John Singleton's One-Sided Treatment of Racial Extremism in Higher Learning
The text that follows is a reference for an article and should not be considered complete unless it is considered along with the article called "Promotion of Ice Cube by Hollywood."
Whites who act out racist characters read out loud from Mein Kampf, but never does Ice Cube's character read from Message to the Blackman in America for the book is not mentioned. The only white character who criticizes a black character for wearing a t-shirt showing the Black Panthers on it, calling the t-shirt display reverse racism, is already hanging out with neo-Nazi skinheads and goes on a shooting rampage near the movie's end. Singleton never mentions violent and racist aspects of the Black Panthers.
Singleton also gives one-sided treatment to interactions between white police officers and young black males. White officers from a college police department break up parties of mostly black students when loud music is played but ignore white fraternity parties when the same can be heard, and they break up a group of blacks who gather at a crime scene caused by a white racist criminal but ignore a group of whites who gathered at the same scene. White officers stop black male students for questioning when there is no reason for stopping them other than to hassle them, and then Singleton portrays the characters as "justified" young black males when they loud mouth at the officers. Singleton does not include a scene in which white officers stop blacks for legitimate reasons, issue strict orders in the same manner that the officers would at young white males, and yet the young black males act unruly anyway because they want no orders at all from white males. A white skinhead brags that his friend in law enforcement gave him guns that he dumps out into a pile, but never does Singleton show racist black gangbangers at all, let alone them piling up guns and bragging that a friend in law enforcement was the source. In the end the white campus police officers finally take proper action when they corner a white shooter, but the scene is preceeded by one in which the white officers, before they know who the shooter is and seeing a black and a white fighting, club the young black hero who was getting the upper hand against the white shooter. The officers allow the white shooter to run off into the next scene in which he is finally cornered.
Ice Cube's character does not say that he wants to kill police officers as Ice Cube the rapper does, so the average viewer need not be turned off by his movie character on that basis. But Singleton allows Ice Cube to make the same statement subtly and the statement is not countered. In the background on a wall behind Ice Cube in his character's apartment, there appears a poster of former Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates, who is white, and the caption at its bottom reads: "Taken Out And Shot." The poster is shown in another movie called Menace II Society, and the view is closer, allowing viewers to read all of the words. The word "SHOT" is crossed out, having been replaced by the word "BEATEN." The phrase is as follows: "casual drug users ought to be TAKEN OUT AND SHOT ["SHOT" being crossed out] BEATEN." The character of Menace II Society uses the poster as a dart board, with darts shown stuck into the photo of Darryl Gates.
Singleton included in Higher Learning, songs by Outkast, The Watts Prophets, and Rage Against the Machine. Rage Against the Machine directs hatred at whites, and its music embraces Marxist-Leninism. Rage Against the Machine's songs played during the movie were "Year of the Boomerang" and "Tire Me."
Posted at http://home.att.net/~phosphor on May 7, 1998.
Last update was posted July 23, 1999. Added on were more info about the poster of Darryl Gates as shown in Menace II Society (June 15, 1999) and the info about Rage Against the Machine (July 23, 1999).
Last editing was posted July 23, 1999.
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