Tag: minorities

Next Steps and a Brief Note

Hi, everyone. I thought I would quietly ghost this site, letting it diminish down into the corner of the internet it basically always was—a place to preserve a certain voice and feeling of a certain moment in our lives, and no more. But then this happened. #Trumpocalypse. The reckoning. Not just with that man-cheeto, but with the very serious question of why half of America decided to vote for him. I was ready to let a new job, a new city, and a new career path distract me from the simple act of writing community into existence, but no longer. I will make time. We will write. And I’ll be honest, we no longer have the funding structure that bound my team together in concrete monetary ways, but please know that the values which knit us together are stronger than ever.

Below are some preliminary ways to get involved and help bolster the social justice movements and ideals that Trump and his coming administration have threatened. This is a storm we can weather, but only if we tell ourselves we can—even if we don’t believe it right now. I am simultaneously numb with shock and horror at the America we woke up to yesterday, and galvanized to action. I feel a fire in my blood. Do you? Continue reading “Next Steps and a Brief Note”

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“Ethnic Castings”: Hardly Enough of a Good Thing

…there was that unsettling remark in the Deadline article that reduces the popularity of shows featuring minorities to a trend. It questions whether the “the trend of ethnic casting” will come back with a vengeance next season.
As the Vulture article points out, Kylie Jenner’s lip liner is a trend. Furbies, gel pens and MySpace are trends. Race is not a trend. To suggest that it is insulting. It undermines the importance of having TV and film that fairly represent the demography of the world we live in. It implies that Hollywood is rightfully a white industry, and that the surge of “ethnic shows” we see is a passing phenomenon.
It should and will be quite the opposite.

Just when we thought Hollywood couldn’t get any whiter, well… it did. Remember when Neil Patrick Harris announced that we were honoring Hollywood’s best and whitest — oops, brightest — at this year’s Oscars? Can’t forget that one. It may have been one of the more memorable moments in an otherwise snoozy media event.

The 2015 Academy Awards were so lacking in diversity that they got a special hashtag, #oscarssowhite, that trended all over the Internet long before the big night. It lived on during and after the event, sparking much-needed awareness and discussion.

While minorities were largely absent from those Oscars ballots, they have been making appearances all over network television this year. As we know, film has historically trailed behind TV on that front, but the contrast was notable.

Continue reading ““Ethnic Castings”: Hardly Enough of a Good Thing”

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