Drop Squad  
Butch Robinson/David Johnson
In my opinion, Drop Squad is one of the most underrated movies of the new black cinema explosion of the late 80s/early 90s. Executive produced by Spike Lee, the film tells the story of a rogue band of fist-raising black nationalists who kidnap upwardly mobile African Americans they feel have lost touch with their true black selves – sell outs, basically. The kidnapped “buppies,” as they were known back in the day, are taken on an odyssey of reeducation meant to turn them back toward their communities of origin and set them on the road to things like romances with down sisters and not white babes. (DROP, as used in the film, actually stands for “deprogramming and restoration of pride.”) Some of it is innocently hilarious and some of it, bitingly satirical of the self-righteousness of those on both sides of the black identity wars at the time. There are two versions, a 40-minute short and a feature. See the short if you can. The feature lost a little something in the Hollywood translation.

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