Cry Freedom Essay, Research Paper

In the movie Cry Freedom Steven Biko is a black human rights leader. He is loved by the black community but hated and feared buy the white South African community. James Wood, the editor of a white newspaper, befriends Biko and agrees to go to a black township with him. Biko, however, is banned from these townships by the government. While in this township a situation arises where an analogy of the governmental and humanistic situations is compared to a table.

The conversation begins when Woods says that the government is beginning to give blacks better education. Biko then says, I won t be forced into your society. You can do whatever you want to me, beat me, torture me or kill me but I wont be what you want me to be, I will be who I am (sic). Woods the says, I don t know, something about it still scares me (sic), and Biko replies, Of course it does. Your world, the white world depicts white as pure and the color black as evil (sic). Biko s friend portrays the table analogy.

He says that the problem with society is that the you (referring to whites) allow us- referring to blacks to come to your table, sit in your chairs, eat your food, use your silverware, and if we are good enough, you will kindly allow us to stay. But we cant have that, we must wipe the table clean, and make a black table, live in peace as we did before you came.

Woods then makes a sarcastic remark enforcing the notion of paternalism, You did have tribal wars then, didn t you? (sic). And Biko intelligently replied, What do you call World War one and two?

The black perspective calls for confrontation as mentioned in the movie. At Biko s trial, a lawyer uses one of Biko s speeches where he called for direct confrontation. The lawyer says that Biko was inciting a revolt against the government. Biko then says to the lawyer, I m am here now, confronting you, yet I see no violence (sic). I agree with Biko, no situation has ever been resolved by idle anger and disagreement. I m not saying there is need for violence. Knowledge is power and if the rest of the non-segregated world knows, then they have the power to change, the power to pressure the South African government against apartheid as is done today by N.A.T.O. and the U.N.

Both perspectives seem appalling to me in the sense that they both enforce the notion of segregation. The whites want to control the blacks at their table and the blacks what to control themselves at their own table. In my perspective, humans are humans, I do not care if they are white, black, yellow, orange, purple, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Satanist or pagan. Their should be no table, only a dining hall. A room that is so called earth. And that room should be populated by any and all living beings in a peaceful and productive way. Those people who do not whish to be peaceful or kind should be the ones treated like the blacks, sitting at the white table, not men, women and children who would work for that great hall.