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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To be surprised at this Hollywood racism

74 replies

mileend2bermondsey · 21/06/2015 18:04

in 2005. I was watching the romcom Hitch yesterday and read a bit of trivia that Will Smith reportedly stated the female lead was orginally supposed to be Cameron Diaz but the studio changed her for Eva Mendez as they thought an interracial couple would be 'too controversial'

The thing is. The main couple were STILL interracial, black and Hispanic. Another couple in the film were Caucasian and Asain, and another white and Hispanic. So what they were actually saying is no one will root for a black guy being with a white woman. Am I BU to be shocked at this racism, even back in 2005?

OP posts:

grannytomine · 23/06/2015 19:32

I think I have dementia, do I mean mixed race or interracial? I'm in a mixed marriage, DH mixed race and I'm white, and I can't even think what I mean. And I don't even drink so I can't claim to be drunk.

ShipShapeAhoy · 23/06/2015 21:23

I think you mean interracial but now I've read the same word so many times and it's lost all meaning!

grannytomine · 24/06/2015 12:02

Thanks ShipShape, I think I had got to that point yesterday. The whole stopped having any meaning. I feel more with it today.

BonnieNoClyde · 26/06/2015 17:32

I thought captain kirk was a bit predatory. I rmember watching that as a young child and thinking he had a bit of a nerve going around taking it upon himself to teach so many beautiful women about 'human love'. {vom}

Aermingers · 26/06/2015 17:45

I'm not sure it's necessarily racism. A lot of black groups in America object if a successful black man is depicted in a film with a white girlfriend because of the implication successful black men 'trade up' to a white girlfriend.

I'm rather shocked at Will Smith too. If somebody told him he'd lost a role because his race was 'too controversial'. But if it's poor Cameron Diaz she just has to put up with it. There was a (correct) storm of protest when people suggested that Idris Elba couldn't be James Bond because he was black. But this has caused barely a ripple. Which is sad.

Idontknowhowtohelpher · 26/06/2015 17:51

In ER the black actor playing Peter Benton refused to continue the storyline where he was in love with Elizabeth Corday - a white woman.

According to wikipedia, in an interview the actor Eriq La Salle stated, "As an African-American man, it becomes a bit offensive if the negative things are all you're showing. Because in real life we romance and get on each other's nerves and laugh and do all the things that any other race of people do. So if the only time you show a balanced relationship is in an interracial relationship, whether it's conscious or sub-conscious, it sends a message I'm not comfortable with."[4] Mindful of the image that he was portraying on television, La Salle asked producers to end Benton's interracial romance.

YesThisIsMe · 26/06/2015 17:59

Yes I remember that. I was gutted because the Benton / Corday plot was hugely entertaining, and the light skinned black actress they hired to be "Benton's Black Girlfriend" was boring as hell (dunno whether it was her fault or her script). I'd much rather they'd found a good black partner, carefully cast and entertainingly scripted, for one of the other black characters than ditch a plot which was working.

Aermingers · 26/06/2015 18:14

Um, can I also point out Sofia according to those figures Compton has 113.8% of population. Forgive me if I'm sceptical.

Especially as they are culled from Wiki and seem to say, in total, that Compton's population is about 150%.

BonnieNoClyde · 26/06/2015 18:27

I always used to think it was ridiculous that the women were paler skinned than the men. It was almost like being paler skinned was a primary female characteristic.

roundtable · 26/06/2015 18:29

I watched an interview with Thandie Newton about the film where she was Simon Pegg's wife and how the interracial marriage between them isn't commented on in the film but she felt if it was a US film, it would have been the focus of the film.

I also saw that granny, pashing it up with aliens- fine, black woman - mass outrage.

I don't think the Hollywood film represents America at all though. I know interracial couples although when in Florida we were pulled over by the police as he basically told us that he thought I was a prostitute until he saw the car seat at the back with our dc in it. (we're an interracial couple)

roundtable · 26/06/2015 18:31

The original Vivian was brilliant - that dance off with the young girl is hysterical!

Frowndalier · 26/06/2015 18:47

I visited relatives in NY, admittedly about 15yrs ago now. I am mixed race but fair skinned and they lived in a black area. I was surprised by some of the looks i got which ranged from curious glances to downright hostile stares. Possibly i was being over-sensitive as I just wasn't used to the segregation. Interestingly i chatted with some of my family there who had lived in US and UK and some of them felt racism was worse in UK but somehow a bit more subtle/less openly expressed.

grannytomine · 26/06/2015 18:56

roundtable, I never even thought about the fact that Captain Kirk had love interest with aliens, I suppose they were white aliens so that was OK.

Must have been fun seeing the look on the police officers face when he saw the baby seat. What a cheek. I got married a long time ago so the interracial thing was more of an issue then but when my PIL got married in the 40s it was really scandalous that he was black and she was white. They even got thrown out of a church. It was also assumed that she was a prostitute.

lljkk · 26/06/2015 19:26

I am kind of with SofiaA in saying that the UK shouldn't claim a moral high ground on this issue. And with others who are saying it's a business not social decision.

...but (just saying) The academics say that Southern California has a lot of room for improvement wrt racial integration.

SofiaAmes · 27/06/2015 05:04

Aermingers, the figures actually came from the US 2010 Census. If Wikipedia shows the same figures, perhaps they got them from the same official source. Again, as I pointed out in my original post, the reason the figures add up to more than 100% is that there is an overlap of races. So someone who is mixed race will show up in more than one category. That actually does indicate the significant amount of mixed race people.

YesThisIsMe · 27/06/2015 08:11

US race stats always add up to more than 100%. I don't think it's the mixed race people, they have their own box, it's the Hispanic people who are counted both by race (white for the most part) and their ethnicity.

SofiaAmes · 27/06/2015 16:55

Thanks Yesthisisme . I was trying to figure out the category headings and what you are saying makes sense.

Aermingers · 27/06/2015 17:43

Okay I've looked it up on the census website.

quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0615044.html

Compton's white population who are not Hispanic or Latino is 0.8%.

So not at all as mixed as those figures suggest.

RosesareSublime · 27/06/2015 17:47

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozled

I watched this film a long time ago ^ its from Spike Lee about race and it was really really interesting and threw up some challenging things that made me think.

BUT what utterly shocked me, was here was this man, making this film to challenge us and make us think and yet film was incredibly rude to disabled people and was littered with offensive use of the word retard

BonnieNoClyde · 27/06/2015 21:10

My son is watching Annie (the one with Jamie Foxx and Rose Byrne) and it's implied they really like each other then at the end he asks her out for dinner. Not exactly getting their kit off but it is a kids' film!

SofiaAmes · 28/06/2015 06:25

Aermingers, I don't think you are reading those numbers correctly. I think that you have to combine the two figures of White Alone and White Alone, Not Hispanic to get the total white figure.

BonnieNoClyde · 28/06/2015 09:22

RoseareSublime, you make an interesting and depressing observation. A man in my office who has always been a champion for gay rights called a woman a 'bint' recently. She had done nothing to justify being on the receiving end of such an insult. Nothing, just, she was a woman, slightly overweight, not very glamorous....... he called her a bint and I called him out on the hypocrisy and he was white with rage (at me).

Also, I notice that there has been so much support behind gay marriage (I'm in Ireland) and yet, when I post something about how cuts will effect the children of single mothers and drive children in to further poverty and create an even bigger divide of wealth in the country, I get maybe one like, out of pity. It's weird. It's like 'I care about eqaulity but only cool equality and only if it cost$ m€ nothing

SofiaAmes · 28/06/2015 17:04

BonnieNoClyde I very much agree with that comment. I have a mentally ill child and I am amazed at the things people say without realizing how insulting they are. And the comments that kids say about gays...using the term as an insult to each other. We belong to an LGBT synagogue and my dc's have made these comments without realizing what they are doing because they hear them so often from their friends. Although, in some cases, words don't carry from one country to another....for example, I have no idea what a bint is.

BonnieNoClyde · 29/06/2015 10:08

it's a horrible word for a woman. like, the owner of a cunt. anybody who uses that word hates women.

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