|
|
|
On Monday and Tuesday 21-22 August HBO aired Spike
Lee's awaited documentary: “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem
in Four Acts” about the devastation dropped on New Orleans in
the wake of hurricane Katrina. Acts 1-2 aired on Monday night
for two hours and fifteen minutes and acts 3-4 aired on Tuesday
night for two hours and fifteen minutes-a total of four and
a half hours. Longer than his epic film Malcolm X of 1992, Spike
is to be applauded for his effort to show the world (certainly
for those of us in the States) what a category 5 hurricane can
do to a city and what a government can do to a people and what
it will not do for a people. Clearly, “When the Levees” exposed
a modern day subjugation of a people, a view, perhaps, of what
the African slave trade must have been like. Consider, the Superdome
surrounded by water with people inside chained by a disaster,
“sardined” with no electricity, no running water, no plumbing,
no drinking water and available food, sleeping in, or amid,
feces, urine, menstrual flow and death. Death in the surrounding
water, death on the bridges, death lying not found (still not
found) in homes. Indeed every breath, in some instances, was
a death breath.
Suddenly, we see a modern day slave ship fulfilling
its qualifications and requirements of an African enslavement
trade. What we see is a government slow to respond to its “home-land”
tragedy and quick to respond to a people in another place—citizens
of another place at the expense of its' own citizens---its'
second-class citizens. Five days later when the government did
respond it scattered and sprinkled families like salt and pepper
to places that they (in many instances)
knew nothing about and knew no one; separating families--taking
children from mothers, brothers from sisters, husbands and wives--expanding
and extending the Diaspora. Indeed, parents let their children
go so the rising waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of
Mexico wouldn’t ravage their children. Through interviews of
the survivors—everyday folk, actors, politicians, doctors, engineers—the
piece exhibits and exposes the lack of care for us as people
of African descent--Black people--and poor people, especially
in the St. Bernard Parish, by a government “for the people and
by the people.”
As I watched this four and a half hour piece I
was drawn to thinking of the almost three and half hour piece
that Spike did on Malcolm X in 1992 and I began to think of
Malcolm's four significant speeches and one in particular: The
Ballot or the Bullet Speech, especially the one delivered in
Detroit on 12 April 1964 (Malcolm delivered two speeches by
the same name in two different places-- the other one was delivered
in Cleveland 3 April 1964). I began to relate some of what he
said then to what we continue to see today, especially in the
wake of Katrina and what people were saying in the “When the
Levees. . .” Malcolm X’s commentary then provided a critical
historical view of the now: the pastness in the present and
the pastness of the present. Not only did it speak to the disaster
of response to Katrina but the disaster of the current politics
of that time and, this time. Here are some excerpts of what
he had to say:
-
“The time when white people can come in our
community and get us to vote for them so that they can be
our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not
to do is long gone. By the same token, the time when that
same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can
send another negro into the community and get you and me to
support him so he can use him to lead us astray -- those days
are long gone too.”
-
“So we’re trapped, trapped, double-trapped,
triple-trapped. Anywhere we go we find that we’re trapped.
And every kind of solution that someone comes up with is just
another trap.”
-
“So as you can see brothers and sisters, today
-- this afternoon, it's not our intention to discuss religion.
We’re going to forget religion. If we bring up religion, we’ll
be in an argument, and the best way to keep away from arguments
and differences, as I said earlier, put your religion at home
-- in the closet. Keep it between you and your God.”
-
“Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or
a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang
you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you 'cause you’re
black. They attack all of us for the same reason . . . . We’re
all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political
oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation
-- all of them from the same enemy.”
-
“The government has failed us; you can’t deny
that . . .. This government has failed us; the government
itself has failed us, and the white liberals who have been
posing as our friends have failed us.”
-
“You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve
seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around
America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who
has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through
the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism.
We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the
American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy;
we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy.”
So the travesty of Katrina is the travesty of
our existence in the United States since the critical masses
of us were brought now into the 21st century. In a time when
we think that we’ve arrived, there is Katrina; when we think
that we’re in control, there is Katrina; at a time when we seemingly
have more--more money, better jobs, bigger homes, there is Katrina;
at a time when we’re more “educated,” there’s Katrina; when
we think that we’re free and living in a democracy, there is
the hypocrisy of Katrina. James Baldwin once said, “History
is a nightmare. People are trapped in history and history is
trapped in them.” Someone said, (I think it was Derrick Bell)
“Black people [seemingly] have learned little to nothing from
their history.” It seems that we continue to be “trapped, trapped,
double-trapped, triple-trapped.” “When the Levees Broke: A
Requiem in Four Acts” is not easy viewing but necessary viewing
and hopefully it will wake us up, and clean us up, so that we
can stand up.
Najee E. Muhammad, EdD is an Associate Professor,
Cultural Studies in Education at Ohio University, Athens, OH
. .email comments to [email protected].
|
Home |
|
|
|
Your comments are always welcome.
Visit the Contact
Us page to send e-Mail or Feedback
or Click
here to send e-Mail to [email protected]
If you send us an e-Mail message
we may publish all or part of it, unless you tell us it
is not for publication. You may also request that we withhold
your name.
Thank you very much for your readership.
|
|
|