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| - by user Docsplice [1] African-Americans were repping hard last night at the Oscars, with Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson each taking away Awards, Whitaker for Best Actor and Hudson for Best Supporting Actress. Whitaker becomes the third black man to take away the Best Actor Award. He won for his portrayal of Idi Amin, the brutal dictator of Uganda, who murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people. Prior to Whitaker, Denzel Washington won the Best Actor Award for his portrayal of a crooked L.A. Cop who exploits his position of authority and rules his hood like a despot. Are we seeing a pattern here? Washington and Whitaker both assembled a diverse portfolio of roles, but each won their Awards by portraying black people who exploit their positions of legal authority to devastating results for the black folks they are supposed to represent. The consequence for the short American attention span will be a re-writing of History similar to that which occurred in Birth of A Nation, wherein post-Civil War Reconstruction was re-written as a time when only the white racism of the Klan could stem the chaos that resulted from fictional "black rule". The new narrative goes something like this: black people are primarily responsible for their condition, which occurs as a result of their own violence and greed and is unconnected to the legacies of slavery and colonialism. The finest role of Denzel's career was without question his portrayal of Civil Rights leader Malcolm X. While I am unable to make the same declaration for Whitaker, his reputation as a character actor is well deserved (Watch Rage In Harlem then watch Ghost Dog, he's a completely different person) it should not be seen as a coincidence that black people are rewarded in popular culture for exonerating white people of involvement in the condition of black people in the modern world. From: www.toosense.net __NOEDITSECTION__ From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.
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