On the Friday after the most shocking election in recent history, I elected to shut off the news.
I escaped to the movies to see the new Danny Glover, J.B. Smoove, Gabrielle Union movie, “Almost Christmas.”
I’ve known some of Glover’s family from growing up in San Francisco’s Western Addition. But in the movie, he’s a successful man of the South. Glover plays Walter Meyers, a mechanic who built a company of six auto shops in the Birmingham, Alabama area. For Christmas, he calls his family home for dinner. The family is successful too. One son is a star college football player; another is running for Congress. The daughters are smart and go-getters, with one in law school, the other a doctor.
Written and directed by David Talbert, a graduate of Morgan State, Maryland’s largest HBCU, and produced by Florida A&M grad Will Packer, the movie strikes comic universal themes and is a cheery feel good movie for right after the election.
Almost.
As I returned to the real world, I realized the movie was an affirmation of the rise of the Black middle class, something that most of America could only dream about before 1964.
The movie was a depiction of the progress made in our society.
