"You know the damage one ignorant negro can do?"
Sgt. Waters may very well be the most interesting black character ever put on film. The depth of the man is astonishing and if you ask 50 black people, you might get a split on how they view him. When I was younger, it was easy to write him off as a self hating Uncle Tom. And I think there were remnants of that in there by design. But it's SO CLEAR that there's much more to him than that. If anything, I think he cares TOO MUCH about his people…to the point of losing perspective of how different black people can be.
When you consider it's based in WWII (the early 1940's), it makes a lot of sense. This is before Dr. King, hell this is before Jackie Robinson. Robert Townsend's character mentions Joe Louis' knockout of Max Schmeling…that literally may have been the stateside highlight of black people en masse in the United States at that time. I say stateside because Jesse Owens completely obliterated Adolf Hitler's notions of white supremacy in the 1936 Olympics, but that was in Germany.
So, we're still segregated and there's still the vestiges of second class citizenship in the U.S., both north and south. So from Sgt. Waters' point of view, the only way to be on the level of white people is to beat them at their own game. You don't have any margin for error. Remember, this was an era when blacks were still being lynched for God's sake. So you have to be sharp, smart, hard working, and disciplined. That's why he rides those men…it's his way not to build them up, but to separate the ones he doesn't think fit this worldview of advancement. Remember, HE LIKES Peterson (Denzel Washington). They fight, but he respects his intelligence and toughness.
CJ on the other hand, comes off as the simple, sambo, Geechie stereotype. Everything wrong with the PERCEPTION of black people in Sgt. Waters' eyes. That's really what it was about. He didn't really have a personal problem with CJ…the conversation he has with him in the prison kinda confirms that. It was just…business. The business of black advancement. And to get where he saw black people going, it had to be done with those values I spoke of and his Waters' eyes, CJ just didn't cut the muster.
You wanna know how I come to this conclusion? It's in the end of the movie. He's drunk because he feels guilty about his responsibility in CJ hanging himself. He knows he drove him to do it. Fascinating considering he tells Wilkie about the man they killed in France that was willing to be "King of the Monkeys". And after all of those efforts to be seen as an example, to take his place with those white men he secretly despised, he comes to the stark reality that in his words, "They still hate you!"
The irony is that Peterson and Waters come from two sides of the same coin, which really was the underlying theme of the movie. Hate in any form can be justified, but it is never productive. Waters hatred of the idea/perception simple, non race lifting black people…and Peterson's hatred of 'Uncle Tom' type men like Waters. Both were WRONG…and yet, both still persist today.
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