I’m always hesitant to see films dealing with racial oppression and subjugation because they always remind me of the stratification and prejudice that is my people’s reality. But what I experienced in theater number nine at the Pike Cinemark was something close to spiritual.
Straight Outta Compton gives people a glimpse at what it is like to be a Black male trying to survive in a white man’s world in the 1980-90’s, today, and possibly forever.
Those who deny police brutality, especially against minorities, need to watch the multiple times N.W.A. was harassed by the police—in front of their workplace, outside their own homes, and even at their own concert. All of these incidents were acts of white, male police officers asserting their power, and not the members of N.W.A. doing something illegal.
The movie also deals with the case of Rodney King, a Black male who was brutally beaten by four L.A.P.D. officers in 1991. When all but one of the officers was acquitted despite video evidence, the oppressed minorities rioted in the streets of L.A., causing an estimated 1 billion dollars in property damage.
The movie is still relevant today, twenty-five years later, because of the tendency history has to repeat itself. The Ferguson Riots of 2014-2015 started when officer Darren Wilson shot and killed the unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. The riots escalated after the grand jury failed to charge Wilson with murder. Similar situations have popped up throughout the United States in recent years.
The issues then and now are indistinguishable simply because we live in a Eurocentric world. “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect,” stated W.E.B. DuBois, the late Black activist. So to those who speak of victimization and racism being over and “not a prevalent issue today,” I say this: hell na.