“‘Boyz N the Hood’ was my first exposure to the inner city black experience,” said Ruth Hopkins, a Native American attorney and writer who lives in South Dakota. “The characters I saw in ‘Boyz N the Hood’ were the people we saw in our own communities. Hopkins recalls a scene in “Boyz N The Hood” where the character Furious Styles, Tre’s father (played Laurence Fishburne), preaches about creating black-owned business and developing self-respect amid a racist society. When Singleton’s 1995 “Higher Learning” came out, a film about racial and sexual tension on a college campus, Hopkins began thinking about college herself. At the time, the film was criticized for exaggerating college racial tensions and for suggesting that white supremacists would attend a racial diverse university.

Source: National Post April 30, 2019 20:37 UTC