Film Ads With Guns Only Fuel Racial Fires

Wesley Snipes is not the only one who is reaching the boiling point. But unlike Snipes, who plays a Treasury agent in the movie “Boiling Point,” I’m not mad because an ex-con is trying to beat the law. I’m mad at the promotional ads for the movie I see on billboards and posters throughout SouthCentral Los Angeles.

The ad that appears in Calendar pictures Snipes next to a badge. On the streets of South-Central, I see Snipes holding a gun that literally dwarfs his face.

Sure, I know the small print in the ad says he’s a cop. And I know that Warner Bros. deleted the gun from newspaper ads because of the tensions that prevailed as the community awaited verdicts in the Rodney G. King civil rights case (“With Verdicts Imminent, Movie Plans Are Changed,” Calendar, April 17). But no effort was made to change the image that stares out from numerous billboards and bus shelter posters, and, given the incessant stereotyping of young black males in much of the media as dope dealers and gang members, many people in fear-ridden Los Angeles might mistake Snipes for just another thug from the “hood.”

How many times do we have to go through this? Two years ago the promotional trailers for “Boys N the Hood” showed violence in the film. Next, there was “Juice.” The billboard ads showed several young black men standing on a street corner with menacing scowls. One of them held a gun. Both these films had human stories to tell, but the ads stressed only the violence.

Several months ago in the film “Trespass,” Hollywood tried to cash in on the tough-guy, ghetto-banger image of rappers Ice-T and Ice Cube. In the promotional trailers, the two men happily wielded their guns. It seems that those who dream up these ads that play to stereotypes are determined to keep the racial pot boiling.

I realize that Hollywood ad people have an ancient love affair with gun-toting white heroes. Roger Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson come to mind. And now Bridget Fonda (“Point of No Return”) and Miranda Richardson (“The Crying Game”) pack firearms in advertising too. But young white men and women don’t use guns to kill each other in staggering numbers. Young black males do.

Since 1969, nearly 1,000 black male teen-agers have died each year from gunfire, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Young black males are seven times more likely than white teen-agers to wind up as homicide victims.

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From 1985 to 1989, Los Angeles County nearly beat out Washington for the title of the nation’s murder capital. Nearly all the gunshot victims were young blacks and Latinos.

There are two other tragic scenarios that could involve young blacks and guns. We saw the first two months ago in Compton when two young police officers were killed after making a routine traffic stop of a motorist. The suspect was described as a young black male.

Here’s the other frightening scenario. A nervous police officer pulls over an African-American male. When the young man reaches toward his glove compartment to get his registration or goes in his pocket to get his license, what happens if the officer thinks he’s reaching for a gun?

I’m not going to write the end to this scene because that young man could be my son. He’s 20 years old, attends college and is a year away from graduating with a degree in business. He has never been arrested, does not belong to a gang, never used or sold drugs and certainly has never owned a gun. Neither has any of his friends. Contrary to what much of the media and the public believe, they, not the gangbangers, are the majority of young black men in the “hood.”

Now I don’t claim that ads lead to mistaken police shootings or cause young blacks to kill each other with reckless abandon. Poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime, family breakdown and racism are the main reasons they do that. But guns do kill. To glamorize guns by their prominent display in advertising can only make them more appealing to those who are most likely to misuse them. My message to Hollywood: Put the guns back in their holsters--better still, dump them altogether--and help keep the peace too!