I haven’t seen American Gangster, but I was checking out the boards on IMDb, and I came across a comment that really got under my skin. It just seemed so ignorant. Here was the originial post (by a user named mizwright):
I was in an audience sitting next to some young black boys and I don’t think they understood what they were watching. They have no concept of the Vietnam war, the drug wars that started in the 1960s…the older people understood perfectly about that era. Good movie, but youngsters won’t understand it.
The comment got me thinking. From what little I know of American Gangster (Manhattan drug lord Frank Lucas rises to power by smuggling heroin– “Blue Magic”– into the country via the coffins of fallen soldiers returning from Vietnam in the sixties), it seems like several conclusions could be drawn between then and now. My response:
I haven’t seen AG, so I don’t know how much it focuses on the Vietnam War or other strictly 1960s material. However, I’m willing to bet it’s not impossible for younger people to understand it, as they still face many of the same issues in somewhat altered form. The 1960s weren’t the only years to struggle with war and drug abuse. Today, 92% of heroin in the world originates in Afghanistan. The poppy resin used to make it is grown illegally by Afghan farmers, and is bought by hands that eventually reach al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These terrorist organizations don’t deal opium directly, but they supply gunmen to protect drug-producing labs and transport convoys. In return for their mercenary-type work, they receive a cut of the profits, which is where the bulk of their funding comes from. No one knows how much the terrorist organizations bring in from this work, but conservative estimates run into the high tens of millions per year. While the number of casualties don’t approach the 1960s, some young Americans are dying to fight these terrorist organizations, and other young Americans are caught up in battling addiction on American soil. History repeats more often than we think.
Drugs are getting so scary. During the last couple of years, America was inundated by a huge influx of fentanyl-laced heroin (stamped as Rolex, Rest in Peace, D-Boy, White House, Timberland, etc.) that has been dropping users like flies. Twenty-two pounds of this crap was put onto the streets (eighty million hits worth). People are still dying from it. Paramedics are unable to revive people who overdose on it, or else they have to use four times the typical dose of naloxone. It is estimated to have killed well over 1,000 people so far. These users often die with the needle still in their arms, and sometimes even before the dose is fully administered. Overdose is rarely instantaneous with heroin, so this is completely scary. No disrespect to mizwright, but I think today’s young people can somewhat grasp what the youth of the 1960s felt, at least with regard to drug use, trafficking, and the resulting impact on individuals and society.
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20 November, 2007 at 1:00 am
COMMENTARY: Drug Dealer Frank Lucas, Denzel and Dad
My Father as a kid delivered groceries to the first drug kingpin “Bumpy” Johnson, who at the time, lived in the corner building on 120th street and 5th Avenue, across the street from Mount Morris Park. He use to tell me these colorful stories with admiration, about this man. Bumpy was an employee and conduit for the mafia, helping to orchestrate the distribution of heroin into Harlem and surrounding communities in the 1940’s, an epidemic that would later spread and engulf the entire country for generations to come.
The street gangs of the 40’s would become some of the first addicts, their members would ultimately form the first ruthless drug-gangs of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Families were destroyed individual lives ruined, violence and crime across the board increased at staggering rates. In spite the gains from the Civil Rights Movement, as a community we never fully recovered from the initial impact of the flooding of drugs into our communities.
Frank Lucas, portrayed by academy Award winner Denzel Washington in “American Gangster”, was the driver for Bumpy Johnson until his death by heart attack in 1968. By the time Mr. Lucas took power- the Harlem community had been decimated by this epidemic and the second generation of addicts already overwhelmed the streets. Like the Hip Hop culture violent movies have a tremendous impact on our children. Our young-people are continually bombarded with negative messages that unfortunately help shape and mold their character, Al Pacino’s as Scareface is still a popular image on T-Shirts.
The moral of the story is not that the bad guy gets it in the end. Too many hopeless kids who are engaged in criminal activity, view the demise of these individuals in a fatalistic and morbidly glamorous way. Enlighten by our past history and current events we have to be careful not to glorify criminals. Mr. Lucas has the right to have his story told but as parents, mentors, big brothers and sisters, we must always monitor the messages and more important the response to the message portrayed in media.
Dad’s discussions about Bumpy, were a small part of the rich history of the community that he shared with me. He gave me, as I did my son, Claude Brown’s definitive book on life in Harlem, “Manchild in the Promise Land”, when I was a teenager. He also talked about Malcolm X and Dr. King, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. Together we watched, Gil Noble’s informative program “Like It Is”. My love of history and current events came from my dads talks about the Bumpy Johnson’s as well as the Dr. King’s of this world. He taught me to discern the messages that would bombarded me in my life-time. He knew then that no matter what, there would always be plenty of people like Bumpy Johnson and Frank Lucas around to share theirs.
Brotherman