The new NWA biopic "Straight Outta Compton" debuted at a hefty $60.2 million last weekend. So, I'm thinking non-black audiences aren't dismissing it as an urban movie or as we used to say a "blaxploitation" film that's just for black people. And if so, they're absolutely right.
This masterful flick transcends race. It's a GREAT movie about American history that everybody needs to see. It's American history that definitely isn't getting taught in anybody's classroom. Raw, in-your-face, biting...just like many of NWA's lyrics, but history nonetheless. It documents the rise of a rap group, whose members in many ways were the Founding Fathers of today's Black Lives Matter movement.
Talk about a timely, topical movie. As much as those of my generation can identify with NWA's signature hit "Fu*k Tha Police," so can young people of today as they angrily mourn and question the killings of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice and others.
Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and the rest were the town criers of the 80's and 90's, reminding America of inconvenient truths about its separate and unequal policing. Not only that, those young brothers were prophets. Seems like not a day goes by that there's not a new hastag about a black person who was killed or harassed by cops.
Sadly, nothing much has changed since NWA bursted on the national scene in 1986. This kind of mess is still going down.
With so much for demand for body cams on cops, many seem to have forgotten that the Rodney King incident was completely captured on tape in 1991, but the rogue cops who beat him savagely still walked. And or course, even today there was undeniable video of the murder of Eric Garner in New York City for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally, but a grand jury failed to indict the police officer who clearly used an illegal choke hold on him. A cop, mind you, who has a documented history of brutalizing and abusing people.
There are lessons for us all to learn from the rise of NWA and what fueled the group's anti-police lyrics that we can apply to what's going on today.
I'm reminded of something that happened around 20 years ago. I was walking into a convenience store in Satellite Beach, Fla. when another African-American guy drove by with loud rap music blaring from his car. Simultaneously, apparently not noticing me, a white girl--probably 13 or so--coming out of the store yelled after him, "We know you're black, you don't have to prove it!!!"
He didn't hear her, but right after she said it, she saw me, made a weird face, wiggled her head and briskly walked away. I just chuckled.
I suppose that kid didn't realize it, but then and now, whites buy the majority of rap music. Given that, it was no surprise to me that Sunday at the movie theater where my wife and I saw Straight Outta Compton, the majority of the audience was white. Hey, maybe the grownup version of that kid was sitting among us in that theater. But even if she wasn't, hopefully NWA's message about American injustice resonated with everyone in that theater and beyond, as much now as it did back in the 80's and 90's.
But it's can't just be about attitude anymore. Now it's got to be about change...change that's long overdue.