Blaxploitation Films

Popular culture can sometimes be used as an instrument to analyze a particular ideology of a time period. One example of popular culture is seen in blaxploitation films. Blaxploitation films were crafted in the seventies and were mainly focused on "black social identities" (Porter 51). The nineteen seventies was a decade that put an enormous amount of emphasis on "the importance of racial and ethnic identities" (Porter 54). The Black Panthers were not a novel organization, getting their start in the late sixties (Carroll 50). Affirmative-action programs were also in full swing (Porter 57). In fact, in the seventies "more than any time before in U.S. history, people of color claimed race as a resource" (Porter 54). However, race as a tool caused an angry "backlash" (Porter 66). While people of color were holding fast to their identities as a social weapon, white Americans began to feel threatened and in jeopardy (Porter 65).

Identity, itself, was a tool of change during the seventies. The time period was centered around the "idea of Ð'... culture as a resource for making lives better Ð'..." (Porter 54). At the forefront of this "idea" was affirmative action.

Affirmative-action programs "validated race as something of value" (Porter 57). The very challenge to affirmative action is responsible for its duration in American society. The challenge came in the form of Allan Bakke, a white student who was rejected admission twice into the University of California Ð'- Davis Medical School (Porter 50). The medical school's program reserved sixteen spots for minority students out of one hundred spots available. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Once there, it was determined that the medical school was wrong in the way it went about diversifying its campus. However, the court did decide that "some consideration of race in admission policies was appropriate" (Porter 51). Race could be a factor into garnering a level of higher of education. (Porter 50-51)

Besides a race-based affirmative action being used as means for social change, the Black Panther Party is another illustration of using race as a means of change in the seventies. This group "embodied the new militance of black, urban youth dedicated to protecting the black community from harassment by white police" (Carroll 50). By the seventies, the Panthers were in a far different social predicament.

In the late sixties the Panthers began to feel the wrath of a government afraid of a "national black coalition" (Carroll 50). The Black Panthers became the victims of a myriad number of raids initiated by the FBI and local police departments. FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, was behind the apprehension of many of the group's members. Due to the efforts of Hoover, many party members found themselves in prison. Fights between blacks and white occurred in the prisons causing outrage among black prisoners, leading to the deaths of many prisoners of color in such prisons as Soledad and Attica. "Racial conditions inside prisons reflected the worst features of American society" (Carroll 51). Their imprisonment, however, led to black unification against the social evil of prison racial conditions. A testament to race as a tool lies in "the Black Panther's organizing long the lines of racial identities" (Porter 55). (Carroll 51-53)

Many white Americans' had negative feelings in response to organizations such as the Black Panther Party and affirmative action in the seventies that resulted in a "backlash" (Porter 66). For example, several whites believed that affirmative action was "inherently unfair" (Porter 65). It was showing favoritism toward black people.

The "backlash" manifested itself in "supremacist[s] and neofascist[s] terms" (Porter 66). The Ku Klux Klan increased its membership to nearly