Anyone actually read the article she was critiquing? Here’s a direct quote:
“A lot of what is happening right now is long overdue. The TV and film superhero ranks have been overly white for too long, workplace shows should be diverse to reflect workplace in real America, and ethnic actors should get a chance to play more than the proverbial best friend or boss.”
So a brief discussion on why just maybe television and acting should be about talent and providing a good product, not about quotas is really a secret way of saying black people getting shot is a win for white people?
Oh, agreed. Of course, that kind of openness in casting was very, very rare. I agree with 1972gd that the Deadline article is really just dealing with the business aspects of increasingly “ethnic” casting, and the original, misrepresentative headline was rightly replaced. But that original headline, and a vignette in the article, did reflect something of a white “zero-sum panic” – if there’s no longer the unspoken assumption that an ethnically unspecified role will be filled by a white actor, then that obviously lowers the odds for white actors in a field where steady work is a rare thing anyway. But the odds of getting work for actors of color have always been vanishingly low; all that’s happening now is that white actors are facing what everyone else always has, just a little.
I hope my comment didn’t come across as advocating, approving and even giving a subtle nod to violence because that is far far from what I was trying to suggest. My main point is that we need to ask more questions about how to address these ingrained hates, how to change the environment our children grow up in seeing the police killing, people carrying guns and taking the ultimate action (killing) into their own hands and even not even subtly many in the religious community teaching hate, distrust and sanctimonious condemnation of another human.
How can we make changes that will grow us up instead of backwards? The current trend in rewriting history to meet the needs of political powers, encouraging ignorance of scientific study and investigation in favor of religion and voodoo is trickling down to those who will be voting in the not too distant future. More and more we see children waving protest signs for/against ideas they aren’t old enough or experienced enough to make those kind of idealist demands. We see random creation of schools that encourages the teaching of very narrow interpretation of ideas or ideas as fact when in reality we should be teaching our children to think, explore and ask questions, not just reproduce ideas by rote because the adults have given over to the same closed processes.
Synergy will work, but we need to encourage education, exploration and discussion also.
What you didn’t do was write “white fragility”, so you don’t need to defend the term.
I read the original article, which now has a less provocative title more in line with an article that comes from the perspective of talent agents and casting directors.
Adrien Schless-Meier’s piece in response to the article is much like a fox news piece on Obama’s choice of cheese for his cheesesteak, or his choice of Hawaii for a vacation.
This, for example, is pathetic: “Andreeva asks her audience to consider, though she does not quite state it outright, the cost to white people of seeing people of color on
television.”
Bullshit. What she wrote was mostly descriptive of the rapid growth in demand for experienced minority actors. She quotes agents glad they no longer have to call to find out if an “ethnic” would be considered, and she quotes agents and casting directors who are disappointed to find that some roles are reserved for ethnics.
She attributes the growth in minority roles to “a concerted effort,” but is not judgemental about the effort. She speculates that the once “grossly underserved” black viewing audience “might have reached its peak”, but she makes it clear that the question will be settled by viewers. If the audience expands, the producers will do more of what has been working.
Thanks Puppies. Being old, I find it hard to keep up with all the nuances in these ‘types’ of articles, a blogger interpreting what a writer said and meant. About race. I’m sorry, this blogger is also an editor and a writer as well. Knock me over.
Someone (famous writer) once stated that a clear sentence is no accident. As Groucho once told me:
Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
A very powerful and 100% true and introspective article. Kudos to the writer.
We’re proud to be human for having people like you in it. Morality does count for something. To be moral you must be just and fair to all people. No exceptions.
I believe that race is a construct invented by racists. So I don’t see much value in furthering that narrative, which is one of division and oppression.
What I do think is important is that we, those of us in the media or those of us hiring employees, should consider culture as opposed to race.
Television shows should, without coming across as contrived, explore cultural diversity, but not necessarily race. If you take a black person who’s raised by white people, they’re going to “act white.” Likewise, if you took a white person who is raised by black people, he’s going to “act black.” But these people aren’t acting, they’re representations of a particular culture.
I do believe that the vast cultures of our country and the world should be explored and represented in our media and entertainment products. I just think focusing on race is a fool’s errand and only really serves the desires of racists.
I’ve always wondered if that sort of anxiety is driven by the fear that one’s victims, once they achieve superior numbers, will behave as badly as the oppressors.
Never mind retaliation, it’s probably just a fair assumption that if whites become a minority then whoever is the new majority will not be zen-like and altruistic, channleling MLK in all things, but more likely just as ugly to protect and advance their own tribe with their new found power. Human nature kinda sucks that way.
You are correct about the article, in a literal sense, but miss the deeper sense. First, Andreeva does have a point. Commercials show black and white people hanging out together far more than they do in real life. But also commercials show more people with really white teeth than occurs in the real world. Both are distortions (and distortions with a reason), yet I see few people wishing for more commercials with people missing teeth. The question should why TV shows, movies and commercials show a larger number of black people (and black people hanging out with white people) than has occurred before. The reasons are multiple, and I wont attempt to cover here. But again, the question should be, "Why do you have ‘this’ distortion compared to ‘that’ one? It is possible to have a more insightful conversation.
Well, most progressives take it for granted that if you dismantle white privelege, then what’s left will be racial and ethnic harmony and equality. Of course that would be wonderful.
There’s a real fear among many conservatives that that’s not realistic, though, and that being stripped of priveledge will lead inevitably to becoming the new oppressed minority… if we really want to progress with racial issues in this country we need to address that.
Well, most progressives take it for granted that if you dismantle white privelege, then what’s left will be racial and ethnic harmony and equality. Of course that would be wonderful.
I don’t take that for granted. History shows that there’s cause for pessimism with regard to eliminating an oppressive structure – often another one takes its place.
But that’s not really the point. The point is that white privilege – racism – is the institutionalized injustice we have now. It’s endemic. We’re not going to build a just society until we tear that structure down. It’s reasonable to be concerned about other structures replacing it, either during reform or subsequently, but history also demonstrates that those who benefit from an unjust status quo invariably argue that the alternative will be worse. It is in their self-interests, and typical, to present a narrative that is all about the slippery-slope of reform-gone-mad, that the oppressors are imminently becoming the oppressed, and the like. Is there evidence for this? What we get are hyperbolic articles about campus PCism and such when things like the contrast between Cliven Bundy’s armed stand-off with law enforcement and the Walter Scott shooting prove that, no, we’re a very long way from creating an inverse injustice.
The sad and insidious truth about privilege is that it’s invisible to those who are privileged … until they lose it. They don’t notice that they were born on third base, but they sure as hell notice it when they’ve moved back to first. This feels like intense injustice to them because they are blind to the institutionalized injustice from which they benefit. And it’s inevitable that even with the merest amount of practical reform, the response is a panicked and angry claim of victimhood.
I understand the psychology, but long ago lost patience with it and have come to believe that the disinclination to recognize one’s own privilege and the reflexive defense of it is an essential psychological sin, so to speak. It’s the Hollywood celebrity pulled over for drunk-driving slurring to the police “do you know who I am?” White people aren’t accustomed to being excluded on the basis of being white – suddenly they are acutely aware of what they think of as “racism”, when before they could hardly be bothered to notice how people unlike themselves are actually living their lives. I am unsympathetic.
I think you start with the fact that not being the majority any more doesn’t mean that there is another majority coming along to oppress you.
And if that doesn’t reassure, I would ask " if you’re really afraid of being a minority, doesn’t it make sense to have rules in place (which are enforced) that protect minorities from being oppressed?"
