Personal Reflections on
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
My
wife and I saw Lee Daniels’ greatly anticipated movie, The Butler, during its opening weekend. Starring Best Actor Oscar winning actor,
Forest Whitaker, and Oprah Winfrey, The Butler
chronicles simultaneously the individual experience of Cecil Gaines and the
collective African American struggle for civil rights and justice from legally
sanctioned segregation in the American South through the years of the Reagan
Administration. Specifically, the movie
centers upon Gaines experience as a butler to the President of the United
States from Eisenhower through Reagan.
As he told in his interview for the job, “The White House has no
tolerance for politics,” Gaines directly observes how Eisenhower, Kennedy,
Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan handle America’s enduring race problem. Gaines’ initial training in service began
after “The Missus” of the Mississippi cotton where he grew up decides to make
him a “house nigger” as compensation for her son’s cold blooded murder of
Gaines’ father for confronting the her son for raping Gaines’ mother in broad
daylight. Gaines is told to serve and
wait on the White family “as if the room is empty to you.” Upon his arrival at the White House, the
chief butler reinforces this instruction. Gaines listens to primary
decision-making conversations directly affecting his life and the lives of his
fellow thirty million African Americans but it is as he is invisible. The
Butler offers viewers an eerie experience of witnessing the triumphs and
tragedies of the interplay between Presidential power, Congressional action,
Southern resistance, Civil Rights leaders and protesters and the Black Power
Movement through the lenses of an essentially invisible man.
Personally,
I am very leery of Hollywood’s newfound interest in the profitability of
telling the story of the African American struggle for freedom, justice and
equality with excessive cinematic poetic license designed to make unrequited
historical horrors palatable to an uninformed audience. Consistent with this burgeoning genre of
marketable “Black” movies that are acceptable to wider audiences, The Butler glosses over the unparalleled
revulsion of lynching and the daily incredulous reality that an African
American could lose his life at the hands of any White person for any “reason”
and without adjudication and due process of law. As a child growing up in Sumter, South
Carolina in the 1970s and 1980s, I recall passing a house of mourning in “the
Black neighborhood” one Sunday morning on the way to church. There, I would learn that a Black father and
future grandfather had been killed by a White man on the previous evening as a
result of a questionable gambling game.
They drew pistols and the White man allegedly fired first in
self-defense; quite possibly, he did.
However, his words solely sufficed to eliminate any further
investigation by law enforcement. Less
than twelve hours after the incident and the death of the Black man, the White
man walked the streets freely. He was
observed buying sodas for a few Black children at an ABC store with his
winnings from the previous night. To
this day, he has not been arraigned yet alone indicted, tried, convicted or
acquitted for firing a fatal gunshot that took the life of a husband, father
and provider of a working class family whose children struggle financially for
the balance of their childhood.
The
recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a
seventeen year-old African American male who simply went to a convenience store
to purchase a pack of Skittles and an Arizona iced tea, raised the ghost of
that memory from my childhood. However,
during Cecil Gaines’ formative years such incidences of the reckless, wanton
and indifferent taking of Black life were commonplace. Both above and below the Mason-Dixon Line,
countless African Americans lost their lives due to the entrenched, maniacal
racial hatred of individuals and the institutional racism of a judicial system
that relegated those lives as not economically worth the cost of investigations
and trials. Hollywood perpetuates these
historical crimes when the movie industry adds dramatic excesses to telling
these stories to enable everyone to leave a viewing with a good feeling.
Notwithstanding
its limitations and deficiencies, The
Butler challenges me to expand my view of the heroes of the Civil Rights
Movement and Black Power Movement.
Myopically, I heretofore considered the protesters in the street as the
primary agents of change as they coerced the legal and social establishment to
enact the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts broaden access of African
Americans to all segments of society whether housing, public facilities or
educational institutions. Cecil Gaines’
life embodies the subversive protests of countless nameless persons who
resisted segregation in their individual means and methods. At first glance, Gaines appears to
accommodate segregation. His silence
seems to equate with cowardice. He seems
concerned only with his provision for his family. As the movies progresses, Gaines’ steadfast,
gradual and forceful protest against devaluing the worth of African American
butlers and employees at the White House unfolds as a personal civil rights
movement. Unrelentingly, he maintains
his resistance to this inequity until he succeeds during the Reagan
Administration. Gaines’ efforts
eventuate in raises for all White House employees. His life and example demonstrates the
importance of establishing mutually respectful relationships with people and
the invaluable role that such relationships play in changing laws and social
mores. Dramatic, nonviolent and public
resistance is not the only effective means of transforming society and
eradicating historical mistakes. Cecil
Gaines teaches the importance subversive means of protesting injustice.
I
was particularly struck by Gaines’ relationship with his two very different
sons. Gaines and his older son, Louis,
misunderstood each other. The son fails
to see his father’s stalwart and progressive protest as a butler in the
corridors of power. In fact, Louis loses
respect for his father as Louis assumes his father accommodates the injustice
of segregation because of a good paying job.
In contrast, Gaines does not fully appreciate the necessity of direct
action as power rarely if ever concedes anything to anyone because the person
asks politely and correctly. Louis’
protests inclusive of sit-ins at the lunch counters, freedom bus rides,
marches, church rallies and boycotts were very valid as these means forced the
legal and political establishment to take affirmative action to transform
American laws and society. Yet, Gaines’
more silent and meek personal protests were equally legitimate. The movie depicts their breakdown in
miscommunication, respect and trust. The
harm to their relationship prevents them from recognizing that they both seek
the same goal despite their differing approaches.
The
death of Gaines’ younger son as a soldier fighting in the U. S. Army during the
Vietnam War dismantles his myopic view about Louis’ participation in the Civil
Rights Movement. Gaines acknowledges
that he did not understand the reasons for the United States entry into that
internal conflict of a sovereign South Asian country. Gaines embodies the invisible African
American sacrifices through perpetual generations throughout American history
from the American Revolutionary War through Operation Iraq Freedom. Louis’ myopic estimation of direct protests
crumbles as he refuses to accept the Black Panther Party’s approval of
revengeful violence. Louis alters his
approach by running for Congress and attempting change via the political
establishment. Simultaneously, Gaines
forges forward with his personal campaign to obtain equal pay and promotion for
African American staff at the White House.
The Butler concludes with
reconciliation between father and son as they both appreciate their arrogance,
myopia and judgment in undervaluing each other’s approach to seeking justice
and equality for African Americans.
Embedded
within this movie about personal and collective African American protest is an
impressive, raw and maturing love story.
Through the peaks and valleys of alcoholism, loneliness, relational
conflict with children, infidelity and breakdown in communication, Gaines and
his wife “stagger forward, rejoicing” in love.
Viewers observe these daily realities and difficulties which anyone who
seeks genuine love experiences in Gaines’ marriage. How he processes this pain, betrayal and
disrespect into an authentic and enduring love for his wife viewers are left to
imagine. The longevity of their
relationship seems incredible given the cumulative effects and affects of their
personal and collective challenges. Yet,
many African Americans faced the existential challenge of cultivating love
despite daily adversities of a rabidly racist society and internal self-hatred
within and relational conflicts of the Black community. I applaud Lee Daniels for including this
respectful and worthy dimension of Gaines’ life. I further appreciate Daniels’ esteem of
Gaines by leaving private the interior pain and disappointment of his heart. Yet, I am grateful for Gaines’ example of the
expense and rewards of finding and maturing in love which the basis for genuine
and redemptive forgiveness.
“It
is as if the room is empty to you.” That
line in the movie reverberates through my consciousness! I doubt I will ever forget it as long as I
live. Lest I lapse into melodrama and
sentimentality, I recite that line as it reminds me of the major motif of Ralph
Ellison’s brilliant, compelling and
enduringly relevant novel about the invisibility of African Americans as it
relates to the history, culture, institutions and ascent to global greatness of
the United States. Stories of the
seminal contributions of non WASP, Eastern European, Latino and Asian
immigrants abound within American folklore and contemporary discourse. Many African Americans ignore the harsh
historical reality of unparalleled chattel slavery practiced in the American
South. However, a scholarly consensus
amongst historians values the property appraisal of slaves at two billion
dollars ($2,000,000,000) in gold in 1860.
Prorated for inflation, the contemporary equivalent of that figure would
be simply astounding. Essentially,
slavery significantly financed America’s ascent into an industrial and imperial
power in the second half of the nineteenth century and her subsequent
assumption of superpower status in the global village. Accordingly, I reiterate the extreme danger
of movies like The Butler meagerly
addressing the lynching of nearly four thousand (4000) persons in the
South. It is a further fault of the
movie to crop the camera and focus the lenses so that story of African American
pain is told through a White person’s prism of experience.
It
is reprehensible that Hollywood insists that Black pain requires White
validation. In 1988 when Mississippi Burning was released, its
director, Alan Parker, vociferously and vehemently defended his decision to
tell the story of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael
Schwerner and the residual murders of countless and nameless other Black
Mississippians through the roles of two FBI agents played by Gene Hackman and
William Defoe. In a feature article in The New York Times, Parker insisted,
“Quite frankly, it had to be done that way.
That was the only way it could be done.”
A quarter of a century later, with the interim release of Unconquered, a 1989 film depicting the socially
progressive sacrifices of former Alabama Attorney General Richmond Flowers, Sr.
in 1962; Glory, a 1989 film
recounting the sacrifices of Robert Gould Shaw as he led the Massachusetts 54th
Regiment, all Black division, in a Civil War battle; The Ghosts of Mississippi, a 1996 film the concentrates upon the
role of Bobby DeLaughter in the eventual conviction of Bryon De La Beckwith for
the cold blooded and cowardly of murder of Medgar Evers whom Beckwith shot in
the back with a shotgun as Evers wife and children watched; and The Help, last year’s blockbuster
success which details the indignities of Black domestic workers through the
perspective of an aspiring White female writer; Parker’s insistence that Black
pain must be told through the experience of White people continually justifies
Hollywood’s marketing approach to releasing “Black films.” Parker’s defensive and inadequate explanation
for slighting the collective, indescribable and incalculable pain of African
Americans persists.
Albeit
a profitable means of addressing race and racial injustice on the wide screen,
hopefully this genre of movies will mature to future iterations in which the
primary expression of Black pain will suffice to encourage and empower all
American citizens to create a more just and equitable society. Who knows, perhaps, Hollywood rather than
furthering prevalent racial stereotypes and creating more Black jokes may
utilize its unquantifiable influence upon social media and popular culture to
fulfill the grand American ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Will Hollywood join the rising tide of
racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and ideological pluralism to establish the
inherent value democratic and egalitarian principle that all persons are indeed
equal and share certain inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness? In its simplest and most
unvarnished form, will Hollywood assist all Americans in seeing the worth of
African American life as of equal value to their own? Then, it will no longer be necessary for Cecil
Gaines or any other African American to live within a social, economic and
political context that remains utterly indifferent to his life and pain. Then, no longer will the room be empty to
Gaines and other African Americans; they will sit alongside the increasing
diversity of this great democratic republic where in King’s grandiloquent
declaration they are judged by the content of their character instead of the
color of their skin.
I
did have a few heartwarming moments as I watch The Butler. I rejoiced
during the scenes in which an elderly Gaines and his wife wore “Obama-Biden”
tee shirts during the 2008 presidential campaign. Immediately, I recalled the many senior
persons who marched during the Civil Rights Movement and protested in their
personal ways who cried on the night of then candidate Obama’s acceptance
speech at the Democratic National Convention which occurred forty-five years to
the date of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on the
National Mall as the culmination of the March on Washington. How momentous an occasion it must have been
for them to have heard King in the midst of the volatility of the sixties and
then to listen to Obama declare “Change has come to America” at the dawn of the
twenty-first century! Additionally, I
remembered staying up on election night in 2008 to witness the historical
moment of the election of the first African American President. I cried as I knew how much my beloved
paternal grandfather, who voted in every single election and never missed
watching any election returns and watched every single “State of Union”
address, would have desired to share firsthand in that jubilant occasion.
Following
the President Obama’s inauguration on 20 January 2009, I went to a fly shop and
purchased two of the biggest American flags on sale. One flag flies on the top of a flag pole
installed by the previous owners and the other adorns the front door of the
house. I raised the first flag on
Presidents Day. The second flag honors
my late brother who died at the tender age of nineteen in a car accident while
on active duty in the United States Air Force.
As I watched the official notification scene in The Butler, I very briefly relived the depth of loss of my brother
who died serving this country. To the
extent the movie invoked any good and sentimental feelings within me, I
imagined how satisfying many African Americans found President Obama’s election
as the fulfillment of centuries of dreams and hope that the United States would
one day recognize and respect their invaluable contributions to making this
country great.
I
have one final favorable reaction to The
Butler. The concluding scene in
which Cecil Gaines waits to be ushered into the Oval Office to meet with
President Obama metaphorically opens the door to unlimited future possibilities
for African Americans and all other persons who become American citizens. Pluralism, globalization, technology,
science, secularism, all, combine to offer boundless opportunities for
individual and national progress. One imagines
how gratifying it must have been for Gaines to have visited with President
Obama. In his wildest dreams, did he
ever allow himself to consider the day that he would wait upon an African
American President? On inauguration day
in 2009, I paused to consider mystically what the White House staff must have
felt when the Obamas moved in following the ceremonies. Could they have ever imagined they would
serve an African American family? Was I
one of them, with tears of deep healing and smiles of great joy, I would have
welcomed them with genuine gratitude for their sacrifices.
The Butler leaves me with
one final question. What is the Civil
Rights Movement of today? Assuredly,
contemporary Americans cannot rest on the laurels of past generations and
erroneously assume the successes of yesteryear eliminate the need to expand
upon past achievements. We are
approaching the wholesale incarceration of one percent, three million people,
of the American population. Many of
these citizens have been wrongly arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried,
convicted and imprisoned because of their race, ethnicities, culture and lack
of economic resources. The Innocence
Project essentially is a twenty-first century civil rights movement as it relates
to crime, capital punishment and classism.
Already, one hundred and fifty men have been exonerated utilizing DNA
thereby proving they did not and could not have committed the crimes for which
they were incarcerated. Minimally, they
have lost fifteen hundred years of human existence due to prosecutorial
misconduct, false eyewitness testimony, racial and class assumptions by jurors,
trial errors and other causes of the miscarriage of justice. Startlingly, some of these exonerated men
were on death row with imminent execution dates. Second, the preservation of good, effective
public education is critical to preserving a solid middle class in the United
States. Segregated residential patterns
throughout the country have resulted in the practical and pragmatic reversal of
the grand aims of Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka. Nearly sixty
years after that landmark U. S. Supreme Court decision, many students of color
attend schools more segregated than the pre-Brown days. Continual erosion of the quality of public
education and its ability to prepare American students to be productive,
profitable and contributing participants in the global village significantly
threatens the country’s international standing and competitiveness.
Third,
predatory lending injustices persists as Americans of color face sophisticated
institutional racism as they strive to attain the American dream of private
home and business ownership. Morally and
ethically questionable lenders of the housing crisis in the first decade of
this century targeted certain demographical segments as they were deemed ripe
for default and foreclosure; realizing huge profits as these people’s expense
and dignity. Fourth, the twenty-first
century civil and human rights movement is not strictly an American one. The epidemic spread of HIV/AIDS in South
Africa perpetually ravages this nation where Americans fought to end
apartheid. Current activists must return
to encourage and empower our brothers and sisters in South Africa and
throughout the continent as they combat an assault on their society and
posterity equal in proportion to the Black Death in Europe in 1348, the Middle
Passage of the Atlantic slave trade, the casualties of the First and Second
World Wars and the wholesale genocide of Eastern Europe and Asia throughout the
twentieth century. This disease is one
of several others including varying types of cancer, heart disease, obesity,
alcoholism and drug addiction which potentially will rob “Millennials” and their
children and grandchildren of the centenarian longevity they should easily
enjoy if they live healthy, happy and holistic lives. Distributing healthcare resources in an equitable
and just means is a contemporary civil and human rights issue that affects all
Americans and global citizens.
Fifth,
dear to my heart, adoption particularly in the African American community is another
type of civil and human rights movement as many of the entrenched personal and
systemic pathologies could be reversed within one generation if the children in
foster care and state custody were adopted into loving and compassionate
families. These family units could train
these children with morals, ethics, principles and work ethic enabling them to actualize
their talents and abilities. This familial
and relational empowerment undoubtedly will eradicate lingering educational and
economic disparities. Easily, I could
list countless other important issues such as the environment, sexuality,
ecology, international relations, debt in Africa, trade and economic empowerment
within developing countries, and diplomacy in the Middle East that comprise a national
and global civil and human rights movement.
Today’s movement requires specialization within one or two issues as the
breadth and width of their interrelation with other social, economic and political
challenges prevent anyone from acquiring expertise in numerous causes. Still, each citizen in the global village can
choose an issue or two and focus intently upon creating a more just world in
which to live celebrating the invaluable wealth of humankind’s diversity.
Whether
advocating for legislative, judicial and governmental changes to redress
systemic causes perpetuation of racism and other societal inequalities or
delivering direct services to individuals as they assume greater personal
responsibility, contemporary citizens have an obligation to expand upon the
legal, social and political achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in
twentieth century America. Lee Daniels
cinematic depiction of Cecil Gaines’ life shows the power of each person to
change the world whether through direct action or confronting societal inequality
through integrity of personal character and myriad silent subversive ways.
