Academy Awards non-racism called out by racists
In an effort to keep racism alive in this country, the Twit0sphere exploded with angry twits from clueless race baiters yesterday when the Academy Award nominee list revealed that there was not enough diversity on the list. Within minutes, #oscarsowhite gained enough steam to actually become a thing thanks to the racist Twits that flooded the internet.
After disappearing from the public eye after several news sources covered the horrifying death of a St. Louis white guy by several black teenagers (using hammers), Al Sharpton reappeared to announce that he would have an emergency meeting to discuss the unchecked racism running rampant in Hollywood. Sharpton began his diatribe with a very soothing statement meant to ease tensions on the subject:
Isn't that special? That will surely bring people to realize that race is a very important topic in this country and that it is a huge problem that must be dealt with.
Only that it really isn't.
If a person looks at a list of anything and the first thing that pops into his mind is that there are too many people of one color, then that person is a racist. It is as simple as that.
The only thing worse than Sharpton's overt racial prejudice, is Obama doing what he does best- making a bad situation worse. The White House announced that it will have a screening of Selma, which apparently didn't receive enough nominations, so that Obama can show everyone that... uh... well, I don't know what that means. Perhaps they think black movies should always be nominated regardless of the shitty acting? Whatever the intent, it will not be a polarizing message.
Hmm, that doesn't sound too far off from the kind of bullshit Sharpton would pull. In fact, I'll make the call now. Here is the breakdown of the US population by race:
So there is the solution I could see Sharpton proposing: 12% of the Academy Awards nominations will be black, 5% Asian and the rest of the races who make a movie will have to duke it out over the other 7%. What a turd. Sadly, there are blacks and guilty whites who would wholeheartedly agree with this asinine proposal.
Here is the best idea I have ever heard on how to end racism- and it doesn't involve sensitivity training, social programs or any type of government spending.
After disappearing from the public eye after several news sources covered the horrifying death of a St. Louis white guy by several black teenagers (using hammers), Al Sharpton reappeared to announce that he would have an emergency meeting to discuss the unchecked racism running rampant in Hollywood. Sharpton began his diatribe with a very soothing statement meant to ease tensions on the subject:
"The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets,"
Isn't that special? That will surely bring people to realize that race is a very important topic in this country and that it is a huge problem that must be dealt with.
Only that it really isn't.
If a person looks at a list of anything and the first thing that pops into his mind is that there are too many people of one color, then that person is a racist. It is as simple as that.
The only thing worse than Sharpton's overt racial prejudice, is Obama doing what he does best- making a bad situation worse. The White House announced that it will have a screening of Selma, which apparently didn't receive enough nominations, so that Obama can show everyone that... uh... well, I don't know what that means. Perhaps they think black movies should always be nominated regardless of the shitty acting? Whatever the intent, it will not be a polarizing message.
Hmm, that doesn't sound too far off from the kind of bullshit Sharpton would pull. In fact, I'll make the call now. Here is the breakdown of the US population by race:
So there is the solution I could see Sharpton proposing: 12% of the Academy Awards nominations will be black, 5% Asian and the rest of the races who make a movie will have to duke it out over the other 7%. What a turd. Sadly, there are blacks and guilty whites who would wholeheartedly agree with this asinine proposal.
Here is the best idea I have ever heard on how to end racism- and it doesn't involve sensitivity training, social programs or any type of government spending.
Sure, the answer to racism is to stop talking about it. And that would make sense if racism is what it was in the 1920s, which is to say, the explicit and culturally acceptable belief that some groups of people are just genetically inferior than others.
ReplyDeleteBut see, racism today looks a lot different. Racism today is a lot more subtle, and a lot more institutional bias rather than individual hate. Racism looks like people implicitly associating "black" with "criminal," and therefore being more willing to believe that when an unarmed black teen gets shot they must have somehow brought it on themselves.
Racism looks like the fact that even though white and black people use drugs at the same rates, black people are convicted for drug crimes five times more than white people, not because of hate, but because when a black person does it they are a "thug." When a white person does it, "they have their whole life ahead of them."
Racism looks like job interviews where people say things like, "He's black, but he's awfully smart!" or, "Yeah, I liked him but I didn't quite click with (the black candidate) as well as I did with (the white one)."
But hey, we're talking about Hollywood, right?
Hollywood racism looks like: how many black romantic leads end up with a white woman?
How often is a Disney villain not drawn as darker-skinned than the hero (Little Mermaid, Lion King, Aladdin, Princess and the Frog, Snow White, Mulan, Emporer's New Groove, Hercules, let alone some of the classics like Dumbo and Fantasia...seriously Disney, WTH?)
How often is it in horror films that the black character is the first one to die (followed closely by the slutty white woman)?
When's the last time non-Jewish white people were stereotyped as offensively as...well, any of the thinly veiled racial stereotypes in the Star Wars films, or Zoidberg from Futurama, or...well, basically any "dragon lady" roles that is any role Lucy Liu has more or less ever played?
For the love of God and all that is mighty, let's be honest with ourselves: racism is alive and real, and it has little to do with hatred or malice anymore. It's about which roles we stereotype people into fitting into. Not talking about it doesn't solve a damn thing: it just lets the people who don't notice it keep on not noticing it, because (at least where movies are concerned) you don't tend to notice it unless it happens to annoy you that you can't point to a lot of people who look like you who you can identify with. And because movies are saturated with white people of all stripes, that's not a problem a lot of white people have.
If you live your life by what the entertainment industry forces on you then you have bigger issues than racism.
ReplyDelete