Sayers and Piccolo were assigned to be roommates, which was pretty radical for the time, and there was a suggestion they received hate mail. In one scene Piccolo pretended to read such a letter: “How dare you share a room with a black person. What kind of low-life person were you raised to be? I find it disgraceful! Love, Mom.” There was gentle use of what we can now refer to only as “the N word,” and what would now be regarded as a racist joke: as Piccolo lay dying talking on the phone with Sayers, there was a mention that Sayers had donated blood, to which Piccolo stated, “Now I know where I got a hankering for chitlins.”
Brian’s Song was an inherently sad movie, but 55 years later there is another sense of sadness that, while we came so close, we lost the chance to become a society not just of tolerance, but of mutual respect and equality, that a person should not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. The ideals of peace, tolerance, and harmony proved to be at odds with the goals progressive racialists- wealth and power- and, as they gained the cultural upper hand, they did what they do: sow division, distrust, and discord and incite conflict.
In regards to black people, the goal is convincing them they are hapless dependent victims, and to be grateful for the beneficence of those who protect them from what they created. Prominent white Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Jamie Raskin, and Elizabeth Warren tell black people they simply aren’t capable, for example, of obtaining ID, and any requirement they do so is just like Jim Crow. They are backed up by obsequious elite black democrats to spread the word- believe what we tell you to believe because you can’t think for yourselves, and keep dancing to whatever tune we play. Your characters are by nature substandard, so you need to let us exploit the color of your skin because otherwise you simply don’t have what it takes. Trust us, and keep giving us the power to protect you against your many short comings as humans.
In 2002-2003 I was a volunteer medical director (PA) at a remote clinic in East Africa. This was during the peak of the soul-wrenching East African AIDS epidemic, superimposed on the never-ending endemic of blood destroying (literally) malaria. Everyday was one of death and suffering, but that’s for another time. I had become friendly with an older guy who worked at the facility as a watchman. One night I was walking back to my cottage when I almost ran into him. I exclaimed, “William, you scared the heck out of me.” He replied, “Mr. Reid, I saw you coming from 100 yards away.” He then offered everything we need to know about race relations: “You are a white man, and I am a black man.” Simple yet profound, and anything beyond that is just posturing and selfish politics.
The Democrats are doing their predictable fearmongering, targeting susceptible blacks claiming that ID requirements for voting is “Jim Crow 2.” I spent a fair amount of time in the deep south during the moribund days of Jim Crow 1 in the late 1970’s. I did meet one or two literal KKK hate-filled types, but for the most part the racist-inclined whites didn’t feel animosity towards blacks. As long as black people stayed in their place they were treated with kindness. It was understood that blacks were childlike, that they could perform simple tasks with appropriate guidance, and that they could be held only to the lowest standards. This was the benign form of progressive racism, and it never disappeared, rather it evolved into the Democrat progressive philosophy we see today. Warning of “Jim Crow 2” is patently absurd and exploitative, and paradoxical because Jim Crow 1 remains alive and well in the minds and actions of of the Democrat establishment, who think black people are too stupid to obtain ID.
