This morning an article titled “Tyler Perry, Stop Vilifying Black Success“ appeared in my Facebook newsfeed. It was written by a young man, Ernest Owens, a Communication & Public Service major at the University of Pennsylvania. What made it more salient for me, a middle aged black man, is that it came from a young black man.
You see, young black men are becoming an endangered species. They are stereotyped as violent, & irresponsible. Nowhere in the discussion is the socio economic conditioning that creates that reality where it exists examined in detail. Nowhere in the discussion is the truth that black men and other minorities form the bulk of the raw material for our private prison industrial complex that creates profits for a few, as corrupt governments uses the tax dollars of the middle class to take care of the imprisoned. The Plutocracy takes its profits from said prisons, a legal transfer of wealth from the taxpayer.
It is bad enough that the majority of the entertainment industrial complex has allowed a few rappers and artists to profit from the exploitation of females, black females in particular. Does anyone believe Americans would have allowed that denigration of white women as is allowed by the current crop of rappers; of course not.
The denigration of black women and men is very profitable because in our innermost being, certain types of negatives sell. The denigration of white women would be even more profitable when scaled. However, the masters of the entertainment industrial complex know their limits.
It is for this reason that Mr. Owen’s piece is so prescient. I have long stopped going to Tyler Perry’s movies. I have always described his work as the “Amos and Andy” of the twenty first century. He has prostituted the race and in doing so prolongs the time where equality and mutual respect even though codified on paper is much delayed in Americans’ hearts and minds.
Tyler Perry is the pimp. His movies, the black stereotypes, are the prostitutes. His viewers are the unknowing johns.
Mr. Owens apparently saw all of his movies and in doing so further makes the damage that Perry does not only to the black psyche, but the black stereotype very apparent. He goes down the list of movies to illustrate the negative stereotype on successful blacks while endearing to the less successful. The following three paragraphs illustrate it best.
[Source]
In your recent disappointment in cinema, Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, your leading actress (played by Jurnee Smollett-Bell) get infected with HIV and loses her marriage based on her ambition to overall pursue a better career as a marriage counselor. Given that she is unhappy in her current marriage with an aloof, underachieving husband (that rather her cook dinner every day for him and go to church more to become "a better wife") Smollett-Bell’s character is less understood given that she instead pursues a man that matches more of her professional, sexual and intellectual desires. If anything, the unfortunate moral of the story is: the more you aim high, the less happy you are.
Such a pathetic motif continued in your other movies, where in Madea’s Family Reunion, successful black actors such as Blair Underwood is a controlling and abusive black attorney who loses his fiancée. Gabrielle Union in Daddy’s Little Girls is a snobby uptight Ivy League alum turned attorney who "humbles" herself for a mechanic with previous children. Sanaa Lathan in The Family That Preys plays an educated accountant that is a doomed cheater that is scarred by a white man. Robbie Jones in Temptation is a successful black social media tycoon with HIV that is a womanizer who cheats, beats, stalks, controls and infects the many women around him. And the list goes on…
As for the many falsehoods and fallacies that play out in your movies, the biggest stereotype might just be that with black success come negative atrocities. If it means anything, your films continue to place blacks who aspire to do more be hesitant to achieve such for preconceived consequences will follow.
While Tyler Perry’s rags to riches life has in effect made him powerful enough to disregard criticism, it is important that everyone irrespective of race or creed be willing to speak out against him. It is bad enough that others knowingly vilify a people. It is unforgivable when it is one of your own.
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In your third paragraph, you spelled Americans (plural) with an apostrophe. That is incorrect usage. If you intended a possessive term, you would use an apostrophe.
If you want people to take your articles seriously you need to proofread a little better. I know it sounds superficial, but using proper punctuation will mean the difference between someone actually reading your article and someone who doesn’t believe you know what you are doing.
Thanks for pointing out the apostrophe. That said I think your tone is a bit overblown. While I must attempt at 100% grammatical accuracy, writing is a human endeavor and errors do occur. I have seen today alone, a couple of errors in New York Times article.
Anyone who causes an apostrophe error to not take a factual piece seriously needs to examine their true intent.
Again, thanks for the correction. Next time consider simply pointing out the error without a tone that implies your infallibility. I have already proven my seriousness so you need not be concerned.