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• 1 2019-10-23T18:12:30-04:00 "PSA for SCORE, The Service Corps for Retired Executives" 40 image_header 2020-03-17T21:36:20-04:00
  

  “PSA for SCORE” is a 1970 public service announcement directed by James E. Hinton and featuring the comedian and political activist Dick Gregory. SCORE, the Service Corps for Retired Executives, is a program aimed at matching retired executives as mentors to business owners with new businesses. This particular promotion of the program highlights Black business owners. This artifact cites capitalism as a route for Black liberation. Gregory looks on either side of the block, pointing out a grocery store and laundromat, both Black-owned. “There is hope here now,” he says. The PSA is filmed on a block in an urban Black community, but the exact location of the filming is left out. This is intentional; Gregory appeals to the executives he seeks to recruit, “The help you give will make a difference to this street, and country full of streets just like it.” Gregory is convinced of commerce as the saving grace for Black communities, a force powerful enough to combat the crime, drugs and desolation he describes as plaguing these communities. 

  However, Black radical thinkers such as Angela Davis and Charlene Mitchell are clear in identifying capitalism as a source of Black people's oppression. As communists, Davis and Mitchell assert that capitalism cannot be a part of Black liberation. A capitalistic system is inherently exploitative and Black people stand to gain the least from such a system. Furthermore, the help Gregory seeks for these Black business owners is likely to come from people who are wealthy and white. The idea of non-Black, specifically white, people being the greatest resource available to restore Black communities is an affront to Black radicalism. Black people are the sole necessary actors in their liberation. Moreover, Jackson's ideas of the lumpenproletariat's efficacy in leading the revolution reject notions of wealth and status as drivers of the liberation movement. 

  This short film also touches on points Eldridge Cleaver made in Soul On Ice about the role of celebrity in liberation. Cleaver lambasts those who have visibility and influence within the Black community as the white man’s pawns who only serve to placate Black people and encourage a tolerance of oppressive conditions. In contrast, Cleaver praises Muhammad Ali for his radicalism and refusal to be controlled by the dominant white class. Dick Gregory’s role in this PSA is aligned more with the former. This creates tension within Gregory's image as a political activist. Although, like Ali, Gregory did protest the Vietnam War and took grass-roots approaches to various socio-political issues, in this particular PSA, Gregory is promoting a white conception of causing change in the Black community. “PSA for SCORE” tries to make a case for an organization that is not made for or by Black people as a means of liberation. By relying on capitalism, this argument for achieving liberation is not only inadequate but also antithetical to Black radical views on the best way to do so.