The African-American male as a human being

In the early hours of Jan. 1, 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African-American man, was shot in the back while being held by police at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, Calif. He later died. In the days and weeks following, Grant was alternately labeled a saint or a villain, a loving father or a drug dealer. Ryan Coogler’s extraordinary debut film shows that he was actually a complicated human being. 

What makes the film Fruitvale Station important is that it avoids the polarizing, simplistic notion that a person is only either a saint or a villain. Coogler shows Grant’s humanity: He is a loving father and a convicted felon; he loves his girlfriend but cheated on her; he loves his mother but lies to her.

The film opens with a cellphone video taken by a bystander of the actual Oscar Grant being shot. Then we switch to Dec. 31, 2008, the last day of his life, and watch Michael B. Jordan’s remarkable portrayal of Grant.

On the verge of a new year and only three months out of prison, Oscar is looking to change his life, to begin anew. He tells his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), that he is committed to her and their daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal).

After dropping off Tatiana at preschool and Sophina at work, he goes to a grocery to try to get his job back. He’s been fired for showing up late, though he hasn’t told Sophina or his mother (Octavia Spencer) this. He says to his former boss, “You want me to sell drugs?”

Oscar has an easygoing nature, and Coogler uses the device of showing his cellphone texts to portray his quick navigation of relationships as he moves from one difficulty to another. We witness his struggle to be a better person in the face of systemic forces that try to hold him back. Finding legal work to support him and his family poses a huge problem.

All the while, as he seeks to change, as he expresses his delight in Tatiana and his affection for Sophina, our gut wrenches because we know what’s coming.

Oscar and his friends are on the train after celebrating the New Year, when a white thug he encountered while in prison baits him into a fight. Later, the police are called and hold Oscar and several of his friends on the platform, and a white officer, struggling to handcuff Oscar, shoots him. (He later claimed he thought he was grabbing his taser instead of his gun, and he served 11 months in prison.)

Coogler has created not only an important film but an excellent film. He shows the complicated humanity behind the stereotype of the young African-American male. The film’s pace, editing, acting and writing are superb, and we come away sad and angry about one more wasted life because we’ve come to know this man—his aspirations, his struggles, his potential.

That the film was released around the time of the Trayvon Martin trial was unintentional yet raises many parallels. A young African-American male, killed by someone overreacting with a gun. Still, Coogler steers clear of racial polarizing. Oscar has several positive interactions with whites.

Fruitvale Station succeeds in portraying a specific human in his realistic complexity, and that story resonates with us viewers who see Oscar’s tragic death as something that affects us all.

Racism in hiding

Mennonite Church USA, like other Christian denominations, is committed to becoming an anti­racist church. One of the things that makes that difficult is that racism, like many systems and like the “powers” described in the New Testament, is pernicious and likes to remain hidden from our awareness. Part of becoming antiracist is keeping our awareness of racism alive.

The opposite of that awareness is denial, and such denial runs rampant in our society. We like to pretend we aren’t as racist as we may be. A recent article in The Atlantic (September) helps call us to task.

In “Fear of a Black President,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at the magazine, writes that as our first black president, Barack Obama has avoided mention of race almost entirely. He goes on: “In having to be ‘twice as good’ and ‘half as black,’ Obama reveals the false promise and double standard of integration.”

The fact that Americans elected a black president is often cited as evidence that we have moved beyond race as a factor in our politics. But that notion is shown to be false.

This does not mean that opposing policies of the Obama administration signifies racism. Racism is a much subtler system.

Coates points to an irony of the United States: “For most of American history, our political system was premised on two conflicting facts—one, an oft-stated love of democracy; the other, an undemocratic white supremacy inscribed at every level of government.”

Coates shows this irony in the events around the death of Trayvon Martin last February. As soon as Obama addressed the parents and said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the case moved from a kind of national mourning to what Coates calls “racialized political fodder,” and he gives numerous examples.

Historically, Coates writes, African Americans have been limited to protest and agitation in addressing the disconnect between democracy and white supremacy. Now, when Obama pledged to “get to the bottom of what happened” in the Martin case, he was not appealing to federal power—he was employing it. “The power was black,” Coates writes, “and, in certain quarters, was received as such.”

“Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred,” Coates writes. “It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.” He notes several studies that have shown the role of race in voting patterns and in opposition to and support for health-care reform. After Obama’s election, the rhetoric of fear became much more prevalent. Signs at Tea Party rallies read, “Obama plans white slavery,” and one congressman complained that Obama “favors the black person.”

The double standard of having to be twice as good “haunts and constrains the Obama presidency, warning him away from candor about America’s sordid birthmark.” Coates points out that in the first two years as president, “Obama talked less about race than any other Democratic president since 1961.”

The myth of “twice as good,” writes Coates, “holds that African Americans—enslaved, tortured, raped, discriminated against and subjected to the most lethal homegrown terrorist movement in American history—feel no anger toward their tormentors.”

Coates makes clear he does not agree with all of Obama’s views. He particularly abhors his embrace of a secretive drone policy. His point is about the pernicious presence of racism in our politics. “Race is not simply a portion of the Obama story,” he writes. “It is the lens through which many Americans view all his politics.”

The problem goes beyond politics and affects—infects—every area of society. Love, not fear, should guide us.