Jamal, let’s call him, didn’t think Jamie Foxx would win the Oscar, even though he felt his was by far the best male screen acting performance in many a year. No surprise here, excellence is not always rewarded. The devil, however, lurched in the details of Jamal’s lack of faith in Hollywood fairness.
The 37-year-old Jamie Foxx, like Jamal, is African-American and thus a descendant of a generation that spent their adulthood ridding their country of the more visible excesses of its racism. Some 40 years ago, for example, the struggle had them on that road from Selma to Montgomery.
The March 7, 1965, march to gain voting rights for Negroes throughout the South started peacefully enough. The 600 marchers, however, made it only six blocks before Alabama state troopers beat the Negroes bloody with clubs, and tear-gassed them.
This case of the uniquely American pattern of state-sponsored terrorism made it to federal court. Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. broke rank with local customs, the white majority and the governor, by supporting the constitutional rights of the black marchers to petition their government.
Two weeks later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. again led a Selma-to-Montgomery march, this time numbering 3,000 people who — with the world looking on — reached their destination.
The “Bloody Sunday” pressure helped persuade President Lyndon Johnson to sign the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In addition to providing federal monitors at polling places, the bill outlawed encumbrances that Southern states had created to prevent blacks from voting, such as the poll tax and a requirement that before casting a ballot, black citizens had to read from text written, say, in Chinese.
Federal poll monitors, needed just as much in the United States these days as in Iraq, would no longer be authorized when the Voting Rights Act expires in 2007. Individual states may once again impose racist bars to African-American voting when the act expires. Some argue that blacks’ basic right to vote will not be affected, since it is entrenched in the U.S. Constitution — just as it was when the Jim Crow laws were enacted.
African-Americans’ justifiable doubts about their rights in this ex-slave republic grow out of centuries of experience, exclusion and genuine concern that, left alone, the white majority will continue to advance only its narrow, group interest.
This age-old doubt has not escaped Jamal and the enlightened African-Americans of his generation. They well expected Leonardo DiCaprio to get the Oscar instead of Jamie Foxx, despite an inferior performance. Those who knew Ray Charles saw the blind singer come alive in Foxx, while DiCaprio flatly failed to conjure the degenerative though engaging Howard Hughes.
With the lesson of Selma-Montgomery upon them, many peers of Jamie Foxx figured that the Oscar judges would shy away from celebrating a black man in full.
After all, this is the Hollywood so intimidated by black authenticity that when by some miracle it emerges, they drape it like a piece of Christo artwork. If it’s a black male, for example, Hollywood won’t rest until the upcoming star is featured in a dress or filmed as gay. Denzel Washington warned Will Smith against accepting such roles, and, despite being ignored, he should have warned Wesley Snipes also.
If the black genuine article is an actress, and wants to work mainstream, then it’s a turn as a maid, a trollop, or a self-loathing joke like Whoopi.
Foxx joins only two other black men in winning the best actor statuette. Each of the others is viewed in some quarters as a concession to the race taste of Hollywood.
Denzel Washington, for example, did not win the award for his brilliant portrayal of Ruben “Hurricane” Carter. Nor did he get the nod for Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.” Both characters were men of their time, and men in full. In their quite different ways, each challenged — and therefore threatened — the established order, which Hollywood is committed to defend. Denzel Washington, instead, was celebrated at the Oscars for portraying a most corrupt, murderous and avaricious police officer.
As for the authenticity of Sidney Poitier’s character in the 1963 Oscar-winning “Lillies of the Field,” perhaps the less said the better.
Hollywood, it must be said, is a lot more open now than during the last millennium. There is yet much room, however, for the exploration of dignified black characters, in addition to the science-fiction studs and the minstrel caricatures.
This more fair and balanced selection of story material and roles for African-American actors of both genders would, hopefully, usher in Oscars for performances both exemplary and authentic.
The Academy Award for “Ray” may well be a start, but let’s wait till next year.