I seen the movie "Fruitvale Station" based on the life of Oscar Grant yesterday and it is a great movie. It almost made me cry at the ending, especially when I thought about Trayvon Martin and how the same situations are happening again and again to our young black males with minimal justice.
I am glad the film portrayed Oscar in a honest way. This is a film that shows something that many of things that make people in America prejudiced about black people go into cognitive dissonance mode: a mother and son trying to overcome adversity and improve their lives, but simply can't due to the fact that they can't secure employment which keeps them confined in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Oscar Grant became the victim of so much negative things going on in his life: poverty, becoming a father at a very young age, lack of a father(I'm unsure if his father was ever in his life since he's not shown or mentioned in the movie), etc.
The film shows Oscar Grant being physically attacked and Oscar fighting back in self defense while witnesses in the Bart train witness everything. Oscar then tries to avoid the police and that's when problems escalate. Even when the men were sitting down like they were told, even though they were TALKING back to the police, they did what they were told.
Oscar was the most cooperative of them all. I don't ever remember seeing Oscar fighting the police. The police manhandled them anyway. The reason they were talking back was because one of the cops was rude, crude and socially unacceptable (getting into this immature swearing match by yelling the N word at Oscar while taking him away to be wuestioned and then handcuffed).
I'm in no manner excusing the dumb mistake the Bart Police Officer made when he mistook a gun for a taser thus shooting Oscar on the back while face down. I still refuse to believe a person can mistake a GUN for a taser... THEN pull the trigger.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, September 15th 2013 at 4:57PM
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