It's because I'm black, innit?

By Bisi Adigun 

British comedian Lenny Henry has a number of interesting sketches he has devised specifically to lampoon his fellow black people in Britain who play the race card whenever they are told by a white person that they are not suitable for a job or a vacant position. My favourite is the one in which he is dressed as a young girl waiting to be auditioned for a part in a musical. Despite Henry's apparent unsuitability, (he is a big black man and more than six feet tall) he is called into the audition room and asked to sing. I cannot recall the song he sings, but Twinkle Twinkle Little Star would not be far from it.

Anyway, after the short audition, the director of the musical who is in charge of the audition politely says to Henry: "Thanks for your time Mr Henry, but are you aware that the part we are looking to cast is that of a five year-old white girl who is blond and blue eyed?" To this seemingly reasonable question, Henry, albeit with a straight face, replies: "It's because I'm black, innit? Unfortunately, I found myself having to resort to Henry's line in the South East of the country recently, but under a very different circumstance, I must add.

For the whole of August, I was in the city of Waterford directing, with Waterford Youth Arts, my new play, The Playboy of the' Sunny' South East, inspired by, based on, loyal to and a new fun version of The Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge (of course!!). Shortly after 9pm on Friday the 5th of August, my mother-in-law called me and during our conversation, she asked if I was looking forward to seeing Ryan Tubridy's debut as the new Late Late Show host. I told her that I did not have a telly where I was staying in Waterford. She said not to worry that the reason she was looking forward to seeing it herself was to hear what the an Taoisheach, Brian Cowen, who happened to be the first guest on the show, had to say for himself.

As it were, I had read a full page article in a newspaper a day or so before in which Mr Brian Cowen was criticized for shying away from the Irish media. I immediately thought I should make an effort to see the programme. It was about 9:30pm by this time and although I was already in bed, I got up, got dressed and made my way to the nearest pub across the street; thinking all that would (or should) be on the tubes in any pub at that time was the nine o'clock news, which precedes the Late Late Show. I was wrong!

The first pub I entered had three large flat screens and all of them were on. But they all had the same rugby match on. By this time it was almost 9:35, the time the ‘historical' Late Late was billed to begin. So in order not to be late, I had a rapid tete-a-tete with my leg that we should head on to my ‘local', the pub that I have frequented a number of times. This pub is located opposite Garter Lane Theatre, in which the play I was directing would be showing.

When I entered my ‘local', the television in the larger part of the pub was on and showing the highlights of the Rugby match that had, by this time, come to an end; about six people were watching it. It was apparent that they were all ‘regulars'. I made my way into the inner part of the pub and thankfully there was no single customer there and the giant television in a corner was not on.

I approached the bar man and asked if he would be kind enough to turn on the telly so I can see the Late Late Show. He said no, that he could not put it on because their "TV is only for news and sports." I said but it was Ryan Tubridy's first Late Late and in my view, that should qualify as news. He said no, that The Late Late was an entertainment programme and it is their policy to only allow their customers to watch only news and sports. Even the mention of the fact that Brian Cowen was Ryan Tubridy's guest would not change his mind.

But I was not ready to give up. As my people say, "He who wants to eat the honey lodged inside a rock would not bother about his axe getting damaged." So I tried to further politely convince the barman why it was important that he allowed me to see the programme. I told him that it was in the interest of the country that all of us in the pub should listen to what Brian Cowen had to say as he is the Taoisheach because the country was going through a lot of uncertainties at the moment. I told him that I read in the local papers a few days earlier about the hundreds of jobs that had been lost in Waterford in the month of August alone. He told me that his sister's job was among them. However he was not going to change his mind about allowing me to watch the Late Late. On that note he excused himself to serve a customer and about five minutes later he was back.

When he returned, I said I hope he did not think I just entered the pub and demanded that he should put on the telly for me. I told him that I was ready to buy a drink. I told him that I chose to come to the pub because I had been there a number of times since I arrived in Waterford. I told him that I had been in the same pub already that afternoon. I told him that he should put the telly on and as soon as any customer arrived he could turn it off. Nothing that I told this bar man would make him change his mind. And it was at that point that I thought: if I were a white Irish man and had approached this barman to turn on a telly, which nobody was watching, so I could see a quintessential Irish television programme like The Late Late show hosted by a new presenter who had the Taoisheach of the country as his first guest, would he really have denied me the privilege?

But instead of expressing the above thought, I suppressed it and instead asked him: "why is it that some people in this country find it extremely difficult to stop digging when they are already in a hole? I said it would be stupid of me to have come into his pub to insist that he should serve me drinks for free. I said it would similarly be wrong of me to approach him to insist that he should allow me to smoke in his pub. But I could not see what was wrong in turning the telly on for me to watch The Late Late, even if it was the cardinal pub rule that no one should watch anything other than sport and news in the pub? I said I wonder what he would have said if I had asked him to put on the telly so I could watch the final of Miss Nigeria in Ireland.

In response he said if he allowed me to watch The Late Late, that he would have to allow another customer who comes in and wants to see the final of The Big Brother. I said I could not believe that he was comparing The Late Late Show with a new host and the Taoisheach as a guest to the Big Brother. I told him that I was sure that the interview would be in all the weekend papers and I could not understand why he could not see that it was news. I had no choice, but to, at this point, express my thought at last. So I said, he was talking bullshit and that I was sure if I was a white Irish fella from down the road and I had come in and asked him to put on the telly so I could watch The Late Late, he would have obliged me. To conclude I asked: "It is because I'm black isn't it?" Not unexpectedly, his response was curt: "This has nothing to do with your skin colour", he uttered. "And if you think it is", he continued, "it means you are a small-minded man". Was this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

Checking my wrist watch, it was almost quarter past ten; too late at this point for The Late Late. So I decided to order for a large bottle of Bulmers, with a pint of ice. I chose a comfortable seat, brought out my pen and began to write this piece before my small mind forgets the encounter which has left me thirsty, but invigorated enough to stop wondering about the origin of the dictum: "People get the leaders they deserve." In Ireland, we have Brian Cowen and the Americans have Barack Obama. While NAMA has already been passed into law here in Ireland, Obama is struggling with his proposed universal healthcare plan. But if the American Congress rejects Obama's health plan, I guess he can say: "It's because I am black, ain't it?

Bisi Adigun© September 2009

Bisi Adigun is the founder and artistic director of Arambe Productions(www.arambeproductions.com)

By Bisi Adigun

It is a year this month that I started writing this column. It has been really fulfilling to be afforded the unique opportunity to share some of my opinions with you our readers. I would like to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to the publisher and editor(s) of this online publication for allowing me to add a feather of a columnist to my cap. Also, I would like to say thanks to all of you, who are regular readers of my column and especially a couple of you who have taken the time to send me your comments and good wishes.

Nearly every month in the past year I have written about what it means to be the ‘Other' in a modern and rapidly diverse post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. It is one thing to be an immigrant domiciling in Ireland, it is a completely different thing to be a black, male, Nigerian dramatist living and working in Ireland. It is from these perspectives that I have penned all my past articles.

Furthermore, my experience since the phenomenal success on the Abbey stage of the new version of The Playboy of the Western World, which was commissioned by my company, Arambe Productions about two years ago, has shown me that if one looks very closely, Ireland is more corrupt than most African countries that are regularly vilified in the Irish media. Zimbabwe and my own country of birth, Nigeria, readily come to mind here. I shall be returning to how endemically ‘dodgy' I have discovered Ireland to be when the time is right in the not-too-distant future. In this article I want to turn my attention to the question: So, why did I stay?

A few weeks ago I was rushing, with my daughter, to get to a motor garage not far from where I live to collect our car. My wife had left it there for a quick check up. It was the Friday before the August bank holiday weekend so if we did not get there before they shut, we would not have the car until Tuesday. I needed the car, among other things, for a trip to the South East of the country that Sunday. Although my daughter was ready to roll on her scooter, I knew it would be a miracle to make it to the garage on time. Just as we stepped out of our house, I noticed Bus 17 approaching. This particular bus plies our street like, once in an hour and one of its stops is located a few metres from our house. So in my view, this was a prayer answered.

I said to my daughter that we should get on the bus since it would take us half way to the garage. "With this?" she asked, pointing to her pink scooter. I nodded and before she could ask another question I had flagged the bus down and carried her and her scooter on to it. As I was rummaging my pocket to look for the correct change to pay for the bus, I was trying to keep an eye on my daughter as well as her scooter so it did not scoot off on its own. The driver took one look at me and waved me to "go on." The driver allowed me to get on the bus without paying.

Before Dublin Bus begins an inquiry into this matter, let me quickly add that the organisation owes me a lot of money. I have dozens of long tickets given to me as change on which I could claim money if I took them to their headquarters in O'Connell Street. The reason why I mentioned the kind gesture of the bus driver here is because it took me completely by surprise. I thought Irish people are not nice like that any more. It has not been easy being a black man in this country in the past two years, I would like to argue. I often get the impression that Nigerians are being made to pay for the death of the Tiger.

Imagine being asked by a bar man to leave a pub because they need "the tables for customers." This is a pub I frequent regularly when I am in town. In fact, I recall that my picture, which is on the Home Page of Arambe's website, was taken inside the same pub in 2005. But on the occasion I was asked to leave, I bought a glass of juice and a packet of crisps as I was going for an important meeting with a teetotaller Nigerian friend I had arranged to meet there. I still cannot get over the fact that we were asked to leave a pub that was nearly empty. What if both of us had just arrived in this country? Would we not be right to think that Irish people are impolite?

Also, I have been refused money by a bank, which I have been with for more than thirteen years, on the basis that I did not have a facility that I have always enjoyed. Can you believe it? I was denied a few hundred euros for which I had worked hard and a number of greedy property developers owe the same bank millions of euro in unpaid loans. Wealth is desirable, but I must admit that I liked this country when it was not so wealthy.

I arrived in Ireland from Britain in 1996 in order to regularise my status in the same way that it is sometimes required of an Irish person to travel to Canada to renew his or her status as an immigrant in America. However, for reasons beyond my comprehension, as soon as I stepped on these shores, I felt at home and unconsciously thought, all things being equal, I would not be returning to Britain. To make ends meet I began to busk (playing djembe drum on the streets for money) on Grafton Street and Temple Bar.

Also for more than five years, I travelled the length and breadth of this country, under the auspices of African Cultural Project, headed then by Ghanaian Adekunle Gomez, facilitating workshops in African Performing Arts. Entitled ‘Africa Alive', my workshop was geared towards primary and secondary school students (transition year students were my favourite). Through music, song and dance, I tried to re-orientate my workshop participants that Africa is much more than the images of war, poverty, starvation and death with which western media usually associate the continent. There is no county that I did not travel to; and I still have good memories of those days.

I remember the day I was travelling to Navan on a bus for a workshop with about fifteen items of African musical instruments. A brought me to outside of Busaras and whilst I was contemplating the best way to take my instruments one by one to the bus point, a group of five ten-year olds on roller skates came by and one of them said to me: "Mister where are you going with all these drums?" I told him that I was thinking of how to get the instruments on to the Navan-bound bus about fifty metres from where we were. He grabbed one of my drums and his friends followed suit. "We will help ye," he said as these youngsters began to go up and down until all my stuff was loaded on to the bus. Before I could express my sincere gratitude, they had skated away.

Once I was travelling again, this time, to Cork on the bus with the same instruments. When we got to the bus station in Cork, it was raining heavily. The bus driver said he would drop me at the B&B where I was staying. After all the passengers had disembarked, the bus driver drove me, only me, in that big luxurious bus to the door of the B&B and helped me take all the drums into the B&B before he went on his way. That sort of generosity is almost unimaginable!

I also remember one evening after I alighted from a cab, I was standing in front of the hotel I was booked into in Limerick wondering how to take all my stuff in. Two guys who were passing by saw me and probably realised I needed help. They crossed over to where I was standing and asked if they could help me. I told them that I was just thinking of the best way to take my stuff into the hotel without leaving any of them outside unattended. They offered to help and together we moved all my gear into the hotel.

Gone are those days! It was a period when this country was a developing developed country or developed developing country, if you like. There was not as much wealth then, but there was lots of craic and humanity. Then, people had a developed sense of communality and Irish people did not have a misconceived idea that they are better than you because of your skin colour. I remember that then you could park anywhere you wanted because fewer people had cars. I remember that you could walk into your local pub and the bar man would cash a cheque written in your name for you and thus saving you the trouble of having to wait for the banks to open. It was an Island with a soul and I liked it that way. In fact I liked it so much; that was why I stayed. And you know what? I have no regrets. If I had to, I would do exactly the same thing. I would stay.

Bisi Adigun is the founder and artistic director of Arambe Productions (www.arambeproductions.com)

By Bisi Adigun

On my way back to Ireland from Nigeria recently I was handed one of those landing immigration cards to complete at the international airport in Abuja. When I got to the section where I had to write the ‘Purpose of Visit', I did not know which box to tick. In truth, no option adequately described the purpose of my trip. I was coming to Ireland neither on holiday nor on business. I wasn't also going there to study or work. Although, there was a box with the word: ‘Other' in front of it, I decided to ignore it too as I would have had to give detailed explanation of my trip. So I left that section blank, hoping that no one would notice.

Unfortunately the eagle-eyed immigration official on duty that morning did. He handed the card back to me promptly with the instruction that I should go back and enter the purpose of my trip. I collected the card, went to a quiet corner and thought long and hard about what to write that would unequivocally encapsulate the purpose of my trip to Ireland. I had been in Nigeria for 30 days. During this period I did not see my wife and daughter, who are based in Ireland. I ticked the box ‘Other....' and instinctively wrote the words: ‘Returning home' in the space provided in front of it. I handed the card back to the officer and made my way to the gate to board the aircraft.

No sooner had I settled in my seat than I began to reflect on the irony of the words: ‘Returning home'. I was about to leave the country where I was born and bred for another man's country and the only words I could employ to appropriately describe the trip were: ‘Returning home'. I know that home is where the heart is but the question remains: Would Ireland ever be my home? Judging by a weird experience I had in the Bank of Ireland in Rathmines shortly before I travelled to Nigeria in April, the answer is an emphatic no.

It was on the 17th of April to be exact. In preparation for my imminent trip home (I mean to Nigeria), I decided to go to the bank of Ireland for the sole purpose of closing an account that my bank persuaded me, not unlike many other customers, to open after the maturity of the SSIA account. My daughter who was on a school break was with me. After standing in the queue of customers for more than 10 minutes, I decided to join the much shorter queue to carry out a different transaction. Another reason why I had to show some initiative and changed to a shorter queue was that I knew from experience that my five-year-old daughter would soon say: "I really want to go to the toilet now". She usually says that after being in a place such as a bank or a post office for more than 10 minutes. It is her polite way of saying, "I am bored out of my head dad".

The queue I joined had three people but it was not a particularly straight one. The first man in the queue who was closest to the cashiers was pacing here and there, chatting away on his mobile phone. The lady in the middle was bending over a mini writing desk busily completing one of those bank deposit forms and the man behind her was also chatting away on his mobile phone. To be sure of what was going on, I asked the man who was last in the queue and the closest to me: "Please is this the queue?" He immediately said: "Hold on" to the person he was speaking to on his mobile phone turned round to me and said: "What does it look like you cunt?" Did he just say what I thought he said? To be sure I heard him right, I asked him: "What did you just say"? And lo and behold, he said it again and this time with more gusto: "I said what does it look like you cunt?" The only thing that I could blurt out at that instant was: "You must be joking!!" to which he responded "You arse hole who is joking with you. For your information I am an immigration lawyer". Sincerely, the only reason why restrained myself was because my daughter was watching.

Imagine if I was an asylum seeker; this man would have intimidated me for the fun of it while all the other people in the bank carried on as if nothing was amiss. You can only imagine how infuriating this man was. I remember that the man actually invited me out so that we could sort it out like men. That was when I said to him that I did not believe that a man like him ever set foot on the soil of a University. I remember an African proverb which says if one argues with a mad man, people would think both are mad. So I let it wash over me and tried to contain my anger especially because my daughter was taking everything in.

I do not know whether it was to prove to me that he was indeed a solicitor that the man handed me his business card as he made his way out of the bank. There is a picture of someone respectably dressed that looks like him on the card as well as the name of a firm: Niall Sheerin & Co Solicitors with the address: 17 North Kings Street, Dublin 7. Nonetheless, if this man could treat me, a citizen of Ireland, in such a manner simply because he thought I must be an ‘undocumented' immigrant because I do not have the same skin pigmentation as his, then any black person, who takes a case to him, does so at his or her own peril. Forewarned is fore armed. So let the house rats inform the bush rats. If a so-called immigration lawyer could conduct himself in such an uncivilized manner in the public, truly there is no hope for this country.

It is because of experiences like this that my writing: ‘Returning home' as my purpose of travelling from Nigeria to Ireland meant nothing other than returning home to my beloved family here in Ireland. If my family happened to be in Mogadishu and I was reuniting with them there, I would also have written: ‘Returning home'. Ireland, as a country, will never be home for me, especially as wolves keep marauding about in sheep's clothing. As the saying goes, ‘East or West, home is the best' and no matter how long I live in Ireland, Nigeria would always be the best.

Bisi Adigun© May 2009

Past articles by Bisi Adigun 

It is high time humans aped the apes

By Bisi Adigun 

MY parents wanted me to study law in the university at all cost. Somehow I ended up in the drama department of the University of Ife, where I graduated with a BA honours in 1990. Almost 20 years on, I feel so blessed and honoured to be a dramatist. Peter Brook, the famous British theatre director, once said: "What a book cannot convey, what a philosopher cannot truly explain can be brought into our understanding through theatre. Translating the untranslatable is its role." Similarly, Aristophanes, the father of Greek comedy, asserted that: "The dramatist should not only offer pleasure but should besides that, be a teacher of morality." In other words a good playwright should not only entertain but should also endeavour to use his creativity as a hammer with which to shape reality.

In my view, this is precisely what The Hounding of David Oluwale by Oladipo Agboluaje, which is currently touring the UK, is doing. It is my hope that Arambe Productions would invite the play to Ireland some time in the not-too-distant-future because it highlights the fact that when it comes to racism, especially institutional racism, as things change, so they remain the same. The play is based on the book, ‘Nationality: Wog'- The Hounding of David Oluwale, a true account of the harrowing racist hounding of David Oluwale by bigoted police officers in the Leeds Metropolitan Police in the 1950s. The book is written by Kester Aspden. Interestingly it was only last summer that Joe (not the plumber), my friend from my days in Great Ife, lent me the book. He said he would like me to read it because it would be a good story to adapt to stage. I read it and thought it would be a great book to bring to life on stage. I did not know that UK-based Nigerian playwright Oladipo Agboluaje had already begun work on dramatising the story of Oluwale.

The story of David Oluwale is not unlike the story of many Nigerian immigrants who have abandoned Nigeria in search of a better life in Europe. Oluwale left Nigeria as a stowaway on a Leeds-bound goods ship in 1949. But he could not find a job because of poverty and racially-motivated discrimination, especially in the areas of housing and employment. Oluwale soon became a rough sleeper. In 1953, he was sectioned when he got into trouble with the police. He spent eight years in Menston, a mental institution outside Leeds, where he was reportedly drugged with Largactil and treated with electric shock. Life would never be the same again for him as he literally became a nonentity in a foreign land

When Oluwale was eventually released from mental hospital, he had no where but Leeds to return to. But life soon became a living hell for him as he became a soft target for a couple of police officers who, over a number of years, regularly terrorized him. They would mercilessly assault him, pee on him, smash his head in and drive him to a location outside Leeds in the middle of the night and abandon him there, hoping he would not return. But Oluwale had no where else to go and no one to turn to. Although he repeatedly asked to be returned to Nigeria, he was never accorded this privilege. If he was not sleeping rough on the streets, he was in prison or in a psychiatrist ward.

The more he complained to the psychiatrist that he was being persecuted by the police, the more he was seen as someone who was delusional. Imprisonment, harassment, brutal assaults and all sorts of indignities were Oluwale's lot until his body was found in the River Aire. The Coroner ruled that his death was caused by drowning. However, a year and a half later, a police cadet reported what he knew about the awful way some members of the police had unabatedly maltreated Oluwale when he was alive. An investigation into Oluwale' mysterious death eventually led to the criminal conviction of all the police officers who had a hand in his brutal murder.

It is worth stressing here that everyone closed rank during the investigation into Ouwale's murder. The police, the lawyers and even the judge agreed that Oluwale was a social nuisance. "But Aspden tracks down people who have something different to say" as Esme Choonara who reviewed the book has rightly observed, "- not just friends, but ambulance drivers, cleaners and shopkeepers who saw him as a friendly and gentle person". If not for that God-sent police cadet who had a conscience and spoke out, the murder of David Oluwale would have been covered up for ever. The question is how many Oluwales are roaming the streets of Europe today? Why on earth do we humans behave so barbaric towards one another?

In an article aptly entitled "Now I'm the king of the fair-play swingers" published in a recent edition of the Sunday Times it was reported that monkeys and apes have a sense of morality. According to the opening line of the article, "Monkeys and apes have a sense of morality and the rudimentary ability to tell right from wrong." The article describes how studies have shown that "apes and monkeys can make judgements about fairness, offer altruistic help and empathise when a fellow animal is ill or in difficulty". It seems to me that all these moral values are no longer evident in our materialistic and racist world. It seems we are living in a world of me me me and me.

As a black man, I strongly believe that if you are black like me, no matter how long you have lived in a place such as Ireland, no matter how knowledgeable and experienced you are in your field, no matter how talented you are and no matter what your academic qualifications are, as long as you are black, you will always be seen as the ‘other' and as inferior to your white counterparts. It is a daily battle to prove oneself. Meanwhile, research has found that "animals have acute sense of fairness and objected strongly when others were rewarded more than themselves for the same task, often sulking and refusing to take part any further". If you look closely at our world you will agree that we humans have a lot to learn from animals. It is high time humans began to ape the apes. Let us copy the chimpanzees, mimic the monkeys and learn a lesson or two about fairness from all such animals we think are inferior. That way, perhaps, our world will be less of a jungle where some ‘animals in human skin' (to borrow a phrase from Fela Anikulapo Kuti) can hound fellow human being to death because of the pigmentation of his skin or the colour of his eyes.

Bisi Adigun is the artistic director of Arambe Productions (www.arambeproductions)

Good black actors in bad roles

By Bisi Adigun 

IT was in 1987 that I eventually got an admission into the University of Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria to study Dramatic Arts. When I told one of my aunts the news, she offered hearty congratulations but then warned me in a-matter-fact manner never to play the part of the downtrodden or a villain in any play in my career as a thespian. She advised very strongly that I should always aim for the part of a king, the rich and the affluent when I go for auditions.

My aunt's advice was based solely on her experience of the Nigerian television drama. More often than not those plays would have Kabiyesi in them because they are either inspired by Yoruba culture or based on historical events. One-off television dramas such as Efusetan Aniwura, Oba Koso and Ogbori Elemoso and the most successful Nigerian television series in the 1970s, Village Headmaster, nostalgically come to mind here. In these plays, like in most classical Hollywood narratives, ‘good' would always overcome ‘evil'. So what my aunt was essentially trying to say to me then was that I should always avoid the part of the ‘baddy'.

Twenty years into my acting career I cannot judge if I have successfully heeded my aunt's golden advice but as a dramatist and a theatre director, I do not believe in the concept of ‘arts for arts sake'. It is like saying: ‘advertisers advertise for the sake of advertising', not to influence consumers. Though I work in a so-called ‘entertainment' industry I believe the role of any artist is not merely to entertain but also to inform and educate. That is why my favourite quote is the one by German drama theorist Bertolt Brecht: "Art is not a mirror to be held up to a society but a hammer with which to shape it". So if you think you are escaping from reality by reading a book, seeing a play or watching a movie, think again. It is through these art forms that our attitudes are cultivated and our reality is fashioned.

Lakeview Terrace, the movie I saw shortly before Christmas, is an example of how Hollywood influences how Americans, and by extension all of us in our global village, perceive reality. Starring one of the most successful black Hollywood actors, Samuel L. Jackson, the movie is about Abel Turner, a widowed racist cop, who makes life hell for a newly married mixed race couple who just had moved into the house next to his. As a black man who is married to a white woman I am certain that it is not by sheer coincidence that the movie was released on the heels of Barack Obama's historic presidential election victory. What Hollywood is unequivocally saying through this movie is: Though Americans may have elected a President whose white mother married a black father, mixed-race marriages still encounter prejudice on both sides of the colour line. Essentially, the message of Lakeview Terrace for young unmarried Americans, in my opinion is: It may seem fashionable now in the wake of Obama's victory to cross the colour line in pursuit of love, it should not be done with reckless abandon. What a waste of money and good talents!

What I found most disappointing about Lakeview Terrace though is the fact that Samuel L Jackson actually agreed to play the role of the ‘evil' bigot cop Abel Turner in the movie. In a sad way, it reminds me of the character of Alonzo, the rogue police detective that Denzel Washington played in the movie Training Day. Unsurprisingly the role earned him his first Oscars in the best actor category a few years ago. I am not saying it is not important to do a movie about black policemen who are racist and corrupt in American society, but one would think that at this stage in their career, Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington should be in a position to influence things a little bit in order to correct the long-held erroneous notion that ‘if you are black you are bad and if you are white you are alright'.

As a black dramatist, I personally find it highly uninspiring to see these iconic black actors in Hollywood movies that end with their characters being riddled with bullets and left on the streets like dogs in order for things to return to ‘normal'. I mean if the two characters played by Washington and Jackson in these movies must die at the end of the films, they deserve to be killed in a dignifying way. I am yet to see Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis play a character whose life comes to an end in such a disgusting manner in any movie. Remember the way Leonardo Di Caprio's character dies in the movie, Titanic? Now that is what I call a meaningful and dignifying death.

I know there are some other good Hollywood black actors who would not be caught dead in such demeaning roles. Sydney Poitier, whom I admire so much because he seems to be in agreement with me that ‘arts for arts sake' is a fallacy, is one of them. In his spiritual autobiography The Measure of a Man, the Hollywood legend recounts when he once had to turn down a part in a movie that would have earned him $750 a week even though he was out of job, very broke and his wife was expecting their second child. "In my view, the character simply didn't measure up." as Poitier puts it. He added: "He didn't fight for what mattered to him, he didn't behave with dignity". In the same book, Poitier also writes about another episode in his life when he insisted that the character he was portraying in a screenplay needed to react to a situation in total contradiction to what was originally conceived for the character. The movie in question is In the Heat of the Night and Poitier played the part of police detective Tibbs from Philadelphia who by chance was assigned to a murder investigation in a small town in the Deep South.

According to the script, a local businessman with enormous influence was one of the murder suspects. Detective Tibbs, who was accompanied by the local police chief, was driven to the local businessman's mansion to question him. At a point, according to Poitier, "I had to ask the inevitable question, ‘where were you on the night of the murder?', and he hauled off and slapped me". At that instant, as the original script dictates, detective Tibbs was meant to look at the racist local influential businessman with great disdain, wrapped himself in his strong ideals and walked out. "That could have happened with another actor playing that part", writes Poitier, "but it couldn't happen with me". So Poitier told the director that the script needed to be changed. When the director asked Poitier what he had in mind, his response was: "Shoot this scene so that without a nanosecond of hesitation, I whack him right back across the face with a backhand slap". The director liked the idea and as Poitier puts it, "It turned out to be very, very dramatic moment in the film".

Would it not have been more dramatic if the racist Abel Turner - the character Samuel L. Jackson's played in Lakeview Terrace - having realised his evil ways, metamorphosed into a good man, a loving father, a friendly neighbour and someone who eventually falls in love with a white woman by the end of the movie? I doubt it very much though if Samuel L Jackson and Denzel Washington ever read The Measure of a Man. If they did, I am certain they would not have allowed the lives of the characters they portrayed so brilliantly in Lakeview Terrace and Training Day to end in such a disgrace. I know it is only a movie but "while fiction may be a form of symbolic action", as Ralph Ellison has written in his novel The Invisible Man, "a mere game of ‘as if', therein lies its true function and its potential for effecting change". What exists in the imagination of the artists goes a long way in shaping our reality. Therefore it is high time good black Hollywood actors stopped playing bad roles. Some of us look up to them as role models and for inspiration.

By the way, happy New Year to you all.