The Difference between Brad Pitt and 50 Cent

There has been some noise in the blogosphere about how much uproar there is over the billboard of gun-toting 50 Cent versus the lack of uproar over the billboard of gun-toting Brad Pitt.  Meaning that people get all worked up about a black man holding a gun and let the white man hold the gun without saying a word.

 

But I don't necessarily buy that this is all that's going on.  For one, I know of the person who led the protest here in Philadelphia against the 50 Cent billboard.  Bilal Qayyum of Concerned Black Men has been a forceful voice against violence in a city that has seen its homicide rate increase, particularly among young black men.  He is right in saying that the 50 Cent billboard, with a chiseled young rapper with do-rag, gat, and microphone, glorifies violence in a way that is not helpful in our neighborhoods.  I don't know that Mr. Qayyum would think that the Brad Pitt billboard would be equally unhelpful, or maybe even unhelpful at all.   I don't think this is an instance of white people getting a pass and black people getting hassled, because I think there's a difference in the visual imagery between the Brad Pitt billboard and the 50 Cent billboard.  But maybe I'm being racist.  Either way, I agree with Mr. Qayyum, and salute his efforts in getting the 50 Cent billboard out of our communities.

 

Speaking of large public images, I'm reminded of one of the first tough decisions I had to make in my career at The Enterprise Center.  In 1997, I was working on commissioning a public mural less than a block from our facility.  We landed a funding source, secured a world-renowned mural artist, and got the permission of the property owner.  And everyone involved agreed that a young basketball phenom named Kobe Bryant would be a good subject for the mural.  He was from the Philadelphia suburbs, had just made the then-shocking leap from high school to the pros, and was lighting up the NBA in his first season.  All that was left for me to do was to get the community's buy-in, an important prerequisite by the standards of the city's mural arts program.  I figured this would be a (no pun intended) slam-dunk.

 

But the principal of the Catholic high school that was across the street from the proposed mural site balked.  I went down to her office to try to convince her otherwise, but left myself being convinced of her position.  Quite simply, she put it: "I work so hard to convince my kids that it's important to go to college, and that the chances of hitting it big in athletics is slim to none.  By glorifying a young black man who skipped college and hit it big in athletics, you'll be undoing everything I'm trying to do."  I backed off.

 

I've looked back on that decision a number of times since then.  You can question the merits of whether Kobe could be a good role model – he speaks fluent Italian, but he's not really from urban Philadelphia, but he's articulate and intelligent, but there's that rape charge thing – but what it boiled down to for me was the power of public art to convey a message, even if that message is ever so subtle: "I know it's a long shot to put your hopes in athletics, but Kobe did it so maybe I can too."  I think I made the right decision, and I think I made it for the right reasons, and I'm glad it was a tough decision because I grew from the experience.  But sometimes when I pass by the proposed mural site, I wonder what a picture of Kobe would look like there. 

 

By the way, we turned the project over to someone else, and now there's a mural of activist Paul Robeson, who is a much better role model to Catholic students and neighborhood residents than Kobe Bryant.  So the story does have a happy ending.