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Here we go again….
Here’s another industry project where they hire their one token person of colour, and explain that they don’t have room for another.
That is what the industry has reduced people of colour into. It’s now to the point where people of colour have become the figurehead of some false screen of openness and decency.
After this news broke, a lot of people are expressed shock that (presumably) the casting director told her this information to her face. Frankly, I’m not shocked at all.
I think the relaying of this information to potential cast members happens a lot and no one speaks out about it. People of colour in the industry want to get work; not everyone is willing to rock the boat, speak out, and risk not getting any jobs (even those one dimensional roles of what [insert ethnic background] man or woman mean) in a very closed industry. No one wants a the loud mouth tag on their neck. :/
Apparently in the 90s T.V shows included more people of colour (filling a lot of roles on shows which would have originally gone to whoever had the lightest skin); maybe it was trendy then, but clearly this is not the case now.
I’m not naming any T.V shows on the air today employing this token character rule on TV and I don’t need to; take a good long look at the cast members on TV (day time, prime time, and late night). These are shows that producers and writers expect people of colour to enjoy and participate in. Essentially what these producers are saying, is one of two things:
1. People of colour don’t exist
2. OK you guys exist, but no one cares to hear your story (we all know it, every black, Latin, Asian person looks the same, is the same, who cares?)
Either way it’s sickening. Why should I bother watching shows from producers and writers who keep trying to show me that I don’t exist, that no one cares if I exist, or that I’m just like everyone else with skin the same approximate shade as mine.
That is what people of colour are being reduced to in the industry. It’s disgusting.
The racism continues..
EDIT TO ADD:
thewayofthebunny reblogged this from separationbymitosis and added:
As Natives, we’re not even on the token list.
You’re absolutely right; Native American (and Canadians), are not even on the token list either. This is an industry which ignores, stereotypes, and in some cases seeks to reduce people of colour.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7kes92Hen1r2hovro1_250.png)
86-year-old comic racist Don Rickles came with his shtick shit comedy to the AFI’s Shirley MacLaine tribute, and likened the President of the United States to a janitor:
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“I shouldn’t make fun of the blacks,”Rickles said…“President Obama is a personal friend of mine. He was over to the house yesterday, but the mop broke”
- Ignorant…human being allowed to operate because he’s old.
- President Barrack Obama (of the United States)
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“The black-tie crowd… alternately gasped at the 86-year-old comic’s put-downs and then found themselves laughing and applauding.”
The awkward moment where you realized a prestigious film organization - hosting an event you’ve been invited to - hired a racist, ignorant human being to being your host for the evening. And you laugh as if it’s supposed to make the awkwardness go away. There is nothing funny about this, Rickles was lucky I wasn’t in the audience.
Why do old white men get a pass when it comes to making racially charged comments? Rickles has a history of making these comments in his stand up routines and yet he’s still getting hired, while he’s telling the same jokes? And these “jokes” mind you, come from a time when if I was alive I’d be drinking water from “coloured” water fountains, and using “coloured” washrooms. It can be surmised that he’s not being told how offensive his jokes are, because he still thinks racist jokes are funny.
To the people in the audience who were shocked and then laughed? Guess What: you’re not any better. You sat there in your seat, and you laughed as he shit out of his mouth. Your laughter reinforced his racist rhetoric, patted him on the back, and said keep doing what you’re doing.
This is The President of the United States, he’s referring to in this manner. I personally don’t give a damn how old he is, he’s a sorry excuse for a human, and he needs to educate himself before he opens his mouth again.
This kind of rhetoric and the fact that he continues to be given an audience, is disgusting to me.
What are your thoughts?
My next post was supposed to be about designer wedding dresses and veils, but I just couldn’t help myself. That’s coming up next I can kind of promise you that.
You may have heard about the sad state of affairs in football these days: rampant racism, prejudice, and racial slurs slung at players at international football stages.
THEO WALCOTT
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News just broke that Theo Walcott’s family (father and brother), had booked flights and accommodation to watch their son compete at this summer’s EUROCUP. After watching programs which reported racial profiling, and racially motivated violence which is said to be taking place in the Ukraine, they decided to stay home and support him from England.
Amnesty International agrees with Walcott’s family:
“Fans and families visiting Ukraine for Euro 2012 have good cause to be concerned about their safety – particularly those of a racial minority,” the organisation said.
Ukraine is known to have a corrupt and vicious police force that openly targets individuals because of their skin colour. A recent case involes two intoxicated police officers in a Ukraine suburb, pulling over a person of colour and beating him for hours with their batons , taking turns when the other became tired, and all the while shouting racial slurs at him.
And there is more where that came from:
Manchester United’s Patrice Eva was subjected to boos and taunts on the field by Liverpool fans at Anfield because he was racially abused by Luis Suarez.
PATRICE EVA
WOLVERHAMPTON COACH TERRY CONNOR
A rule called The Rooney Rule, which requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching positions. People yell and complain about it, and coaches who belong to a minority group become disrespected in the same way.
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There is this unspoken expectation in football, that when a player is being racially attacked, they are to keep their mouth shut and say nothing. When the issue is addressed - and a player is consequently suspended or fined - the player who was the victim gets attacked for speaking up about it.
It sickens me that such a universal sport - played all over the world - would have a culture of racism attached to it. This is an issue which is ever prevalent, and it cannot be ignored. The racism reaches the players, coaches, and not their families. More measures have to take place to ensure that these players are respected and given the dignity they deserve.
More later.
I won’t even bring myself to post the full picture of this cake on my tumblr. I just wonder what kind of people live on this earth, and how anyone can try to justify this ministers actions.
I’m just going to post a cropped version here:
Apparently before people were allowed to eat this….cake, attendees were required to take part in performing some kind of sacramental female genital mutilation. This so called minister of culture, an claimed anti-racist started the party by wielding a knife with a smile on her face.
Apparently the cake was made for awareness of female mutilation, but the message, the smiling faces disturb me an rube me the wrong way. I don’t think you have to read between and around the lines this walks across.
“Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth (Minister of Culture) was invited to open the festivities by performing a clitoridectomy on the cake, which she did by slicing off the part of the cake depicting female genitalia. She then proceeded to feed that part of the cake to a performance artist, done up in blackface, his head protruding through the table.”
Because it’s hearsay unless I post a link to something, click here at your own discretion.
Is it too much to ask for such a prominent figure of a country to have some understanding, some empathy, and understanding of race relations?
I’ve been collecting myself in order to say this in a way that is even, clear, and without a whole lot of anger in my words.
Did you watch the Oscars on Sunday night? Billy Crystal hosted - a last minute replacement of Eddie Murphy - and people generally seem to think he did an OK job.
It makes me wonder if people were watching the same show I was. All I can remember is - aside from the cheesy numbers and overdone monologues - are two moments in particular that more than rubbed me the wrong way.
1. Billy Crystal in Black Face at the Oscars:
I am struggling to understand how he thinks this is in any way funny.
2. After Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for The Help Billy Crystal said
“After I saw The Help I wanted to hug the first black woman I saw, which from Beverly Hills is about a 45- minute drive.” (Perhaps he’s referring to Compton, California, it’s about a 40 minute drive from Beverly Hills.) And when you think about the people Compton is made up of/believed to be, then you can see the insinuations he’s making here.
“I’m heading out of my white upper class neighborhood into the ghetto to hug the first black woman I saw:: aren’t I a special person?! “
No you’re not Billy. You’re incredibly offensive, and you need to get re-acquainted with what is OK, and what is not OK. You sound incredibly ignorant and misinformed to me.
I’m happy to see that people realize how offensive and disgusting his hosting effort was this year.
Black face seems to be percolating in the K-POP community as well apparently:
This is a band called SNSD
Their music and performance routines are full of derogatory language, stereotypes and implications. One of the videos includes a man wondering why they are eating a watermelon in the way they are (this group in black face), because everyone knows that black people eat/are “like animals.”
Here Is my position on the issue;
I am saddened, I am offended, and I am not entirely surprised that view points exist in today’s society. We have no way of knowing what other people truly think or believe behind closed doors, and so when stories or events like this surface it’s like re-opening a wound that no one has figured out how to properly fixed yet, and maybe we don’t really know how deep this cut is.
I don’t want to write an essay on this topic - and I certainly could, I would prefer to open it up to the tumblr community. So tell me, what are your thoughts?
