If Beale Street Could Talk is a slice of Americana cut from the rich turbulence of early 1960s Harlem.
James Baldwin: When I was growing up, I was trying to make a connection between the life I saw and the life I lived. There are days when you wonder what your role is in this country, and what your future is in it. This is one of them. The thing that tormented me the most was the very thing that connected me to all the people who are alive. I’ll tell you a story if I may.
The movie is above all else a love story...it’s about many love stories, in fact. Love of a mother for her children; love of a father for his children; sibling love — of a fierce big sister for her little sister — and it’s about young love that was destined to be tempered by fire so that it could become strong, nurturing, enduring, and life-affirming. If Beale Street Could Talk is about hate. A movie about how racism can and does change the trajectories of ordinary lives; about how cruel people go out of their way to heap unnecessary hardship, anguish and pain on totally innocent folks. If Beale Street Could Talk explains why racism is and has always been about the power to disrupt and control lives. If Beale Street Could Talk is about blue hate for black skin.
A movie based on a book written by "one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, adapted and directed by Barry Jenkins, and recommended by Barack Obama is a can’t-miss project for me.
I am one of the few people on planet earth for whom you cannot spoil a book, a movie, or a game. I don’t care what you say about it or what secrets are divulged, doesn’t bother me one bit...I’m still gonna enjoy the project. But, in deference to those who don’t think like me, I’ll just say, if you can, please go see this movie. It’ll be worth it. I started crying in the middle of the last scene and didn’t stop until it was time for me leave. I cried for all the lives that have been cruelly and unnecessarily disrupted, the sons and daughters who’d never know their dads, the wives who’d lost lovers, the parents who’ve lost children...I cried because of the amazing healing power of love.
Beale Street is Ferguson, it’s Baltimore, it’s Chicago, it’s Cleveland, it’s Harlem. Beale Street is where trees of love are easily uprooted. It takes time and energy to fight for your dignity, your freedom or for your life even; sometimes there’s nothing left to give after all the exhausting battles to survive and to hold onto your sanity. Beale Street is where a dispute with a malicious neighbor or an encounter with a racist cop can mean the difference between life and death or freedom and prison.
Beale Street is Detroit...
I am writing this at 2:10 AM, 2/1/2019 and the hope is that by the time this is published, Officer Gary Steele and his partner of the Detroit Police Department will no longer have jobs with law enforcement...at least not in areas where they’ll be forced to interact with people of color.
The officers stopped 23-year-old Ariel Moore for expired registration, they said. Rather than give her a ticket, they decided to impound her car. In freezing weather. To their credit, they did offer her a drive home which given what happened next, she rightly declined. As she walked away, in sub-zero temperature, the peace officers decided to have some fun at her expense. At this point, is there any question as to why they chose to run her tag? We must thank them for documenting their hate for the world to see. Listen to the end as they mocked Ariel with “Bye Felicia.”
The face of a hateful racist:
Beale Street is Brusly, Louisiana...
Beale Street is Binghamton, N.Y.
Administrators at a middle school in upstate New York, are under fire for allegedly strip-searching four 12-year-old African American girls who were suspected of being under the influence of drugs after they appeared “hyper and giddy” during their lunch period.
The incident occurred earlier this month when a school nurse and the assistant principal at East Middle School in Binghamton told the children to remove their clothes, while one girl was stripped down to just her bra and underwear.
Four giggly little girls were taken out of their class and sent to the school nurse because the teacher said they were acting “hyper and giddy” and thus they must be doing drugs. Because that’s what little black girls do, of course. The little misses were questioned and observed by the school nurse and the assistant principal and then stripped searched...stripped searched, mind you, without first notifying their parents. After doing their best to scar the girls for life, to change the trajectory of their lives, the adults then sent them back to class — traumatized and humiliated. Do you for even one second think that the same would have been done to four little white girls? Four adults participated in the violation of the girls: the teacher, the principal, the assistant principal, and the school nurse.
The school’s defense is that the girls were not stripped searched but that they were given "medical evaluation."
Governor Cuomo has directed his State Education Board to investigate the incident.
“The allegations that 12-year-old girls were strip-searched for drugs after being perceived as ‘hyper and giddy’ at a Binghamton middle school are deeply disturbing and raise serious concerns of racial and gender bias,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “Asking a child to remove her clothing — and then commenting on her body — is shaming, humiliating, traumatic sexual harassment.”
Beale Street is so The Bronx
We call your name, Kalief Browder.
Beale Street is the United States of America.
At the end we look again to James Baldwin to show the way forward:
"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced" James Baldwin.