Arc(h)enemies: Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard and Ludacris
by Richard Oxman

A rainbow of illuminated light moves in the opposite direction of its source-since the rainbow falls as the sun rises. Just so with Don, Terrence and The Rapper.

Dapper, socially-conscious to a point, and certainly pomaded heads and white Prada loafer heels above White Powers such as C. Rice and G. Bush, the three Crash celebrities are cashing in on The Obvious whilst neglecting The Holocaust in Africa. Enemies. Going the wrong way.

Forgive me, but I am calling that continent their source. From one angle, of course, it is not. And yet-it is. Regardless, it is certainly their responsibility to be more informed and more proactive respecting Black Trauma, the disappearance of an Authentic Blackness and/or Black Africa. In the end-Our Mutual Source.

I have no clue what Harry Belafonte or TransAfrica Forum plan to do about what I'm laying down here, but –clearly– something must be done without waiting for the sun to shine courtesy of Powell or any of the White Powers.

Maybe Danny Glover will jump in here on a very personal level. Or maybe Inauguration Invite Maya Angelou will do the right thing with or without Spike Lee, Oprah or the Bullocks of the world.

Which brings me full circle riding the arch of my rainbow back to trashing the Crash people. It's not worth damning Eastwood colleague Paul Haggis –main indecorous creative dude for the Crash crop– and so I go on record with the following, spotlighting people who can still do something about the Greatest Holocaust of the past decade. (1)

Let's call them on the carpet, shall we?

Were Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Esposito both actually wearing Barrick Gold/Caleb Int'l diamonds (courtesy of Catalyst Co. of Canada and former Prez Clinton)? Or did they come down the pike via NPR Sponsors and the so-called U.N. peacekeeping mission?

Does it matter how they got them? Yes, among other things.

I'll tell you what matters. To wit, IT MATTERS A HELLUVA LOT that when Terrence Howard was interviewed on the Red Oscar Carpet with the better part of his immediate family, virtually the whole tribe was decked out with blood diamonds and indiscretionary gold. How come -no clue- from such a compassionate guy?

And IT MATTERS A HELLUVA LOT that Don Cheadle is misleading the public once again with regard to monumentally important race/class-related matters. Crash is arguably the Southern California counterpart to his Hotel Rwanda. (2) Por qué?

And (-Watch me, I'm) Ludacris with the color, cut, clarity and carat weight of what he's carrying around-speaks for himself. Or at least, NOT for the traumatized Africans.

When -arch- first came into our language it was still used in the sense of curved structure, as in Chaucer's -the arch of the day-from the sun rising till it go to rest.-

The actions of our celebrities are linear, enabled by the wearing of blinders.

But let's not make Terrence, Don and Chicken-N-Beer our enemies, okay? Rather, let's invite them to self-educate beyond The Obvious and into The Meaningful. Let's ask them to return to their roots –which are OUR roots too– to embrace the full circular rainbow which plunges deep into the earth, deep into the heart of darkest Africa.

Let's ask ourselves –what do you say?– to acknowledge that we've been (and are) merely looking at a half-arch of a rainbow which only leads to imaginary gold.

The Challenge is, for starters, to take the heartbeats to really learn what's going down. (3) Not to be the Biggest Penis (or Sweetest Vagina) in Town.

Footnotes:

(1) See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9832 for an introduction to what's really been coming down in Africa-and still going on. VERY INTERESTING how much trouble I've been having trying to access Keith Harmon Snow's website ( listed in my recent article on this subject at http://oxtogrind.org/archive/143 ). For those who want to cling to the high schoolish notion that Crash did something socially-conscious, I invite one and all to click on the (asterisked) negative reviews at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1144992-crash/ , especially Walter Chaw's http://filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/crash2005.htm spot-on-target real deal.

(2) Anyone wanting to make a positive case for the cheap Chappelle-like Cheadle cheat of a cinematic catastrophe should take a look at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN2 0051016&articleId=1096 first.

(3) In that sense-most activists, most professors and the vast majority of celebrities don't know very much. Or don't care. And are enemies of Black Africa.