*As we reported, last week writer/director Jordan Peele (“Get Out,” “Us”) made a comment that’s still reverberating throughout Hollywood and beyond.
If you missed it, Peele, during a recent appearance at East Hollywood’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, declared that he probably will never make a movie with a white actor as the male lead.
“I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie. Not that I don’t like white dudes. But I’ve seen that movie,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The way I look at it, I get to cast black people in my movies. I feel fortunate to be in this position where I can say to Universal, ‘I want to make a $20 million horror movie with a black family.’ And they say yes.”
Needless to say that comment freaked a lot of (white) people out. But journalist Jeremy Helligar has written a response/essay for The Wrap that outlines why there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what Peele’s stance.
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Here’s a taste of what Helligar wrote:
Cue sanctimonious outrage: Reverse racism! His critics collectively dismissed him as racist for speaking his own truth, one whose flip side has applied, though it’s never stated outright, to white movie directors since the dawn of Hollywood. If Peele’s manifest destiny is to tell black stories because they so rarely get told (and almost never by white directors), why would any reasonable person expect a white actor to get top billing?
“Reverse racism” is such a cop-out, a fallacious concept invented by white people who need to see in others what they can’t bear to see in themselves. They’re the ones who can’t take what they routinely dish out.
Racism is racism, and all of us, regardless of color, harbor it to some degree.
But racism becomes a social disease when it systematically and systemically places one race at the top of a hierarchy at the expense of other races. That is why the N-word stings so much more than any word blacks ever coined to denigrate white people. It’s why blackface hurts in a way that whiteface doesn’t. There are centuries of brutal history to back up the sting.
In Hollywood, racism has historically worked in favor of white actors. They rule the hierarchy. Peele’s dedication to a different cause may cost a few white actors leading roles, but it’s a twist made necessary by a caste system created by whites to benefit whites.
Of course there is much more to this essay from Jeremy Helligar about Jordan Peele’s declaration that he probably never will make a movie with a white actor as the protagonist.
Read the FULL article at The Wrap.
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