Which had the worst impact on the Black Community. Vietnam War or the Crack era?

SeaSnake

SeaSnake

OG
Now this is kinda tough because Vietnam happened first and I think allowed for drugs to hit us easier. But I saw this take about Dead Presidents and how Anthony was extremely traumatized with no name for PTSD at the time and no easy way to provide for his family.



Alright boom 👏🏾. Let’s get into Dead Presidents because this movie is a masterclass in a slow-burn crashout and I will stand ten toes on that.

Let me say this first before the “he should’ve just got a job” crowd clears their throats:
Anthony Curtis was not born a criminal. He was manufactured. Period.

Anthony went to Vietnam a boy and came back a ghost. They fought for a country that promised honor, stability, a future and instead gave them trauma, a heroin habit, and a cold shoulder. PTSD wasn’t even a word folks cared to use back then especially not for Black men. You were expected to “man up,” shut up, and get back to work like you didn’t just watch people d!e in the jungle every day.

Psychologically? Baby, Anthony was already fractured before the robbery ever entered the chat.

He comes home to:
• No real job opportunities
• No mental health support
• A community drowning in poverty
• A system that sees him as disposable
• And a country that loves Black men in uniform but fears them in civilian clothes

That kind of contradiction will mess with your sense of self REAL bad.

Now let’s talk PTSD

Anthony is hypervigilant. Emotionally numb. Detached. He moves through the world like he’s still in a war zone because mentally he still is. Vietnam never left him. The sounds, the violence, the survival mentality that’s why the armored truck r0bbery felt logical to him. It wasn’t about greed, it was about control. A mission. A plan. A way to finally feel powerful instead of helpless.

And listen poverty will have you doing mental gymnastics to justify damn near anything. When you do everything “right” and still end up with nothing, your moral compass starts spinning. Especially when you realize the same government that sent you to war has no problem letting you starve afterward.

Was Anthony wrong?
Morally? Yes.
Psychologically? I get it.

That’s the uncomfortable truth people don’t want to sit with. His crashout wasn’t impulsive it was cumulative. Death by a thousand cuts. Racism. War trauma. Economic neglect. Broken promises. Masculinity tied to providing when the system won’t even give you the tools to do so.

His character arc is tragic because you can pinpoint every moment where things could’ve gone differently if someone anyone had intervened. But in the 60s and 70s, Black men didn’t get grace. They got blamed.

Dead Presidents isn’t a heist movie to me. It’s a psychological autopsy.
Anthony didn’t just rob an armored truck he was trying to reclaim a life that had already been taken from him.

And that’s why his downfall hurts. Because it makes you ask:
How many Anthonys did this country chew up and discard?

Whew.
And y’all know I love a good crashout, but this one?
This one was cooked long before the robbery.

#DeadPresidents
#PsychologyInFilm

Stole this from FB
 
I view it through my dad he went to the Army at like 17 spent some time in Germany and I think did two years in Vietnam. My dad didn’t even know he had PTSD or at least didn’t see anybody for it until I was in high school. Probably in his late 40s. He had issues with drugs which me and my younger brother didnt even know about for real until HS. Married to my mom but wasn’t a good marriage and he had a lot of tension with one of my older brothers which I think my older brother viewed him as selfish. Not to mention my dad didn’t meet his father until after Vietnam. Which in my mind is crazy because what if he died before meeting his pops.

And I really feel like the loss of young able bodied men in a war that wasn’t really viewed favorable tore a lot of folks up. Slight tangent but even how the future was viewed in movies changed after the 70s. Lost in Space and Flying cars was the fantasy before. But afterwards everything or a lot of things were dystopian and dreary.
 
When I was younger I would’ve said crack. But now, I can look at other demographics and see that other demographics dealt with substance abuse and by and large, the majority of them rebounded to a place of stability.

Same with the war, other demographics dealt with it and rebounded. Other things like oppression and civil right and white supremacy. None of them small things but all of them reasonably over comeable. Because the black American has something in our favor.

We are black and we are American. Those two, sauced by our past and strength. We have a resolve that’s stronger than most immigrant or ethnic groups. We have enough to over come all of those things.

What held us down and holds us down. Is that we begin to believe the narratives of the symptoms that came about because of crack, war, and whites supremacy. We made it our music, our entertainment, our way of being apart of a capitalist society.

And it’s cool for those that know what they are doing. But it’s extremely damaging to young people that don’t know anything but the narratives. Try to explain to educate them and you’re a lame with no motion that gets not hoes and is pussy.

If it ain’t about money I don’t wanna talk. Our albatross around our neck became the same thing we embraced as who we were as people. And it’s so ingrained and seen as the culture that the only way you can take it off and see it for what it is. Is to become an outsider to your own people.

And when your people aren’t accepted anywhere else for real. That’s a lonely walk to walk. Too black for them, not black enough for us. So people just shut up and code switch.
 
SeaSnake said:
Now this is kinda tough because Vietnam happened first and I think allowed for drugs to hit us easier. But I saw this take about Dead Presidents and how Anthony was extremely traumatized with no name for PTSD at the time and no easy way to provide for his family.



Alright boom 👏🏾. Let’s get into Dead Presidents because this movie is a masterclass in a slow-burn crashout and I will stand ten toes on that.

Let me say this first before the “he should’ve just got a job” crowd clears their throats:
Anthony Curtis was not born a criminal. He was manufactured. Period.

Anthony went to Vietnam a boy and came back a ghost. They fought for a country that promised honor, stability, a future and instead gave them trauma, a heroin habit, and a cold shoulder. PTSD wasn’t even a word folks cared to use back then especially not for Black men. You were expected to “man up,” shut up, and get back to work like you didn’t just watch people d!e in the jungle every day.

Psychologically? Baby, Anthony was already fractured before the robbery ever entered the chat.

He comes home to:
• No real job opportunities
• No mental health support
• A community drowning in poverty
• A system that sees him as disposable
• And a country that loves Black men in uniform but fears them in civilian clothes

That kind of contradiction will mess with your sense of self REAL bad.

Now let’s talk PTSD

Anthony is hypervigilant. Emotionally numb. Detached. He moves through the world like he’s still in a war zone because mentally he still is. Vietnam never left him. The sounds, the violence, the survival mentality that’s why the armored truck r0bbery felt logical to him. It wasn’t about greed, it was about control. A mission. A plan. A way to finally feel powerful instead of helpless.

And listen poverty will have you doing mental gymnastics to justify damn near anything. When you do everything “right” and still end up with nothing, your moral compass starts spinning. Especially when you realize the same government that sent you to war has no problem letting you starve afterward.

Was Anthony wrong?
Morally? Yes.
Psychologically? I get it.

That’s the uncomfortable truth people don’t want to sit with. His crashout wasn’t impulsive it was cumulative. Death by a thousand cuts. Racism. War trauma. Economic neglect. Broken promises. Masculinity tied to providing when the system won’t even give you the tools to do so.

His character arc is tragic because you can pinpoint every moment where things could’ve gone differently if someone anyone had intervened. But in the 60s and 70s, Black men didn’t get grace. They got blamed.

Dead Presidents isn’t a heist movie to me. It’s a psychological autopsy.
Anthony didn’t just rob an armored truck he was trying to reclaim a life that had already been taken from him.

And that’s why his downfall hurts. Because it makes you ask:
How many Anthonys did this country chew up and discard?

Whew.
And y’all know I love a good crashout, but this one?
This one was cooked long before the robbery.

#DeadPresidents
#PsychologyInFilm

Stole this from FB
Click to expand...

As for the movie breakdown...if a person watches Dead Presidents and doesn't get that then they're not paying attention. It really shouldn't need to be broken down like that and I've never seen any arguments against the film that person is defending it against.


As for the thread...Vietnam War.
 
Good talking point. But I think crack was more devastating.

Mainly because you didn't have to go to war to feel its impact. shit was manufactured cocaine at a time when pure cocaine was easily accessible. it was just way too wide spread. and targeted mainly at the inner city black populations.

Mad white people think the 90's were all chill.....like they think nuffin happened of notice. where as in the black community, the war on drugs happened, homicides were at a all time high, projects were battlegrounds, race riots...like shit was really really fucked up....and our people were punished harshly. you ain't have to be in the military or even have finally in the military to be at war during the crack epidemic.
 
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The crack era of course

It's equivalent to the whyte-man stumbling upon the natives and giving them
Alcohol..... Ever since that first sip they ain't never been able to get right.


Remember....they dropped them boxes all over the country into "certain" neighborhoods...

Ultimately I do not like giving them folks all the credibility of really having just the ultimate long-lasting trauma induce gene manipulating epigenetic pseudo-scientific impact on anything cause they lie


But we all know the little tricks and triads low vibrating Edomites like to do
 
Dead President is/was one of my fave movies

but there are some exaggerations in the main character's limited choices

plenty of vets came back fucked from Vietnam and didn't wild out like ol' boy in the movie



being older and being a vet myself who has 1st hand experience with PTSD....I look at that movie with a slightly diff view now

I def can understand a dude in that situation feeling like committing crime is the best way to make ends meet

but a bank/truck robbery was a serious escalation in bad choices

just the planning alone took a level of conspiracy that u can't just dismiss as a mofo having limited options

not once did the movie address why he didn't re-enlist if his prospects were that bad......I also never saw him put in a job app at McDonalds either if we being real 🙁


the ultimate point is if u can be smart enough to plot/participate in criminal shit....then u also got the capacity to find a way to provide without risking ur freedom





Cutty was my fave character in that movie tho 😂
 
I'm a little confused here. I see the breakdown of the movie, and that's fine but I don't see an actual argument for how Vietnam had a marked effect on the Black community. It had an effect on soldiers that fought in the war and their families, but that's a relatively small portion of the Black community. It's impact was nowhere near a widespread as crack.
 
The Lonious Monk said:
I'm a little confused here. I see the breakdown of the movie, and that's fine but I don't see an actual argument for how Vietnam had a marked effect on the Black community. It had an effect on soldiers that fought in the war and their families, but that's a relatively small portion of the Black community. It's impact was nowhere near a widespread as crack.
Click to expand...


I wouldn’t say relatively small I mean their was a whole draft that’s a significant amount
 
SeaSnake said:
I wouldn’t say relatively small I mean their was a whole draft that’s a significant amount
Click to expand...
More of a trickle effect if you had military in your family..... Crack had neighborhoods being turned into warzones. They actually declared war on crack.... And carried it out as such. Like it was bad
 
Crack era by far.

Also, the Vietnam War isn't why communities fell off, it was Globalism and the mass outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Couple that with feminism and the breakdown of families, and all that setup the fake Drug War perfectly.
 
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