My Politically Correct College Part I

I don't want to be too mean to the college I'm currently attending, mainly because I'm friends with some of the people who work there, and I like the place, but I felt the need to say something about this. My college is doing this film series on Diversity, and the fact that they called it a diversity film series should have been a dead giveaway, but I have nothing to do on Wednesday nights (other than sit in the Student Lounge), so that's how I ended up going to the first one.

The movie was called "The Long Walk Home," and it's about the Montgomery bus boycott. I though it was pretty good, until I realized something just the other night: they did not show one white man in a positive light in this movie. White women? Yes. White men? No.

Alright, so, The Long Walk Home focus on a black housekeeper/maid (played by Whoopi Goldberg. I couldn't believe it.) who works for a well-to-do white family. The house where her employers work is a good distance away from her own home, so every morning, she takes the bus to get there, until, of course, the boycott begins.

After that, she walks to work, which takes her longer and eventually, tired of waiting for her employee so long, her employer starts picking her up twice a week and driving her to work. After all, the employer reasons, she goes out early on those mornings, so on the way back she may as well stop and pick up the housekeeper on the way back.

So everything's going along fine for awhile, until her husband finds out that she's giving the housekeeper a ride, and he orders her to stop. So she stops for a day, but later that night she makes her point clear to her husband: she doesn't come to work to help him with his job. She doesn't need him telling her how to take care of the house. And if she needs to give the maid a ride to keep the house in order, then that's what she's going to do.

So she resumes giving the maid rides, and then she wants to get more involved in this bus boycott. During the boycott, the blacks in the city get all the cars they can together and carpool, and so the employer offers her car, and driving services, to the carpool.

Meanwhile, her husband is being influenced by his nasty younger brother, and ends up involved in a group - of white men, of course, - who are going to break up the boycott. I just love how they have the Confederate flag in their meeting place. Because of course, the ONLY reason the Civil War was fought was about slavery. It had nothing to do with state's rights. Nope, nothing at all.

So, one night the employer and her daughter are there at the carpool, finishing up for the day, when the giant group of men shows up to destroy the cars and drive everyone away. So, the first thing the younger brother does is try to get his sister-in-law out of there. That doesn't the work. The next thing you know, all these black women are surrounded by white men who are yelling at them to walk home. At first the employer just stands there with the men, then she finally goes and joins the black women. And then there's tears and sorrow and joy because she did the right thing even if the white men are all bigots.

Alright, now, maybe there was a good reason to make this movie. I haven't found one yet. Not all white men, not even in the South, are or were bigots, okay? And movies that portray every white men like that are doing this country a disservice. Usually when I watch a movie, I want to escape the real world, not have it shoved back at me. Has their been bigotry in the past? Yes. And Hollyweird makes sure to portray people as bigots rather then show them as heroes. How the white men who marched at Selma? I've been told there were some. How about a movie about how they suffered so colored people could have the same rights as whites?

But no one will ever make a movie like that.

And the next film in this series promises to be a doozy. More on that one at a later date.