The title of the post is from this Chris Rock video — in particular, from the final minute of the video.
Damn straight. True equality isn’t measured in how the extraordinary people do; it’s in how the mediocre do. When schmucks of all types are equal, then we’ve got something.
Derek Kirk Kim expands on Rock’s point:
White roles go to white actors who are phenomenal, mediocre, and shitty without condition. Why shouldn’t that be the case for Asian actors going after roles of Asian characters? The argument that only extraordinary Asians should be allowed to be on the screen is completely unfair and, if you’re Asian yourself making this argument, self-defeating. When they go to cast “Rob Roy,” are they really trying to find the most talented actor? No, they are trying to find the most talented white actor. As it should be–that role is for a white Anglo-Saxon character. As such, a role for an Asian character like that in Avatar MUST go to an Asian actor, even if the best one they can find is simply mediocre. (You know, like a million kids’ movies like “The Chronicles of Narnia” starring mediocre white actors.) Or else we don’t have true equality. This kind of exclusion also makes it very difficult for that phenomenal Asian American actor to emerge. […] You can’t find gold if you’re not even aloud to dig or approach the river.
Fn1. See also Richard Delgado, “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,” 87 Mich. L. Rev. 2411, 2431-34 (1989). Richard Delgado offers a withering criticism of meritocracy as practiced by a law school hiring committee. The committee rigorously and fair-mindedly spends all its time and efforts seeking to hire an extraordinarily meritorious candidate of any race. And fails. Then, having no more time to engage in a rigorous and fair-minded review of merely average candidates, they just picked someone they’d heard good things about through the grapevine. And, surprise, most of the people that this mostly white hiring committee had heard about informally were white.
No evidence of bad faith on anyone’s part. But the facially-neutral process produced a predictably biased result.
@nobody.really
While that’s a good point, that problem could expand to anybody who is not culturally related to the hiring comittee. It expands beyond race, to the point of being a sort of cultural nepotism. Any outsider, regardless of race – even a white American outsider – will face the same barrier in the “facially-neutral” process of professional nepotism.
When race is eliminated from the equation, white underclasses face the same barriers as non-white ones… but underclasses are still shat upon.
Race is simply the most obvious indicator. A non-racist group of white men will select from within their own culture, and their culture is mostly full of white folks. This is a self-perpetuating cycle. The only racism it requires occurred hundreds of years ago, when blacks were pushed into a separate underclass and culture by slavery and the failure to integrate ex-slaves afterwards.
This is why I support affirmative action plans, even in the absence of racism. I would prefer they focus on multigenerational poverty and cultural isolation rather than ethnicity, but either way I think they’re necessary.
You seem to be saying that racism in hiring doesn’t exist anymore — or at least, isn’t important. (Maybe that’s not what you’re saying, in which case please clarify, sorry for misunderstanding.) I don’t think that’s at all true.
First of all, I don’t think the “it’s all about economics” theory can explain why there are so few parts for Asian actors, even as Asian characters are reimagined as white characters so that white actors can be cast in those roles.
Second of all, studies have shown that when testers (matched for voice, height, body type, accent, clothing, etc) apply for entry-level jobs, white skin is an advantage for getting hired.
even as Asian characters are reimagined as white characters so that white actors can be cast in those roles.
I had a really difficult time convincing a white co-worker that the main character in the movie “21” and book “Bringing Down the House” was based upon an Asian guy. (For some reason, our non-white assistants found it immediately plausible.) Eventually I got exasperated and said, “They were at MIT* in the 1990s!” At which point he backed away and said jokingly, “Uh oh, racial stereotyping!”
* Asians aren’t considered a “minority” at MIT. They’re 28% of the class of 2010; Caucasians are 37% (although international students are a separate ethnicity in MIT’s statistics).
Silenced is Foo wrote:
Wrong:
As that study shows, white felons were consistently preferred over black non-felons.
Yes, class differences matter, but they’re not the “real” issue. They’re another issue.
Such a fabulous point, I was thinking about this today because we found out our old neighbor was arrested for selling steroids. This guy, in the process of being arrested, refused to stop on multiple occasions, rammed several police cars, tried to run a police officer down. My first thought was, if he was black, he would have been shot and killed. So I guess maybe this applies to being below average too. :)
@Ampersand
No, I meant the opposite – that if personal racism could stop today (not that it _has_ stopped today) and the system itself would still have self-perpetuating racism. Black culture would still be marginalized because blacks have been isolated from affluent white society for long enough that, even without racial issues, they simply lack the advantages of familiarity and cultural connection to the wealthy decision-makers. It’s natural to assume that if racism stopped than racial disparity would quickly follow and things would naturally balance out, but I’m saying the opposite – that it would exist forever without a counteracting agent like affirmative action.
Not that anything like that has actually happened. I’m simply saying that even simple business conventions like “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” perpetuates a racist (and, more specifically, classist) system.
Okay, got it. Thanks for clarifying, and I agree.
LOVED the picture of David Hasselhoff as the iconic mediocre white actor whose career keeps going.
I must quibble with Derek Kirk Kim. If we’re going to be particular, then the role of Robert Roy MacGregor is a role for a Scot, or if we must be broad, for a Celt (and in the most recent movie was given to a Celt, though an Irish Celt, Liam Neeson). Anglo-Saxon is a completely different culture, made superficially equivalent only by centuries of cultural and biological interaction, and the fact that both populations have white skin.
Calling a Celtic historical figure from the early 1700s “Anglo-Saxon” is perhaps like calling a Korean historical character “Japanese”. Most Koreans would notice the difference, and many Japanese, even if people from distant cultures wouldn’t.
Just FYI and for further thought.
Grace
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