In the 1967 movie “In the Heat of the Night,” Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective played by Sidney Poitier, is slapped across the face by Endicott, a white plantation owner he is interrogating in a murder investigation. Tibbs immediately retaliates with a slap of his own—a gesture that has gone down in history as “the slap heard round the world” (Guardian, 1/7). Never before had the Hollywood screen allowed–let alone affirmed—such an expression of Black antiracist anger. We want to cheer.
Yet, even this feel-good moment is directed by the ruling class. Working-class movie-goers need to be skeptical of the pleasures afforded by popular culture. We may think movies are “just entertainment,” but we are being strategically positioned to view some characters and actions as villainous, and others as admirable: nothing could be more political. So, how do movies reflect the historical pressures of their times? What ruling-class ideologies do they affirm? How do we apply communist criticism to the propaganda of the bosses—capitalist entertainment, after all, is part of the state apparatus.
Impossible stains status
The films of the recently-deceased Sidney Poitier (1927—2022) provide an excellent opportunity for communist critique. Poitier is best known for several films from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s in which he played characters transcending racial antagonism through near-impossible displays of individual integrity, stoicism, and moral generosity.
In “The Defiant Ones” (1958), he and Tony Curtis co-star as escaping prisoners chained together; at the end, Poitier’s character gives up the chance to hop onto a freight car to remain with his wounded friend. In “Lilies of the Field“ (1963)—for which Poitier was the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar award—he plays an itinerant handyman who, free of charge, constructs a church for a group of German nuns. In these sentimental films, multiracial solidarity is linked not with antiracist struggle, but self-sacrifice.  
As James Baldwin caustically commented about the finale of “The Defiant Ones:” “Liberal white audiences applauded when Sidney, at the end of the film, jumped off the train in order not to abandon his white buddy. . . . The Harlem audience was outraged and yelled, Get back on the train you fool! “ (The Conversation, 1/7).
In 1967, three of Poitier’s films were top box office hits. In “To Sir, with Love,” Poitier plays a teacher who tames and edifies rebellious youth in a tough London neighborhood. “In the Heat of the Night” shows Virgil Tibbs not only slapping the plantation owner but also challenging the racist condescension of the Mississippi sheriff who calls him “boy.” “They call me Mister Tibbs,” is his famous response.
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” features Poitier as a brilliant doctor who confronts—and triumphs over—the liberal racism of the parents of the young white woman he plans to marry. While the film challenged near-universal taboos on representing interracial relationships it aimed to portray Poitier as an impossibly perfect suitor, feeding into respectability politics.
Poitier furthers myth of individual success
In preceding decades, such heroic roles had not been available to Black actors. Poitier ostensibly broke the mold, clearing the way for Laurence Fishburne and Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett and Viola Davis.  But Poitier’s aura of near-saintly “dignity” came at a price. The heroes he portrayed were “well-dressed,” “well-spoken,” and “self-controlled”; they never organized collective resistance to racism.
Indeed, they embodied the myth of individual success: Virgil Tibbs insists upon being called “Mister Tibbs.” Moreover, despite his matinee-idol good looks, Poitier was almost never cast as leading man in a romantic role; even his role in “Guess who’s Coming to Dinner” contains near-zero erotic charge.
Poitier’s films appealed to hesitant, white liberals by making it possible to identify with a Black man who did not require them to do anything more than admire him. (See Sharon Willis, The Poitier Effect: Racial Melodrama and the Fantasies of Reconciliation).  
In his offscreen life, Poitier hardly conformed to the pacifist image he projected in his most popular films. He and his closest friend Harry Belafonte together risked their lives to bring desperately-needed funds to Mississippi after the 1963 lynchings of civil rights fighters (Dallas News, 1/22)).When racist mobs gathered outside his Mississippi motel room while he was filming “In the Heat of the Night,” he slept with a gun under his pillow—and told the movie’s director, Norman Jewison, "I got a gun under my pillow and I'm going to blow away the first guy who comes through that door" (People, 1/22).
But Poitier insisted on only taking roles that would refute inherited stereotypes, even if this committed him to playing the same hero over and over. “I felt I was representing 15, 18 million people with every movie I made,” he once commented (NYT, 1/7).
Poitier and actors like him help legitimize U.S. capitalism
Many of Poitier’s obituaries noted that his career traced the arc of the Civil Rights Movement. What they failed to mention is the role he played in stifling the very antiracism to which his films gave expression. The U.S. ruling class was fearful of a working-class uprising, and especially of Black rebellion (see Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns). Ultimately, the typical Poitier hero supports the capitalist state; Virgil Tibbs is, after all, a cop, bent on restoring law and order. Like their predecessor, current actors like  Angela Bassett also help workers buy into a more diverse face of capitalism.
Furthermore, Poitier’s films legitimized U.S. imperialism by shoring up the image of the United States in the eyes of the world. Starting in the mid-1950s, the U.S. was competing for the hearts and minds of the vast nonwhite populations rising up against colonialism and drawn toward the Soviet Union (See Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy).  
There was a division in the ruling class: southern landowners wished to retain the highly profitable practice of Jim Crow, while more far-seeing imperialists wanted to sanitize the nation’s image by proposing that the nation was overcoming its racist past. The “slap heard round the world” was part of this ideological project.
In the final analysis, Sidney Poitier was no culture hero in the working-class struggle against racism. From this era, far more important—and for this reason maligned and harangued to the end of his life by the U.S. government—was the communist Paul Robeson (See CHALLENGE, 1/5).

Students choose fightback over attendance
Ever since the start of this school year, we all have been no strangers to low attendance rates, social distance protocols, and inconsistent schedules. Despite all shortcomings, everyone in the building pulled themselves through a strange year. Right before the winter break, everything was just like the last time schools went remote. The classrooms were practically empty and confirmed Covid-19 cases within the school were rising at an alarming rate. However, a few days after the New Year, we came back to a lack of change. Nothing to protect the school from the new variant.
I understand why the city, the school faculty, and even some students would prefer to remain in person. But we remain open despite it being detrimental to the health of everyone in the building. A majority of my classmates and teachers have fallen ill from the virus. Classes lack substitute teachers as the school is too understaffed to replace the ones who are in quarantine.  The length of this pandemic compounded with the lack of agency the students felt really brought a sense of hopelessness over the student body. The student walkout was a result of our pent up feelings.
On the day of the walkout, I remember asking the students who weren’t planning to participate in the event why. Why did they choose to stay? The responses generally fell under not wanting to miss a test or being wary of a teacher’s disapproval. I understand why they made such a decision. After all, it is also the same reason why I am writing this letter anonymously. But why do we need to use acts of civil disobedience just to get our voices out there? We shouldn’t need to put our education and futures on the line just to be heard.  We are more than our attendance records and acceptance letters, damn it, but when are we going to act like it?
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CHALLENGE in the classroom
After a difficult and chaotic return to in-person school last week, I was excited to share the last CHALLENGE  editorial, “Criminal Rulers Mandate Profit Over Workers Health.” In one of the classes I teach, my students responded well to the article  and it led to a series of good class discussions over three days.
We started off by talking about the ways in which racism and inequality (frequent topics in our class) were making the current Omicron variant worse. Students were quick to recall the ways in which Covid-19 has disproportionately hit Black and Latin workers  harder.
Next we dove into the article. The discussion questions provided on PLP.org (Progressive Labor Party) provided a helpful guide to our conversations over the next few days. Since ours is a bilingual class, we read the Spanish version with the English provided for reference as needed. On day one, we got through the first section and discussed “Why is the focus on the pandemic’s impact on the international working class [in all countries] important?”
The next day, we used the memes and social media posts about the CDC (from page 5 of the same issue) to reopen our discussion. The idea that the CDC was simply paid by the bosses to push workers back to work after five  days was no surprise but still upsetting to students. And the fact that students are still being told to stay home 10 days after a positive test made it clear this action was about preserving profits not protecting lives.
Finally, we ended by discussing a student walkout against unsafe Covid-19 conditions that had affected many schools (but not ours). Some students had heard about the walkout on TV and expressed that they would like to have participated. This connected to us talking about the sway of ideas about personal freedom or wants instead of collective needs. When asked why they or others act this way, students responded with constructive criticisms/self-criticisms such as: “We are conditioned to be that way,” “I was taught not to care only about myself, but it is a struggle,” and “Selfishness is like a disease.”
Thanks CHALLENGE  for helping to provide such useful teaching resources to foster a more revolutionary and collective classroom. Next steps: invite certain students to a study group outside of school and read excerpts of “Smash Racism: A Fighter’s Manual” with the whole class.
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MTA bosses guilty for subway death
A young Latin worker recently lost his life in an accident, while attempting to “jump” the turnstiles in a subway station in Queens. The bosses’ media has shared gruesome surveillance video of the incident, which has also gone viral. While he was apparently intoxicated at the time, several comments online are suggesting he deserved it for “fare-beating.”
Ohio politician (and fascism apologist) Jim Trakas, for example, disgustingly wrote in response to a New York Post Tweet about the story, “The Darwin Awards claims its first victor of 2022. He died doing what he loved-stealing from others.”
These comments (and plenty more that need not be repeated here) show how the bosses work overtime to convince workers that other workers are the real thieves, and that they are responsible for the subway being in such horrible shape.
It goes along with the refrain that “If they can afford to have [insert fancy item here], they can afford the $2.75 to ride the train.”
The reality is that the racist MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) bosses are $35 billion in debt to their Wall Street overlords (AMNY, 10/13/20). That’s why they need to keep cutting service to many working-class neighborhoods. Less money to hire workers and more money for the Wall Street finance capitalists. So even if every single person paid the fare, it wouldn’t put a dent in improving anything.
But of course, the ruling class needs to create boogeymen to blame for its shortfalls (see page 2). What better way for them to do that than by pitting workers against one another?

Also, many workers have a hard time paying the fare and balancing other critical financial responsibilities in their lives. While the city has a fare program in place to supposedly help these people, former Mayor Bill DeBlasio cut $65 million from the program in 2020, using reduced pandemic ridership as an excuse. (StreetsBlogNYC, 6/30/20)
These cuts left so-called “essential” workers, who couldn’t work from home, struggling to pay their way to their jobs. Many of them are Black and Latin, as racism once again rears its ugly head.
The subway, just like hospitals and fire departments, provides an essential service for millions of workers in the city, whose taxes already pay for the trains and buses. It’s not workers fault that money goes towards imperialist war, leaving our infrastructure to rot.
No worker deserves to die just because they did not pay a fare to use the trains! Public transit should be completely free. Under a communist world, that would be a reality,  One that can’t come soon enough.
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Red on radio exposes democracy
I gave the following statement on the Rick Smith labor talk show on WBAI radio airing Saturdays at 6pm.
“Hi Rick, I’d like to give an historical perspective to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. All Democrats and Republicans say they want to save democracy, a system that originated in the Greek Empire that featured a ratio of 40 slaves for every free man. Following the example of Greek democracy, the Constitution gave voting power only to slave and property owners and capitalists while restricting workers, slaves, women, indigenous people and immigrants from voting. U.S. history includes hundreds of racist insurrections to crush the Black working class and prevent racial unity. Whole communities were burned to the ground.
The Democrats represent the U.S. Empire of finance capitalists and imperialists who profit from endless wars that consume the majority of our taxes. The Republicans represent America First domestic capitalists who don’t want to support the U.S. Empire’s tax costs. They have allied with the racist insurrectionists who were made up of over 50 percent business owners and 10 percent military dedicated to take back their country and restore white supremacy.
The 20 million protestors of all races who marched against police murders and for equality last year have no stake in the capitalist’s fight for power. The growing wave of national and international strikes and rebellions are the worldwide voices of a rising working class, capable of forming a worker’s party to end capitalist racist inequality and endless wars. All history is of class struggle and workers today must decide which side they’re on.”
The whole statement was allowed on the air and the host referred to it several times during the remainder of the program. The reason is there is an audience for many of these ideas.
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