Sailer writes: “Anyway, these data remind me of something I noticed while watching Chris Rock’s attempt at a black Woody Allen movie, Top Five: black people in America really have a blast being black and they don’t seem very interested in much else these days.”
Comments:
* It also tends to point to the public ruckus that Kanye West caused at the Grammies last week. He probably spoke in his way for millions of blacks in general, and that’s namely that blacks should win just about every relevant and worthwhile entertainment award out there for every single year indefinitely. If it’s a choice for rooting for one’s own they tend to be among the most loyal of fans.
* So it is as I’ve believed all along, “diverse” means “black” and only 100% “diversity” is good enough.
* Well, “diversity” is a moving goalpost. In this instance, it means black. In some instances, it could mean black and Hispanic but no other non-whites. In some instances, it means everyone but the straight white cisgendered heterosexual gentile man. There are lots of possibilities.
* One other consideration is that AMPAS doesn’t want any shootings or murders at Oscars pre-parties or after-parties.
* An Indian told me the other day they wanted to move to a diverse neighborhood, one with Indian supermarkets, restaurants and residents.
I said – oh, so you mean a non-diverse neighborhood full of Indians? He didn’t understand.
* The assumption that the average black person was going to watch the Oscars if the cast & director of Selma were honored is a bit bizarre. The stars and director are not household names even to black people – a somewhat art-house director and and lead stars who are British with little exposure in the US. Nor was the movie particularly successful, despite being incessantly praised by the media.
“Precious” was totally different – Mo’nique was legitimately popular and had been a star of major sitcoms on UPN for years (jokingly referred to as the “Urban People Network”) and the movie was very successful (with a cast that had plenty of other familiar and popular faces for the typical black movie goer). The movie also fit well in with the reliably popular “urban fiction” genre.
As always, the NY Times seems to have a different view of what black people should be interested in from what they actually are interested in.
* John Jay, at about the time of the Constitutional Convention, is reported to have remarked that those who owned the country ought to run it. Apocalypto Gibson was right: the Jews run Hollywood. Have they dropped the ball? Not hardly. They should therefore run the awards show racket as well (which is, of course, just not-very-well-disguised advertising).
If the Soul Brothers ran H’wood, the foreign market for films would be cut to a fraction of its present size. The Japanese don’t give a flying f**k (if you’ll pardon the pun) about the Tuskeegee Airmen cult. Or about “Selma” or about Selma.
* Kanye is quite in favor of blackness for its own sake. Black power. His father was a former Black Panther member.
The larger issue is correct: Namely, Kanye doesn’t particularly like or care about white people and would much rather prefer that a black entertainer always win an award, any award, over a white person. After all in his mind, only blacks can create the best entertainment and anyway, “everyone” knows that whitey stole all the good music from the brothers.
As this isn’t the first time he has publicly interrupted an award show over the exact same issue (‘Why’d some honkie crackaa win over a sister, yo?’), this is starting to look like a pattern with him and again, he is speaking for millions of blacks just as Jesse and Al speak for blacks collectively on the national stage, just as the Congressional Black Caucus speaks (and votes) collectively for blacks at the national level in the US Congress.
Blacks want to win every single solitary entertainment award (or all the good stuff thats relevant in today’s society) indefinitely in order to balance out the books for centuries and centuries of institutional racism, etc.
* Wonder if HW has looked at the demographics of movie theater attendance in areas that are middle class white yet have a representative number of blacks living there or near by.
Most whites I know have given up on those theaters–blacks in the audience make attending a thoroughly unpleasant experience: not only can they not hear but there’s the chance of things breaking out into a fight if they ask them to stop talking, laughing, or blurting out comments to the characters on the screen.
As a result, some get Netflix, but many don’t. It’s not uncommon for me to hear from these people who used to like to watch movies on the big screen, “I haven’t watched a movie in years.”
* What is our a priori expectation here?
Blacks are about 13% of the population. So do we expect them to earn 13% of the Oscars. Were we to say that we would be tacitly expecting blacks to be equal in acting talent with whites. Who thinks that’s true?
For example since blacks are 13% of the total population should we expect blacks to win 13% of the science based Nobel Prizes or the Fields Medal? Conversely blacks are overrepresented in all the hand speed and foot speed sports. So should they only be 13% of new entrants into the Hall of Fame?
Blacks are probably overrepresented in most Hollywood screenplays because there are government bureaucrats who set a quota for blacks roles. I’m not sure that this is true in movies but it is obvious in TV commercials.
All of which gets us back to the question – Can blacks act?
We know that blacks are less intelligent so we should expect to see fewer of them in fields that require much intellect. For example the Tesla car company is in the news again. I don’t actually know the name of the guy who is the founder and guiding genius behind this company – but I’m pretty sure he isn’t black. So why don’t we know who he is and we all know about Morgan Freeman?
In fact almost all black actors are famous for their personalities rather than their ability to act. Whites like Kevin Kline or even Brad Pitt will assay a wide variety of characters. Pitt for example bulked up for ‘Troy’ and then lost the weight to appear in a comic role. He has appeared as young men, old men, handsome young studs and ugly creeps. But Samuel L. Jackson is always Samuel L. Jackson. He always talks too loud and is pushy.
Blacks are entertainers but blacks just aren’t actors in the sense that whites are.
