I’ve been thinking about… race matters.
Race is hardly ever on my mind and certainly not on my agenda,
but these days it’s in my face at every turn. Some months back, I saw the story below about negative and racist reactions to the casting of some black* actors in The Hunger Games movie (http://www.thehungergamesmovie.com/). Read the story for yourself and then ask yourself, Do you still think that “racism is dead in America“? http://www.thegrio.com/specials/the-dish/hunger-games-fans-outraged-over-black-characters.php
After reading about these Tweets, I was over-brimming with retorts and rejoinders. Behold my comment to the story:
Oh, so many things to say about this! I’ll try to keep this short.
– Agreed, these reactions to some of the characters being black or being portrayed by black actors are supremely ignorant, but who are these people anyway? They are so few that the box office didn’t take a hit from their absence. They are so dumb that they used their keyboard to proclaim worldwide that they are racists.
– Could these people have been any less careful reader? Wait, let me make my point clear for them: You read right past the skin colors you didn’t like, pictured the characters how you wanted them to be, and were disappointed that filmmakers didn’t follow your vision.
– Do these fools think only white people will be around in the post-apocalyptic future?
– If they assumed/preferred/expected all the characters to be white and/or were disappointed that the characters/actors are not; they need not don’t ask themselves if they’re racist, they should just ADMIT that they are.
– Let’s remember and be grateful that racists have a right to express their opinions/beliefs and their exercising it shows us precisely who they are.
*I’m not fond of the hyphenations used to categorize the U.S. citizenry. (Really, if we’re supposed to be “Americans,” why differentiate among African-Americans, Asia-Americans, Indian-American, Native-Americans, etc. Even though black is just as poorly descriptive of people as is white, I prefer it over hyphenated label.