Debating Singleton’s View of Black America

John Singleton is selling fictitious tales of “geto tragedy” to white mainstream America and defiling images of both black women and black men in the process (“A Difficult Coming of Age,” by Patrick Goldstein, Feb. 27).

It is especially ironic that this USC film school graduate, who is currently making a $14-million rehash of some black urban pathology theme from the 1960s Moynihan Report, is criticizing the “black bourgeoisie” for correctly calling the film misogynistic. Who is Singleton kidding? He isn’t from this phony urban nightmare he claims is the black reality--if he were, by his own accounts he would be dead already.

Singleton is not a black artist or filmmaker, he is a millennium minstrel! What is more black and bourgeois than that?

KALI NICOLE GROSS

Philadelphia

*

As a black man, I think Singleton has done blacks a disservice by his negative portrayal of the African American community.

Yes, there are blacks who live in urban ghettos and who have to fight to survive. But I don’t believe they make up the majority of the black community, which is what I picked up from Singleton in your story.

My black friends and I would scarcely recognize the harrowing existence of the young men Singleton reportedly has depicted in the movie “Baby Boy.” And I don’t think my friends and I are anomalies.

Singleton is showing the black America (in the most sensational and saddest of manners) that white America wants to see, further perpetuating negative stereotypes about young black men.

WILL EMERSON

South Bend, Ind.

*

Goldstein’s piece on “Baby Boy” was great. John Singleton’s insistence on telling it like it is likens him to other great African American leaders. I applaud him for his honesty and courage, and The Times for presenting the material in a way that conveys his point.

BRANDON MARLOWE

Santa Monica

*

Here’s my idea for Singleton’s next film: Smart, educated young African American man finds himself incapable and/or unwilling to master the concept of birth control, thus fulfilling a cultural stereotype.

HARRY E. WINTERS III

Santa Monica