spearheaded by a new form of racism, the dismantling of the New Deal, deindustrialization, unfettered privatization, and the appalling state of American health care and education. Instead, they engage in endless heated quarrels over whether the local Italian American pizza joint, Sal’s Pizzeria, should have pictures of black people on the wall, or whether the predominantly black locals should be allowed to play their music in Sal’s pizza parlor.
Not without controversy, some have argued that Spike Lee is taking the black nationalist position that the anti-white riot which marks the film’s culmination is justified, as he plays the character of Mookie who commits the initial act of violence which serves as the spark that sets off the powder keg. Irregardless of his personal views on the matter, the film can be interpreted in many different ways, and there is sufficient material here that can be used to take a contrary position.
A microcosm of a deeply divided and ghettoized America, Do the Right Thing demonstrates how the ruling establishment keeps these Brooklyn denizens, who are overwhelmingly poor and uneducated, at one another’s throats by having white cops aggressively patrol black communities, while simultaneously pitting ordinary black folks against ordinary white folks – a strategy simultaneously deployed in the prison system – albeit in a more extreme and violent manner.
Many things conspire to triggering the riot:
Mookie, who works as a pizza delivery guy at Sal’s, is frustrated by the lack of better job opportunities, and this frustration permeates the neighborhood
Immediately prior to the riot, a white cop murders a young black man by placing him in a chokehold in front of outraged members of the community; this act of police brutality is interconnected with a racially charged incident that takes place inside the pizzeria
Many of the Bed-Stuy natives resent small businesses in their neighborhood that are owned by those they deem outsiders – even if they are fellow Americans
Sal, and especially his younger son, are generally respectful towards the locals; however, his older son harbors openly racist views towards them
As a result of the dismantling of the American canon and the rise of the anti-humanities, the glue that once held Americans together as a nation has largely disintegrated; as a result, the majority of these characters place their tribal identity before an American identity
It is very hot
A motif that runs throughout the film is the Public Enemy song “Fight the Power,” which dominates the soundtrack and symbolizes the defeat of the Civil Rights Movement and the unraveling of America into a morass of segregation, anti-white jihad, and sectarianization. Suffice to say, “the power” is a reference to white America – not the ruling establishment.
Do the Right Thing boasts a variety of quirky and colorful characters. Da Mayor (executed masterfully by Ossie Davis) is of particular significance as he is a modern-day seer reminiscent of Cassandra and Laocoon, both of whom tried to warn their fellow Trojans about the dangers of accepting the Trojan Horse, resulting in the former being dismissed as insane and the latter being murdered by serpents sent by Athena whose sympathies lay with the Greeks. What emerges from the Neoliberal Horse isn’t a unit of elite Achaean warriors but black nationalism, identity politics, and an inverted Jim Crow. The kindly Da Mayor embodies wisdom and compassion, yet is rewarded for his efforts with nothing but mockery and ridicule. (Tiresias and Prometheus are also examples of seers and sages in Graeco-Roman mythology that are punished for revealing the truth).
Additionally, there are Koreans and Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood who exhibit a tendency to live more within their respective tribes than within a broader American community (the former due to a significant language barrier); and there are Feminisis jihadis, hysterical and unruly, that delight in incessantly berating their men for not earning more money and for being ne’er-do-wells in the wondrous “new economy.” Consequently, not only are different ethnicities and nationalities pitted against one another, but women and men are pitted against one another as well, truly resulting in a war of all against all.
Has this capitalistically orchestrated dissolution of any semblance of national cohesion and collective memory brought about by multiculturalism achieved the promised liberation of the American worker? Neoliberal cultists, who have fanatically backed uncontrolled immigration for decades along with the dismantling of the humanities and their usurpation by the multicultural curriculum and identity studies, might reflect on who really benefits from the ethnic hatreds and demise of solidarity that these policies have wrought.
Conclusion
Understanding Washington’s love affair with destabilizing national identities is foundational to understanding how they maintain hegemony, both domestically, where the emphasis is on generating low-level ethno-sectarian conflict along with gang-related violence within certain segregated communities, and within the outer reaches of the empire where the sectarianism often takes on religious connotations.
Whether it is Sunnis and Shiites killing one another in Iraq, Russophiles and Banderites battling for the soul of Ukraine (a polarization that has ethnic, religious, and linguistic ramifications), Libyans killing Libyans, or African Americans and Italian Americans duking it out in Brooklyn the evil angels of tribalism and sectarianism destroy all that are subsumed beneath their remorseless wicked shroud.
Should the pitting of brother against brother pass the point of no return, societies can fracture, and even disintegrate.
As a consequence of this cataclysmic unraveling Americans are increasingly enslaved to unbridled privatization, unprecedented forms of economic inequality, moral degradation, extreme atomization, an eviscerated public education system, and above all, a profound societal fragmentation all of which uncage the plutocracy to sack and pillage without any checks on their natural predilection to embrace a ruthless, authoritarian, and diabolical order.
