AIBU to think a white man should not be able to self identify as black

[probablynotrelevant]

AIBU in thinking that you can't self identify as a different race? Where will this all end? Being able to self identify as a different gender is inevitably going to open the floodgates for all kinds of other 'self identifying' - WTF is going on?!

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anthony-ekundayo-lennon-black-white-theatre-director-job-people-of-colour-actor-artist-tawala-a8617011.html

Or am I missing something here and essentially humanity is better off as identifying as whatever the hell they like, no matter actual reality, where men are women, black is white, cats are dogs etc etc

There are two genders. Male and female.
You can be a bit feminine or a bit masculine. I think expecting the rest of the world to see you as a man when your not is irrelevant.

Are we going to start allowing adult babies a safe space in public to change.

Same as race. Your the race you were born as. Id have loved the Hispanic skin tone alas I'm as white as a clould.

Are kids are never going to be happy of they can change everything they don't like

@Beamur mixed heritage is a massive spectrum. From the people I know and knew in London you can be Indian - Sikh and white British, Indian - Hindu and black Carribbean, Indian Hindu and White British, Indian Sikh and Japanese, etc. Each of these people have been treated a different way from their peer or even sibling with the same mixed heritage due to the way they look. So your post is nonsense.

@ClaryFray race is a social construct. For examlple Asian in the UK, US and New Zealand have completely different meanings. I never heard of Hispanic until I started going on US based forums and it isn't a category on UK forms.

I don’t think it’s very comparable to gender at all, you can go in either direction there - female to male, male to female - but white people pretending to be black? Black people generally can’t pretend to be white.

@WhyDidIEatThat - black (well usually mixed heritage) people can 'present' as white, if their skin tone is light and hair not Afro.
I had an Irish and Caribbean heritage boyfriend who looked plain ok' white. He found it quite upsetting as sometimes people would share racist views with him, not realising he was half black.

I know! Of my two older children (same set of parents) one looks very black the other more sort of European - we were talking about this today, but other people assuming your ethnicity is not quite the same thing as what this chap has done is it?

Madness some of these comments.

If that guy didn't shave his head and go on sunbeds all year round he wouldn't even look the way he pretends to look. I'm hazarding a guess that make up is involved

And it's insulting to everyone. I'm white but my cousin was adopted from Africa and I have witnessed the racism she experienced.

My cousin couldn't pretend to be white, even Beyoncé who is now shades lighter than she started out due to skin bleaching can't. Jeez!

How often do we see coloured actors on tv even today. Maybe one or two actors but it's predominantly white actors with a ratio of 1/25 or higher

hence why funding and residential funding places and jobs are scarcely made available for a few who need to be more recognised in the arts.

This guy is a con man

Mixed race.
Probably would qualify for funding too.

The other guy, not mixed race but as 'we're all from Africa' decided to steal funding meant for actors of colour. Because, you know, we are all African

I hope his conscience kicks in and he gives it back.
Or he gets arrested.

I identify with the struggles that Paris Hilton has to endure. Where can I get funding to right that inequality?

@WhyDidIEatThat - no, other people assuming isn't the same, but black people have been forced to 'passed for' white deliberately in the past.. albeit for very different reasons.

So, black people can experience white privilege, if the look white, but then obviously there may be a psychological price to pay.

Personally, I think him accepting the funding was a step too far, just as I think that man who sometimes dresses as a woman, accepting a Woman of the Year award, was a step too far.

However, a lot of the examples have shown that identifying 'race' isn't as black and white as sex (pardon the pun).

His features aren't typically European.

To me, for what it's worth - he looks a lot like both Pete Postlethwaite, who did occasionally play ethnically ambiguous characters, and Patrick Stewart who was a twin for Lenin (who apparently had a Mongol grandparent) in "A Fall of Eagles".

Maybe public pressure will persuade him to do a dna test, then he can produce his >1% African heritage and waft it around somehow

He does not pretend to be genetically black.
When he was young his hair looked afro (watch the 1990 clip of him)
When he was a kid, landlords still had signs saying "no blacks, no dogs, no irish" so I guess he did what he could to avoid getting beaten up.

I am sure many people have asked him where is he from as he looks racially ambiguous and he may have suffered some prejudice

But he is also cultivated a persona and changed his name to fool others and it’s been a gain for himself

How is that fair when it is a choice he has made

When he was a kid, landlords still had signs saying "no blacks, no dogs, no irish"

Exactly how old is he?

By the way although I'm black, I'm no expert, but to me it does feel a little like he's playing dress up. At the same time, I wouldn't accuse him of using sunbeds and shaving off his non-afro hair. I don't think it's intentional like Rachel D. But he has taken advantage of it.

Oh and just because you're Welsh and have been for generations, doesn't mean you're all white. Little history about Wales (and the rest of the UK) will let you know that Romans included black people too.

Recessive genes do come out every now and again.

How can he say he has experienced what it's like to be black?

He has submerged himself in black culture, but that does not mean he knows what it's like to be black.

And what's a born again African?

Please stop.

I for one never said that. I just said he doesnt look white to me so i can see how he slipped in to these roles (acting roles that is)

Am I the only person who thinks he looks a lot like some of the Greek men I've met ? Or ME?Jewish ?

I think he should not have applied for the grant. Because there is no such thing as 'born again African'.

I think he likely has had some interesting experiences in terms of discrimination on the basis of his darker coloring. He could make a good ally to black actors on the basis of his lived experience.

It's not really being an ally, though, to take an opportunity that could have gone to an ethnically and racially black actor who has not only individual experience of racism, but of the collective trauma and injustices that arise from the systemic and historic oppression of your race.

Having said all that, race is definitely somewhat socially constructed, and so it's not at all similar to appropriations of sex, given that sex is biological and immutable.

I reckon it is only now that he has to explain himself, explain his take on himself. Before the funding i suppose he coyld just shrug and go where the casting agents sent him.

An expected spattering of posters on here identifying as witty.

Watch him, in the Everyman film. The young black woman podiyiveky urges him to take on looking black and adopt it as him.

And it’s clear that he has Afro texture hair in the film, too.

As for casting, you get cast for your looks, not identity. Directors take you as they see you, not for your politics.

Instead of asking whether he is black or not we should be asking why it is still acceptable to deny artists roles on basis of race.

No, we should be asking whether it's OK for a white man to take a paid job set aside for black people.

You are the race and sex that you were born as. Those cannot and will not ever change. Gender is not the same thing as sex; as a previous poster has said, race and sex are biologically and chromosomally determined, and no amount of 'self identifying' will change that.

Of course his racial identity relies on his knowledge of his parentage being correct. There are a whole host of reasons why that might not be the case.

@mumto2babyboys - he doesn't look like he went on a sunbed as he doesn't have that orange appearance. Plus lots of bald men of all ethnicities shave their heads and do it themselves as it is just easier to look after their hair.

Reading his interviews he has been perceived as mixed race by other people even when he had hair, and suffered abuse because of it.

I have mixed race family and friends who have been and are perceived as something they are not e.g. white and put up with people telling racist "jokes" to them, Asian and been called "P£&*". They however will still tell you their family ethnic origins and are proud of it, so I don't understand how he can tick mixed ethnicity on a form when he is white Irish.

Nurse "...she was white and therefore her life experience was that of a white person."
Anthony IS white and his life experience has been that of a white person experiencing some prejudice on account of his appearance. Not because he is black by any stretch of the imagination. RD also 'passed' as black, no difference.
And no surprises re the comparative coverage and criticism the two cases have received respectively: a FB feminist group I lurk on, which metaphorically burned RD as a culturally appropriative witch, and usually comes out very strongly against any perceived incidents of cultural appropriation, most recently a celebration of The Day of the Dead in an affluent city in the southwest; but has anyone raised this? Nope. But then they all think TWAW, and who'd want to upset a guy's man-feelz, deny a bloke a bit of blackness?