The total absence of African-Americans in "Flags of our Fathers"

On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.

"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former United States marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach.

"I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's Prayer, over and over and over."

Sadly, Sergeant McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film's battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including McPhatter.

.......

"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said McPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."


http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=287378&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/

I am often reminded of an Archie Bunker quote:

Archie Bunker once said to the character Maude in reference to Eleanor Roosevelt: She discovered the coloreds. We didn't even know they were there until she pointed them out.

...of time and money trying to make us all forget them again.

No doubt, Eastwood's marketing people told him that every black face in the movie would mean 10,000 fewer ticket sales in the 'heartland', so he just (in Sam Goldwyn's immortal words) included them out.

honestly this is counter productive. do you actualy think that just because there is no black people in the movie/show that the writer is racist? frankly i hold humans to a higher standard then that.

if you want discrimination, look at the cable channles what with the networks geared towards a particular audience;
BET
Oxygen
LifeTime

to be honest i would be more concerned about those then the precentage of characters in a movie/show who are not white.

iwo jima include them?

television channels are targeting smaller audiences because there are more viewers -- and channels are sttling for smaller ratings.

flags of our fathers showing only white soldiers has national implications.

Or one in eighty-five. None of them assigned to a combat unit, because of the segregationist policies of the military at the time. So the lack of depiction of black Marines in films about Iwo Jima is not necessarily racist, given the focus of such films (at least those I'm aware of) on the actions of combat units. It's simply something that reflects the way things (unfortunately) were in the 1940's.

1800 black soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day; you don't see any in the movie "Saving Private Ryan". Yet oddly enough I don't seem to recall any accusations of racism levelled at that film.

"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former United States marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach.
"I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's Prayer, over and over and over."


African-American troops played a significant role in the capture of Iwo Jima. Negro drivers served in the Army DUKW units active throughout the landing. Black Marines of the 8th Ammunition Company and the 36th Depot Company landed on D-day, served as stevedores on those chaotic beaches, and were joined by the 33d and 34th Depot Companies on D+3. These Marines were incorporated into the VAC Shore Party which did Herculean work sustaining the momentum of the American drive northwards. When Japanese counterattacks penetrated to the beach areas, these Marines dropped their cargo, unslung their carbines, and engaged in well-disciplined fire and maneuver, inflicting more casualties than they sustained. Two Marines, Privates James W. Whitlock and James Davis, received the Bronze Star. Said Colonel Leland S. Swindler, commanding the VAC Shore Party, the entire body of black Marines "conducted themselves with marked coolness and courage."
http://www.mpma28.com/page/page/2271596.htm

there's more there than meets the eye -- or movie.

BET, Oxygen and Lifetime are boutique channels. They target a specific audience. Big budget movies with international distribution supposedly target everyone.

Shows on BET, Oxygen and Lifetime actors of all ages, genders and races, regardless of who their target audience is. Clint Eastwood apparently thinks only white men won WWII.

I have no idea why you think small specialty channels on cable are discriminatory. And I wonder why you don't seem to think white-washed portrayals of history are not evidence of racism.
:shrug:

I agree with the original post. It's a damned shame when history is re-written so that only white men seemed to have participated in it. And I say that as a white man.

what indications other then the casting in this movie, shows you that Clint Eastwood is a racist?

plus its not as though they show instances of black troops being total failures in the film.

especially from the heroic naratives, is a standard form, of racism.

It might not have been overt racism, but simply accepting the idea that heroic naratives should be all-white is evidence.

You can call it Bullshit, but do you have anything other than your opinion to back that up?

African Americans were confined to support units at that time. The movie would either have to cover actions which usually don't get the glory and press to show African Americans. Or would have to include African American actors in places that African Americans were not allowed.

Your choices are to either cover the activities African Americans were involved in and risk boring the audience. Or put African Americans into the front line combat units of the pictures and be accused of Revisionist History. Since African Americans were not allowed in combat units then. Or risk having an all white cast and being called racist.

his positive protrayals of African-Americans through his directing career.

he was also a 30-year member of the NAACP at the time of the award.

Eastwood also produced and directed a film about Charlie Parker on his own.

The lack of portrayal of African-Americans in military films is valid, though.

The gist so far of the comments is either that ) Eastwood was a racist for not including black soldiers, or ) there were no black soldiers present, since they had non-combat roles. The artcle destroys point two, and weakens point one.

Basically, it says that the non-combat troops were firing weapons and fighting, too (which destroys the argument that their role would not make good film) and that the news cameras of the time deliberately turned away from black faces. That would be good film.

Eastwood was asked to include black troops, but never responded. TW says he was simply following the book, and it was the books ommission--which makes some sense, but not complete sense. I'm sure there portrayals in the movie not in the book.

The most interesting point, to me: McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US Navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on," he says. That, too, is absent from the film.

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I don't really see this as a criticism of Eastwood, so much as of Hollywood. You know this was discussed from the producer on down to casting. Whether the writers, the marketers, or Eastwood himself made the decision, it's a very common decision in Hollywood. There are no good roles for women, and very few honest depictions of African Americans, except in "black" films. Yet we still finance the industry.

:cry:

that the book (I have not seen the film) is the story of the six flag raisers and their stories. They were five white guys and a Pima Indian. As I recall from the book. James Bradley did not go into that much detail concerning any other people with maybe the exception of family members.

Go back and read some of the reviews for "Crash"--they were very, very mixed. (It was only the #56 best-reviewed film of 2005 according to PREMIERE, and around #34 in Entertainment Weekly.)

What critics kept commenting over and over was how hamfisted the writing was in its approach to racial issues and stereotypes, and how the characters' overwhelming drives always went back to racism. The film was one long screaming polemic (with, admittedly, some great acting).

Are you surprised that Haggis either 1) decided this time to avoid the issue entirely, or 2) lacked the finesse and talent to pull it off? (Several critics have commented that the story about the Native American soldier, played by Adam Beach, was told with more insight and pathos in a Tony Curtis movie some 42 years ago, after the soldier drank himself to death.)