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• Who invented PBC, PVC, PBB, and a host of chemicals that are killing us? White guys.

• Who has started every war America has been in? White men.

• Who is responsible for the programming on FOX? White men.

• Who invented the punch card ballot? A white man.

• Whose idea was it to pollute the world with the internal combustion engine? Whitey, that’s who.

• The Holocaust? That guy really gave white people a bad name (that’s why we prefer to call him a Nazi and his little helpers Germans).

• The genocide of Native Americans? White man.

• Slavery? Whitey!

• So far in 2001, American companies have laid off over 700,000 people. Who ordered the layoffs? White CEOs.

• Who keeps bumping me off the Internet? Some friggin’ white guy, and if I find him, he’s a dead white guy.

You name the problem, the disease, the human suffering, or the abject misery visited upon millions, and I’ll bet you ten bucks I can put a white face on it faster than you can name the members of ‘N Sync.

And yet when I turn on the news each night, what do I see again and again? Black men alleged to be killing, raping, mugging, stabbing, gangbanging, looting, rioting, selling drugs, pimping, ho-ing, having too many babies, dropping babies from tenement windows, fatherless, motherless, Godless, penniless. “The suspect is described as a black male ... the suspect is described as a black male ... THE SUSPECT IS DESCRIBED AS A BLACK MALE....” No matter what city I’m in, the news is always the same, the suspect always the same unidentified black male. I’m in Atlanta tonight, and I swear the police sketch of the black male suspect on TV looks just like the black male suspect I saw on the news last night in Denver and the night before in L.A. In every sketch he’s frowning, he’s menacing—and he’s wearing the same knit cap! Is it possible that it’s the same black guy committing every crime in America?

I believe we’ve become so used to this image of the black man as predator that we are forever ruined by this brainwashing, In my first film, Roger & Me, a white woman on Social Security clubs a bunny rabbit to death so that she can sell him as “meat” instead of as a pet. I wish I had a nickel for every time in the last ten years someone has come up to me and told me how “horrified” and “shocked” they were when they saw that “poor little cute bunny” bonked on the head. The scene, they say, made them physically sick. Some had to turn away or leave the theater. Many wondered why I would include such a scene. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) gave Roger & Me an R rating in response to that rabbit killing (which compelled 60 Minutes to do a story on the stupidity of the rating system). Teachers write me and say they have to edit that part out of the film so they won’t get in trouble for showing my movie to their students.

But less than two minutes after the bunny lady does her deed, I included footage of a scene in which the police in Flint opened fire and shot a black man who was wearing a Superman cape and holding a plastic toy gun. Not once—not ever—has anyone said to me, “I can’t believe you showed a black man being shot in your movie! How horrible! How disgusting! I couldn’t sleep for weeks.” After all, he was just a black man, not a cute, cuddly bunny. There is no outrage at showing a black man being shot on camera (least of all from the MPAA ratings board, who saw absolutely nothing wrong with that scene).

Why? Because a black man being shot is no longer shocking. Just the opposite—it’s normal, natural. We’ve become so accustomed to seeing black men killed—in the movies and on the evening news—that we now accept it as standard operating procedure. No big deal, just another dead black guy! That’s what blacks do—kill and die. Ho-hum. Pass the butter.

It’s odd that, despite the fact that most crimes are committed by whites, black faces are usually attached to what we think of as “crime.” Ask any white person who they fear might break into their home or harm them on the street, and if they’re honest, they