Pimpsticks and Pulpits...

I just got finished watching the movie "Lottery Ticket" starring Bow Wow and executive produced by Ice Cube.  Aside from the characterization of women of color as money grubbing vamps (we'll have to address that piece in another article), it was a fun, and fairly harmless comedy about a young man who wins the lottery and tries his best to keep his sanity after the residents of his California housing project learn of his good fortune.

I'm not a movie reviewer or critic, and this movie was released in 2010 (where was I when this was released?), so any analysis of the plot, structure and characters of the movie would be superfluous.

But there was a scene in the movie that got me to thinking.  It was a scene in which, Bow Wow, the protagonist has just won the lottery and he accompanies his grandmother to church.

After the choir rocks and sways and belts out a hymn to a congregation people shouting and dancing jigs in the pews, the pastor of the has his turn to "preach."

The pastor of the church is none other than comedian Mike Epps.  As the attention of the congregation turns to him, he awakes from a slumber.  His hair has been carefully permed and his three piece suit looks like something a pimp would wear on a work night when he's checking his traps.

And as Epps begins to preach, his insult-laced sermon or homily is centered around his desire for material wealth--a larger church, a bigger home, more money and a more beautiful wife.

So, is this what its come to?  A caricature of clergy of color that reduces them to untrained, uneducated greedy hustlers and a congregation full of people of color who either can't discern or refuse to discern that the worship leader is on a hustle?  Really?

I can't just pick on Epps and Ice Cube.  They are not the only folks that have reduced clergy of color to unflattering caricatures.  Cedric the Entertainer, Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Eddie Griffin and others have all taken a turn at playing the hustler turned clergy who never actually stopped being a hustler.

People outside churches of color or who have not worshipped in one for any sustained period wouldn't know it from the caricatures, but most clergy of color are educated, seminary-trained, folks who aren't on a hustle.  Some of them, like Dr. James Cone, are even directly responsible for some of the most forward-thinking, liberatory theology of our time. 

 To be sure, there are some people who become clergy for the wrong reasons.  But, why do movies marketed to communities of color want America to believe that that is the exception rather than the rule?