Too Soon for Sorry

For years, hip-hop culture has been portrayed in the media as an authentic expression of life in the black ghettos. This documentary shows the contrast between this kind of idealised image of young blacks and Latinos in the media, in the sport and amusement industries, and the reality of the ghettos and the American prison system.Eighty-five percent of prisoners in New York State are Afro-Americans or Latinos. For the whole of America, an average of one-third of all young blacks are either in prison or have a criminal record. Halfway through the nineties, North America was swept clean: beggars, homeless, junks and dealers were systematically removed from the centres of the big cities. Checking and punishing them has become a flourishing industry. Since the seventies, crime figures have dropped, but attention in the media seems to have increased in inverse proportion. The way in which blacks are portrayed in the media, together with social and economic factors, creates a vicious circle that relegates a whole generation of Afro Americans and Latinos to the sidelines.Weingartner shows how difficult it is for young blacks to escape from the stigma and how discrimination still plays a role. This situation is still regarded by many as a form of slavery. The film is made up of interviews, a glimpse behind the scenes at a number of prisons, TV fragments and commercials that have been edited together in a kind of hip-hop style.