‘Get Out’ of America
18th April 2017 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
After viewing the trailers, which were somewhat confusing and purposely vague, I really didn’t want to see the film Get Out. There was something creepy and very disturbing about the TV ads about the film that I just couldn’t put my finger on.
But then a couple of my friends and colleagues told me that not seeing it was not an option, that I needed to see it sooner rather than later.
When I did, I figured out why.
Get Out is a very disturbing and unsettling film that captures the current state of “race relations” in America better than most of the films on the silver screen today. It unearths some very old practices in America that date back to the days when this nation was called the New World.
It gives the world a vivid glimpse of America’s underbelly, and shines a spotlight on unseemly realities that people don’t talk about at parties or over a meal.
While I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it yet, I will say that Get Out is a film that every brother and sister needs to see in order to better grasp what people of African descent and white people of good will are dealing with in these very Disunited States.
As the descendants of a proud African people who were kidnapped, bought and sold on the auction block like cattle, it should come as no surprise to Black people today that there are still white people in the U.S. who see nothing wrong with making Black and Brown people disappear, slaughtering us like farm animals and selling our body parts on the open market.
It’s a wake-up call for those who, for whatever reason, have refused to see the SCOTUS’ weakening of the Voting Rights Act, privatization of the nation’s public schools, the Koch brothers’ courtship of the United Negro College Fund, mass incarceration and the rise of President Donald Trump for what these things represent: a return to the glory days of the past when Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and poor people had no rights that wealthy white men were bound by law to respect and the classification of Black people as three-fifths human for taxation and public funding purposes.
With the Feds finding more than 1,000 Black bodies in a Detroit warehouse and other warehouses and buyers in cities like Chicago and Las Vegas, isn’t it way past time for Black folks to wake up and smell the genocide.
Perhaps it’s time for a new bumper sticker and T-shirt campaign that says “Black Livestock Matters”… Just a thought.
Anyway, I got some questions for y’all.
• Who thinks that the same wealthy campaign contributors who control most local Black elected officials also don’t control most local white elected officials?
• When are we going to stop allowing the powers that be to handpick our leaders, recruit Black political candidates to do their bidding and pay Black folks with no self-respect or sense of who they are to get into mayoral, City Council and legislative races to split the Black vote and make it easier for another white or compromised Black candidate to win an election?
• Who could possibly believe that it makes more sense to further criminalize and marginalize the majority of the residents of this city with a $40 million crime initiative that puts cameras everywhere than to spend at least part of that money improving educational and economic opportunities for those in this city who need help the most?
• When did elected officials, the medical profession, law enforcement agencies and the mainstream media start depicting and treating heroin addicts like humans?
• How close to completely dismantling the entire federal government will President Donald Trump get before people finally figure out that he did not legitimately win November’s presidential election?
• If Donald Trump is declared an illegitimate president, what happens to hiss Supreme Court appointment(s)?
• Did anyone notice how quickly White House spokesman Sean Spicer changed his tune after suggesting that Syria’s use of deadly nerve gas makes it worse than Adolf Hitler during his reign of terror and murder in Nazi Germany?
• What is up with all the bickering, cattiness and hostility that was recently on display at the April 6 New Orleans City Council meeting?
• Why isn’t the City of New Orleans lifting a finger to help African-American elders hold onto the homes they worked all their lives to build and/or buy rather than auctioning these homes off to house-flippers, profiteers and carpetbaggers for just pennies on the dollar?
• Who’s policing the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board as it continues to give residents less customer service at a higher rate and allows overtime pay abuse and the use of outside contractors to do work that S&WB engineers are more than willing and capable of doing?
• How many elected officials who say they want to see the Confederate-era monuments relocated to other sites would be willing to shell out $10,000 to make that happen?
• Who thinks Louisiana voters or President Donald Trump should decide what the City of New Orleans does with monuments, statues and landmarks that the overwhelming majority of this city’s residents find to be offensive?
• How many major campaign contributors who use their contributions as a means of controlling local resources and controlling public education and business development in New Orleans, hail from families who made a killing off the enslavement, trafficking, sale, subjugation and exploitation of African women men and children in Haiti and antebellum New Orleans?
This article originally published in the April 17, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
