When the news of an upcoming movie from a first time director by the name of Nate Parker on the subject of Nat Turners infamous slave rebellion entitled “The Birth of a Nation” came across my Yahoo news feed early this year, at the time I would have had difficulty putting into words my joy of the very idea. Everything about the movie was nothing short of just plain ballsy; The fact that for perhaps the first time since “Amistad (1997)” a movie subverting the idea of American slaves as having only been docile into one of us knowing that what was happening was unjust and organizing uprisings as a way to restore that justice was being brought to the forefront, the fact that this was being brought up during a time when paralleled tensions between people of color and law enforcement are once again re-emerging, the fact that Nate Parker had the audacity to re-appropriate the name of D.W. Griffiths “The Birth of a Nation (1915)” a film notoriously known for its gross characterization of Black Americans at the time as animalistic rapists who could only be stopped by the heroic Ku Klux Klan, the fact that this was all bundled up in a directorial debut from a black director who had to invest his own money into the project just to get it off the ground…even the story behind the story had its own pair of balls! All the way down to the knowledge that it would spark a much needed conversation about how the current state of race relations in America, despite significant progress having been made, is still quite parallel to how it was hundreds of years ago.
I now recognize that joy as having been hope, and as Black Americans we all experience a very specific kind of hope. You could hear it in Halle Berry's trembling voice in her speech accepting the 2002 Oscar for best actress, the first black woman to do so, all the way down to Jesse Jackson's tears at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2008. Us Black Americans don’t have many heroes, let alone many who are as self-made as Nate Parker, so when the news of Nate Parkers and “Births” co-writer Jean Celestin’s past rape case was brought to light, in addition to the news of the victims’ suicide in April of 2012, it put many Black Americans, myself included, in an uncomfortable position. Never before did I expect to have to compromise my strong beliefs in the rights of women and rape survivors with my undying love and support for black creatives.
Almost immediately many Black Americans begun to rally around Nate Parker. High profile black leaders and creatives like Al Sharpton, Anthony Anderson and Harry Belafonte all the way down to bloggers on platforms such as Facebook and Tumblr; justifications and dismissals of Nate Parkers actions like the fact that he was acquitted (even though co-writer Jean Celestin ended up being charged in the same case and regardless Mr. Parker played a role in putting her in a vulnerable position), the fact that the victim and Mr. Parker had mutual sexual contact before the incident, the fact that the victim had battles with mental illness even before the supposed rape, how “convenient” it is that this is resurfacing just as “The Birth of a Nation” is getting more attention (because that’s kind of how the spread of information works???), but the main argument seem to be that the story of Nat Turners rebellion is way bigger than the scandal surrounding Nate Parker.
And I get it, I understand why we rally behind our heroes so passionately, we praise them because no one else will, we defend them because one else will, we support them because from the get go it was already established by America that they will receive less support than their white counter-parts, but dehumanizing someone takes on two flavors; not only in antagonization, but also in idolization.
It all boils down to one fact: loving black creatives and holding them accountable are not mutually exclusive. How are we to support black men when at the very least we refuse to hold them accountable? Black men are still men, and in being men, do benefit from patriarchal privilege.
If any Black American still supports the filming light of any of this, by all means it’s you’re right. If the support of black men weighs more than the act of holding them accountable on your scales I don’t think it necessarily makes you any better or worse as a person. But the idolization of black men despite instances of the abuse of male privilege is what will ultimately allow the special brand of toxic masculinity that exists within the black community to continue to fester. It’s uncomfortable to discuss, but this is what we must talk about when we talk about Nate Parker.
