Discussion Diversity In the New Saga [See OP Warning]

For Christ’s sake, just read my actual words instead of spinning off into completely misguided outrage. I made a clear case for rewarding talented people that have delivered big time for Lucasfilm in the Mandalorian, and who happen to be women and people of color (who under normal industry circumstances wouldn’t have even been given a chance in the first place, so kudos to Kennedy and Favreau for thinking about the wider talent pool). Why would Chow and Famuyiwa not be given more opportunities after knocking their episodes out of the park, vs. white guys who haven’t demonstrated that ability? They get Star Wars. So give them more Star Wars. And look farther and wider than you normalmente have for people that get Star Wars. Because based on how awesome those two directive were, it makes me think that there is an absolutely massive pool of untapped talent out there. And that there are lots and lots of women and people of color among them.

 

Starfish, yeah, of course Hollywood's been a ****-show of inequality in times past. Nobody's going to argue with that.

Thing is, that's not the case in 2020. Movies made by minorities, featuring minorities, about minorities get nominated & lauded all the damn time. Every year. One just took best picture, director, and screenplay alike.

Kinda hard to do the "the man's keepin' us down!" schtick these days, frankly. Your movie's awesome, these supposedly-out-of-touch old whiteys are giving credit where credit's due. Was that the case 30 years ago? No, I'd agree. Much harder a hill to die on as an argument now.

It is. It's beyond demeaning.

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be part of some quota-demand-from-on-high if I ever get further up the movie-business ladder.

Then again, guess I'd better just listen to all these white people telling me how outraged & victimized I should be.

 

Hmmm, this may not be the correct place to bring this up, but I was wondering how audiences would react to having more non-Western classical in Star Wars. I was listening to music played by an oud and was wondering if perhaps that could at least be applied to some scores here and there. I could almost see some of the more, shall we say, reactionary "fans" get upset over Non-Western classical music having more of a place in Star Wars but keep in mind that The Clone Wars also experimented with Non-Western music here and there.

Anyway, that's not the "diversity" that we all talk about here, but I was just sort of wondering how audiences would react to "non-traditional" music in Star Wars.

Also, has anyone considered Zahn McClarnon?

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0565647/

He has a pretty good pedigree and I know that many people liked him in Longmire. I also saw him as Hanzee Dent in the Fargo TV series and was quite impressed. He would do well in a Star Wars TV series or even a Star Wars movie. He could easily be a main character given his acting experience.

Thoughts?

 

Isn't just The Clone Wars that has experimented with non-traditional classical scores. The Mandalorian is a huge recent example of that too (and a successful one). Fans overall loved the approach. The mold has been thankfully broken.

 

Well, we've had quotas for white people, especially white males, since 1776 with slavery, and then Jim Crow laws and structural economic and political racism afterward until today, so yes, it does make sense to reverse the discrimination for some time in order to even the playing field. Some people like to pretend that you can reboot the world and make it equal simply by having positive feelings about color-blind ideology, but that's just a way to let institutional and structural racism continue.

To end the damage quotas for white people have caused people of color, reverse quotas are necessary. In my own fields, teaching and writing, I'm more than happy to let non-whites have the institutional advantage for a while. That's justice, even if it affects me negatively.

It's not in any way insulting; it's a necessary policy to reverse previous injustice.

 

The fact that you are an educator is quite frankly, terrifying.

 

All people like you have is ad hominem. That's your response to injustice. I find that terrifying.

 

What's with the personal attacks, ya'll?

 

Discuss the topic, NOT other posters.

 

You can't fight fire with fire. Same goes for racism.

 

Minorities are not capable of racism. Racism has to do with the dominant race in a society using their power toward maintaining economic hegemony.

Reversing that hegemony towards an equitable system is justice.

Whites are often confused between the difference of prejudice/bias and racism. Racism is a political structure that benefits a majority race. Minorities are therefore incapable of it.

Now, if we have two equally qualified candidates for a job, and one is white and one black, it is more just to hire the black candidate because of hundreds of years of white privilege. That should be clear to anyone who understands American racial history.

 

I sincerely apologize if I offended you. But the ideas you are describing are what many would consider a “white savior” complex. Whites that think people of color need their special help in order to achieve. Whites that think they need to step aside in order to “level the playing field” for non-whites. You will find many people of color find that quite demeaning and patronizing and resent the suggestion that they need their hand held. (See Aximili86's comments above).

 

Are you being serious?? Maybe you should look at the definition of the word in a dictionary https://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism . Minority groups are more commonly the ones that are victims of racism, but that absolutely doesn't mean that only people of minority groups can be victims of racism. If I went to China, I would be a minority. That would not mean I could go around acting in a racist way to Chinese people without any racism having occurred.

 

Of course they're capable of racism. Also, since when's racism been a purely economic factor?

Personally, sure, I'd label 3/4 of the **** Farrakhan spurts as "racist". Or the ol' persecuted Hamas voters and their "you Jews have no right to breathe!" stuff. As branching-off-topic as you're taking the discussion with , the tangent, to indulge it all the same, of course someone in a minority community can be racist. Racism can come with a power-over-others "first class citizen" component, but it's hardly the case across the board. Hate knows no specific color or economic standing, people are people are people are people, same misguided follies exist in certain segments of every community & creed.

 

There's no "systematic racism" in any developed western country right now.

Racism's a thing, yes. It's not "systematic" in 2020. Go yell racist epithets at someone in the street, "the system" is rightfully coming down on you along with 95% of random civilians. There's that 5%er outlier, yes. They're not "the system".

 

I was replying to someone above (post #455) who specifically stated discrimination against whites is necessary on an institutional level in order to give minorities better opportunity and to enact justice for them. You yourself "liked" that particular comment (just saying). They also said they'd be happy to step aside in their own field in order to help that process along. That's what some would consider "white savior-ism" and that's what I was responding to.

With due respect, this is a straw man and I haven't seen a single person here display this attitude. If the vast majority of Hollywood films were to star people of color, that's awesome. All some are saying is let it unfold naturally through creative individualism and not because of some top-down corporate regulations. Corporations have too much creative power in Hollywood already. Multi-billion dollar corporations like Apple and Disney shouldn't be given the power to discriminate against or favor particular groups. These huge corporate power structures need to crumble and give control back to individual artists like in the 1970's.

 

I'm sorry, I've probably been too direct in my responses. I genuinely like you and almost always agree with your posts on other threads. I think everyone here is well-intentioned and everyone wills the good. We all want equal opportunity for all. We just have disagreements on how that can best be achieved. The possibility of misunderstanding each other in online discussions is also very real, so forgive me if I've misinterpreted you.

 

Just stating my opinion here, I kind of agree with some of what @The Chalk Jedi, mainly because what he says is pretty much one of the basis of the political system in my country. It is one of the only reasons why democracy is strong in my country too. (We don't deal with racism much here, but had a very similar problem).
The problem is, if a minority group wanted to make a movie to represent minorities, they often may lack the resources to do so. Let me put this in an example: Suppose I was an actor of color who was looking for a movie. Often I may be turned down due to my color. The main reason is because for years movies have been dominated by white actors. People have become used to seeing white people on screen. It leads to producers being more likely to bankroll a movie with a white cast than a black one. Now this problem is eliminated once more movies are made by more people of color, each becoming as successful as those by movies made by white people.
Now back to me as an actor, I'm now looking for a movie. But most of the movies with good scripts are hesitant to cast me as a lead. This leads to me having to make a movie which I might not have as much faith in as the first one. This movie isn't very successful. Now the movies being made are not as successful as the ones made by white people. This leads producers with good scripts to bankroll their movies, and returns me to the beginning of my problem, and not being able to get a good movie to act in. And hence the cycle continues. One way to eliminate this is to support POC until an even playing field is established.
Now movies made by white people and POCs are equally successful, so they have an equal chance to get bankrolled by producers with good scripts, and hence equality is achieved.

 

This and the Boyega thread have highlighted how some have a serious lack of understanding what racism is, its impact on society through entertainment and any other aspect of this convo. If you're coming at this as a Star Wars fan - naive and/or ignorant to all that I bet its a challenge. And that's assuming positive intent.

Hard to have a real convo under those circumstances.

 

I for my part want to make an effort to understand better.

 

Why would this topic be hard to understand?

 

a good place to start may be to read through the race relations thread in the JCC
https://boards.theforce.net/threads...and-black-men.50022332/page-609#post-56462617

 

I'm not talking about the "topic". I'm talking about understanding "people" and their points of view. You know, reaching out and actually communicating in a sincere way instead of with snark and insults.