Posted on December 19, 2014 at 8:00 am
Film Courage produced this excellent and very compelling film with actors of color talking about the challenges they face in Hollywood. If we did a better job of representing diversity in film, we would not just tell better stories and tell stories better, we would make better progress toward understanding, respect, and justice for all.
Posted on March 20, 2014 at 8:00 am
Author Walter Dean Myers
Myers speaks very personally, about the impact on him as a child who loved books but sought in vain to find some semblance of the world he knew in them.
I needed more than the characters in the Bible to identify with, or even the characters in Arthur Miller’s plays or my beloved Balzac. As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine. I didn’t want to become the “black” representative, or some shining example of diversity. What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me.
Books did not become my enemies. They were more like friends with whom I no longer felt comfortable. I stopped reading. I stopped going to school. On my 17th birthday, I joined the Army. In retrospect I see that I had lost the potential person I would become — an odd idea that I could not have articulated at the time, but that seems so clear today.
And he makes it clear that it is just as important for children to read about characters of other races as it is to read about their own.
Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of color? Where are the future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their knowledge of people of color? Where are black children going to get a sense of who they are and what they can be?
The same day Myers’ essay appeared, the Guardian announced a new policy for reviewing books intended for children. If the book is marketed only to one gender, they will not review it. Literary editor Kay Guest wrote:
I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent’s books section. And nor will the children’s books blog at Independent.co.uk. Any Girls’ Book of Boring Princesses that crosses my desk will go straight into the recycling pile along with every Great Big Book of Snot for Boys. If you are a publisher with enough faith in your new book that you think it will appeal to all children, we’ll be very happy to hear from you. But the next Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen will not come in glittery pink covers. So we’d thank you not to send us such books at all.
As Myers said, books give us an idea of who we are and what we can be. They also teach us empathy for others. They can do this best when they reflect the world as it is, made up of people with many differences and many connections.
Posted on March 1, 2014 at 3:59 pm
I hope Lupita Nyoung’o wins the Best Supporting Actress award tomorrow night. She deserves it. But there’s another reason: I want to hear her acceptance speech. Her speech at the Essence Awards this week was beautifully heartfelt, gracious, and wise. She talked very frankly about the difficulty of feeling beautiful with dark skin, and how she felt when she received a fan letter from a young girl who said she had been about to try a skin-lightening cream before she saw Nyoung’o and realized that it was possible to be dark-skinned and successful. Nyoung’o said:
What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsey in so much trouble with her master, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has faded away.
And so I hope that my presence on your screens and in the magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside.
Posted on May 5, 2011 at 8:25 am
“‘Fast Five’ is a great example of Hollywood getting it right,” Craig Detweiler, professor of film history at Pepperdine University, told TheWrap. “Its multi-racial cast matches the multi-racial audience. The Rock and Vin Diesel reflect the browning of America, that there is more blurring across races and cultures than ever before. The box office take reflects that.”
But after that auspicious start, the summer derails quicker than one of Diesel’s sports cars. A quick scan of the major films hitting theaters over the next few months shows that Hollywood is about to flood the marketplace — again! — with four-quadrant fare almost exclusively by and starring the ever-shrinking white plurality.
I was pleased to see one of my favorite actors, Idris Elba of “The Wire” and “Daddy’s Little Girls,” in “Thor” (playing a character who is white in the comic books). But The Wrap has it right:
Don’t look for anybody ethnic to save the world or make it safe for democracy in “The Green Lantern” or “Cowboys and Aliens.” For that matter, “X-Men: First Class” may preach inclusion, but its cast isn’t exactly a rainbow coalition.
Posted on October 20, 2010 at 10:46 pm
A Family Affair is a documentary about the unforgivable. And the power of forgiveness. Film-maker Chico Colvard has made a powerful film about his own family’s tragedy and their journey toward reconciliation and understanding. Those in the Washington, D.C. area can see it on November 8 at the Johnson Center Cinema at George Mason University. Colvard will be there for a Q&A following the film.
