Is the black anger correct -- and to what degree: totally?.., partly?

I'm just not sure where I land on this tarmac. It's indeed unfortunate that nobody of color was nominated the last two years. But that's just the last two years. It's commonplace for black actors to be nominated and sometimes win nowadays -- so it's not like it's never happening. (A few short years ago, 3 out of the 4 acting Oscar winners were black).

And yet only 2% of the Academy being black is clearly not enough (94% are white, 77% are male).

That's an issue, and it needs fixing.

Yet something about all the outrage over this feels "off" a bit, although my leftist impulses disincline me to say why. But I'll try, so look out:


I saw the Tony Rock paparazzi video piece on 'TMZ', and the way he delivers his "we bent over backwards for you white people... just *beep* all o' y'all!" is, frankly, typical of a common attitude from the America black population which views all whites and white establishment as not simply evil, undiluted racists but also as malevolent parents who are refusing to let the angry adolescent take the car out on Friday night, and using the plantation history as a grounds for their complaint.

Not saying there's not a valid problem, but Jada's and Tony's "we don't need your approval!" would play a lot better with me if only it were true.

But they do. Incessantly. They just do.

Let's face it, a lengthy history of abuse nearly always results in a later pattern of self-absorption, whether it applies to the individual or a culture. Those scars go with the territory. And a number of black leaders have addressed the PTSD in the African American community, rage handed down from generation to generation such that that rage is no longer reliably connected to the original offense, and one is no longer always able to distinguish what qualifies as valid abuse and neglect in the present and what doesn't.

I'm not waving away the significance of 400 years of oppression. But as one of my black friends said snarkily after a lost weekend of binge-watching PEOPLE'S COURT reruns: "black people need a lot of attention."

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