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Why was this thread moved, seems extremely petty to me.
Since Poitier was before my time how accurate is this? Says after his initial success and the culture changed he was considered an Uncle Tom and a lackey. Great write up about him either way.
The Message of Sidney Poitier’s Success
He improved America’s perceptions of its black countrymen at a time when it really mattered.
My late parents, whose rocky divorce occurred in the 1970s when their three children were still in grade school, didn’t agree on much. But they did agree on Sidney Poitier, who died last week at 94.
For mom, men didn’t come better-looking. To both of my parents the actor exuded charm, grace and decency. They were idealizing a celebrity they didn’t know personally. But for millions of black people of Poitier’s generation, when dignified depictions of blacks in motion pictures were still scarce, his most famous roles—the detective in “In the Heat of the Night,” the teacher in “To Sir, With Love,” the doctor in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the handyman in “Lilies of the Field”—epitomized how a black man should carry himself.
Poitier’s heyday was the 1960s, and a case could be made that these positive portrayals of black men helped shift attitudes against Jim Crow almost as much as the sit-ins and marches led by civil-rights activists. Groups like the NAACP cared a great deal about how blacks were portrayed in the entertainment industry, which they linked to how everyday blacks comported themselves. Describing someone as “a credit to his race” was still commonplace.
Poitier was well aware that he operated under a microscope and that his actions would reflect, fairly or unfairly, on other blacks. In his 1980 memoir, “This Life,” he said that he accepted an invitation to participate in the 1964 Academy Awards, where he became the first black performer to win the Oscar for best actor, because he “felt it would be good for black people to see themselves competing for the top honor.” He hadn’t expected to win, but he felt a heavy responsibility to say something that wouldn’t embarrass fellow blacks if he did. “I was not going to get up there and look dumb,” he wrote. “Whatever I say must be the truth . . . and it must be something intelligent and impressive that will leave the people in that room and the millions watching at home—leave them all duly and irrevocably impressed.”
He viewed his award as a victory for all blacks. “I was happy for me, but I was also happy for ‘the folks,’ ” he wrote. “We had done it. We black people had done it. We were capable. We forget sometimes, having to persevere against unspeakable odds, that we are capable of infinitely more that the culture is yet willing to credit to our account.”
Yet the culture changed as the decade wore on. The civil-rights movement became more militant, and black popular attitudes soured toward the types of roles that had made Poitier’s career. He was called an Uncle Tom and a lackey. The New York Times began publishing articles with snarky headlines such as “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?” A black culture critic called him a “million-dollar shoeshine boy.”
Poitier’s acting career never fully recovered. “Blaxploitation” films, which featured black protagonists beating up white criminals, came into vogue in the 1970s and were popular with black audiences. By the 1980s, Poitier was semiretired from acting and focused on directing. The civil-rights movement evolved as well. The old guard, personified by luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins, urged black people to adopt the middle-class habits and sensibilities associated with the roles that made Poitier a star. In addition to garnering white support, the thinking was that black self-development was as important as the struggle for equal rights itself, if only so that blacks would be prepared to take advantage of new opportunities once equal rights had been secured.
To the detriment of the black underclass, a younger generation of black activists and intellectuals dismisses any focus on black behavior as “respectability politics,” which they hold in contempt. But hard work, respect for authority, and delayed gratification aren’t race-specific values. In a free-market democracy, they are the path to upward mobility for all groups. Today, the political left continues to ignore the role that antisocial behavior plays in perpetuating racial inequality. Elites talk about policing instead of criminality, standardized tests instead of study habits, poverty instead of family formation, wealth redistribution instead of the work ethic. In an earlier era, black leaders knew better.
Sidney Poitier is rightly being celebrated for his pioneering performances, but his legacy is larger than that. He attempted, with some success, to change how all blacks were perceived at a time when it mattered immensely. The nation owes him a debt of gratitude.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/message...pos_2#cxrecs_s
cancel2 2022 (01-11-2022)
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Great soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith
Yep so much better now, eh Guano.
As Bill de Blasio Prepares To Leave Office
At this writing on January 2, de Blasio is finally gone from office. Whether the new guy (Eric Adams) proves to be any better remains to be seen.
Before leaving the topic of de Blasio’s legacy to New York, I would be remiss not to include a post on the subject of crime.
The bottom line for crime, as for every other major issue of public policy, was that the progressive de Blasio ruined everything he touched. Outcomes worsened across the board, and the decline was the clear result of the progressive policies that de Blasio either implemented or advocated. Yes, he had help from an equally progressive state legislature, particularly in the area of bail “reform.” But the changes to bail law were things that de Blasio did not oppose or resist in any way, and would have implemented himself if they had been under his control.
Today, New York remains a far, far safer city than pretty much all the comparable deep-blue cities in the country. Nevertheless, de Blasio took the almost miraculous successes of his two predecessors over twenty years, and in short order was able to turn the everything around and end his term with rapid increases in crime in his last few years.
To understand how de Blasio has affected the situation, a review of the history of crime in New York since 1990 is in order. For this review, I will use the annual number of murders as a proxy for crime more generally. I adopt this convention because, relative to other potential measures of the level of crime, the number of murders is much less affected by subjective judgments and/or manipulations, which makes it particularly useful as the index to observe trends and to compare one jurisdiction to another.
In 1990, after years of escalating crime, there were 2,262 murders recorded in New York City. With a population of 7.3 million, that meant that New York had a murder rate of about 31 per 100,000 — right up there with some of the most dangerous jurisdictions in the country. The Mayor was Democrat David Dinkins. Over the remaining years of Dinkins’s term, the number of murders declined marginally, to 1,927 in 1993, or about 26 per hundred thousand. Many said that New York City was ungovernable.
1993 is the year that Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor, as a Republican. Giuliani made it his first priority to get crime under control. In only eight years with Giuliani as Mayor, the number of murders went from the 1,927 all the way down to 649 in 2001. Meanwhile the decline in crime was accompanied by a surge in population to over 8 million, so that the murder rate per hundred thousand was all the way down to 8.
Giuliani was followed as Mayor by Mike Bloomberg, who then served three terms, through 2013. Bloomberg was also elected as a Republican, although he converted to Independent during his tenure. When Bloomberg took office, many doubted that there was much potential for further reduction in crime, but to his credit Bloomberg continued to work the issue, and particularly promoted assertive policing focused on the highest-crime neighborhoods. To the surprise of many (myself included), the number of murders continued to fall dramatically. In Bloomerg’s last year in office, 2013, the figure was 335. By then, the population was up to 8.3 million, so the murder rate was just over 4 per hundred thousand. New York was far and away the safest large city in the country.
Which brings us to de Blasio, who took office in 2014. Where his predecessors focused on crime control and public safety, de Blasio thought that he was going to solve poverty and income inequality. The police went on autopilot. The number of murders remained essentially stable for a few years, and even declined slightly, reaching the lowest level of 289 in 2018. And then the increases started, at first slowly, and then accelerating: 318 in 2019, 460 in 2020, and 479 as of December 26, 2021 — with five days to go, just short of 500. The increase is about 70% over just three years. With the population now at 8.8 million, the murder rate is back to about 5.5 per hundred thousand.
Granted, that figure still leaves New York at the safest end of the scale among the big progressive-governed cities in the U.S. Relatively safe Los Angeles, with 331 murders through November 30 and population of about 3.9 million, is on track for a 2021 murder rate of about 9 per hundred thousand. Chicago, with population well less than a third that of New York (2.7 million) has a tentative final murder number for 2021 of 842. That would be a rate per hundred thousand of more than 31, comparable to New York in its very worst days back in the early 90s. And then there are the true murder capitals: Detroit (murder rate of 51 per hundred thousand based on 2020 figures), Memphis (52), Baltimore (58), Birmingham (61), and St. Louis (an almost unimaginable 87). All of these places are governed by progressive Democrats, of course.
But our 70% increase in murders in just the past three years shows just how fast things can go wrong when the focus on crime control gets relaxed. The forces of chaos are always ready to spring into action. It is not at all obvious that the current trend can be turned around quickly before the number of murders soars still higher, perhaps much higher.
And let’s not lose track of the effects on minority communities. In all these progressive-governed cities, the majority of the murder victims are young black males. Two hundred additional annual murder victims per year in New York means well over a hundred young black males whose lives have been terminated.
And then there’s the effect of crime rates on incarceration rates. The dramatic decline in crime in New York City from the early 1990s through the 2010s led to comparable decreases in the jail population. In 1992, the average daily count of inmates in New York City jails was 21,449, with annual intake of 111,045. By 2019 (before the recent bail reform), the average census was down to 7,234. Bail reform has led to an immediate drop (to 4,471 in 2020), but if crime soars it is inevitable that incarceration will shortly go up accordingly.
I supposed the final verdict on de Blasio on the subject of crime might be “it could have been a lot worse.” On the other hand, it is almost incredible that the amazing achievements in crime control over the 20-year Giuliani/Bloomberg era could be so casually brushed aside, particularly with almost no consideration given to the detrimental effects on minority communities.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/...part-iii-crime
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