By Farayi Mungoshi

RACISM was one of the most debated subjects of the 20th Century, spilling into the 21st Century.
When some blacks speak out on the injustices of racism, there’s always an equally heated response by some whites, especially on social media platforms, arguing the racism topic is now outdated and that blacks are being crybabies.
Such is the case now with the release of the movie Kong, Skull Island.
A critic, by the name Zeba Blay argued the new Kong movie is a straightforward adventure story though historically it has been viewed by some critics as ‘a kind of allegory, symbolically depicting white America’s view of black people at the time’.
I recall the first time I thought King Kong was racist.
It was while listening to rap musician Nas in the documentary Hidden Colours.
He says he first noticed racism while watching cartoons as a child, how the early Disney Channel gave monkey features to the black characters in their cartoon programmes.
That was during the segregation period in the US.
He chuckled as he said this, but there was no mistaking the underlying hurt and pain.
I was reminded of Nas’ interview after watching the 2017 Kong movie and immediately set out to dig deeper on how a big ape like King Kong could be an allegory for black males.
University of Michigan Afro-American studies Professor Robin Means Coleman argues King Kong has always been a tale about black lynching.
“This is, again, a big, black man — right? A big, black ape who is absolutely obsessed with whiteness and particularly white women,” she says.
“That has to be cut down.”
Some might ask then (mockingly) that, is every movie that depicts apes or gorillas acting like human beings metaphors of black people like the movie Planet of the Apes?
The answer is no, of course not which is what makes the new Kong movie a different kind of movie and worth talking about.
The original King Kong movie in 1933 was about a film crew that goes to Africa for a shoot.
While there, their main actress, played by Ann Durrow, is kidnapped by ‘savages’ (obviously their take on African people that they are primitive savages) and is offered to King Kong.
King Kong takes the frightened woman deep into the jungle (his domain) but he is followed and the white woman is rescued.
King Kong is captured and taken to the US, the aim being to make profit by exhibiting him.
Once in the US, King Kong manages to escape and he kidnaps Ann Durrow.
He destroys Manhattan infrastructure as he runs off with the ‘beautiful’ white girl and eventually climbs up Empire State Building.
It is at the top of the building that he is shot down and dies.
The girl is freed and everybody is happy.
The King Kong shown in all King Kong movies, be it the 1976, 2005 or 2017 remake, is not like any other ape.
He has an intelligence that surpasses your everyday chimpanzee or gorilla.
He thinks like a man and even has feelings like a man.
He is emotional and is clearly infatuated by the white woman, even with his back against the wall, outnumbered and in foreign lands, he still goes for the white girl.
This just goes to show how white America viewed African-American men’s sexuality; always accusing them of being obsessed with their white women.
No wonder Professor Coleman said Kong is about one big lynching – and we understand that a lot of black men were lynched because a white woman somewhere ‘cried rape’.
The idea of him being taken in chains from his homeland in Africa and being brought to the US with his captors hoping to make a profit from his enslavement is symbolical of how the African-American was brought to America through the slave trade by greedy men who wanted to make money by exploiting other people.
But in the end, it all turns out ugly, and instead of making money for his captors, Kong becomes a problem that needs to be dealt with terminally.
Ninety-four (94) years on, since the original King Kong, Kong returns to the screens again but this time with a difference.
There are a lot of interracial marriages and relationships now in the US.
There has also been a black president in the White House.
As seen in the new Kong movie, Kong is a god in an unchartered island somewhere in the South Pacific.
Unlike the old Kong, this new Kong is a guardian/protector of this island and will kill anything that upsets the natural balance of things on the island (Skull Island).
Kong is not taken to the US in chains.
Instead, the explorers end up fighting among themselves, with some wanting to kill Kong and others defending him.
In the final showdown, Kong befriends a white woman and a few white friends and is fighting alongside them against a more vicious enemy.
This movie is unlike the rest of the Kong movies and their ugly racial slurs.
It leaves Kong movies critics wondering whether the US is now trying to distance itself from the ugly truths on racism and the attempt by its Government to do away with black people that was once shown in the 1933 Kong movie.
The movie does not portray anything on the race issues currently rocking the US, 49 years after the abolishment of the segregation laws.
Others would say there is still racism in the US, but Hollywood will try by all means to give an impression that racism is a fallacy.
The saddest thing is that some people actually believe them.
One commentator, after reading Professor Coleman’s commentary that King Kong is about one big lynching, wrote: “How empty your life must be, to waste it away looking for racism in everything; imagining it to be everywhere, as if lurking around each corner, bleeding from the pages of every book, flowing from every song, blaring from every movie.
If that’s the only way you can find meaning in life, you have quite simply failed at it entirely.
It has passed you by while you dwell in your twisted fantasyland of hate.”
No doubt, the above writer is white, ill-informed and not well researched.
She is not black and therefore cannot feel the pain of all black folk, the massacres we have faced and continue to face at the hands of white imperialists.
And yet the same white imperialists preach to us that all men were, and are, created equal.