BAMBOOZLED

When I watched this film I really did become annoyed by how I felt Spike Lee beat the dead horse on racism. Half way through the movie I reached a point where I felt that he had made his point clear and it got very annoying to watch. I am not a racist, I am a friend to people of all nationality’s, ethnicity’s, and skin colors. But honestly at this point in history when are White people going to stop being viewed as racists? Is it racist of black people to view all white people as racist? I am Irish, I am an immigrant and I a first generation immigrant, my white ancestors did not have slaves, and they did not persecute African (or African American) people. They were poor, and all my life I’ve been told by black people that my ancestors enslaved theirs. I used to get very angry at these kinds of remarks, because they are completely untrue. My progenitors were for the most part either poor or barely middle class citizens. I was raised in a household that taught me men are men and no matter what skin color, religion, or sexual orientation people are our brothers and sisters, and we should see them as Gods children.

Something I found very funny about Bamboozled was the scene when the gang of black people and their white friend kidnap Manray because he is disrespecting all that African Americans have been through time. But they show one thing that maybe spike lee was trying to show, that if you want to stop being stereotyped you need to stop giving into the stereotype. Many black people are viewed by society as thugs, criminals, troublemakers, and always in gangs. They were in “revolution” against a system they were living in. They killed Manray because they felt he was opposing them, did they really do anything for their cause by killing Manray? In my opinion, no, they went from being a group of thugs, to a group of killers. They supported the stereotype they had been fighting, and it was very ironic to me. In the next scene the police of course shoot the black people and just arrest the white kid. Which I think is a bit absurd, they show these policemen execute all of the black thugs and leaving the white one virtually unharmed and arrested.

I do agree with the message the movie is promoting that we are all people, we all need to be respected, and that racial slurs are harmful to people they are directed at. Rather than victimizing one group of people and point a finger at another we should take a step back and look at all the factors that cause these profile that are associated with races and solve the issues rather than blame each other for one thing or another. I agree that some white people are unfair to some black people, but I agree the opposite is also true. To fix a problem it will take effort from both parties.