Foxy Brown & Boyz N the Hood: A Comparison Anonymous College

In Eldridge Cleaver’s introduction to The Genius of Huey P. Newton, he states that when reading the essays of Newton, “one can picture Huey as he was when he wrote them: hard pressed by pigs who he knew were plotting to kill him. With pigs breathing down his neck, Huey was racing against time that had almost run out to get the information down on paper so that no matter what happened to him the roar of the Panther would still exist as a legacy to our people and our struggle.” (Cleaver, ii) This mythological larger-than-life representation of Huey P. Newton is in sharp contrast to Newton’s ignoble death from a violent drug deal in the 1980s. In many ways, Huey P. Newton can illustrate the major differences between the movies Foxy Brown and Boys N’ The Hood. In the 1970s, Newton was a hero and a martyr as well as a representative of an African American masculinity that took pride in aggression. In the 1980s, Newton was a victim of a system of violence that came with urban blight as well as the neglected inner city. After the civil rights movement and the liberalism of the 1970s, the Reagan Revolution ushered in a period of conservatism that included free market economics and a concerted attack on affirmative action programs. For...