Fisking NPR about Latinos in the movies

Damn it, people. I post that I’m trying to finish a novel by the end of the month, and what do you go and do? You post Fisk Bait articles like this on my Facebook page.

As a D List novelist, I should be cranking out more cismale gendernormative fiction, but oh no, you guys had to go and tag me with an article about how all of our entertainment needs to be filtered through the lens of righteous Social Justice, and if you don’t find racism in absolutely everything, then racist. Obviously.

This is so dumb, how can I not take the time to make fun of it?

As usual, the original will be in italics and my comments will be in bold.

Here is a link to the original article on NPR. Since this is NPR you need to imagine the article being quietly narrated in the most boring, pretentious, monotone, nasal tone possible. Trust me. It makes it so much better.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/08/06/338324139/why-arent-top-films-diverse-as-the-real-world-they-miss-hispanics?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140806

Why Aren’t Top Films Diverse As The Real World? They Miss Hispanics

 

Imagine you were the most loyal customer to the hottest restaurant in town. And when you walked in the door, you were given the worst seat in the house.

That’s kind of how Hollywood is treating Hispanic filmgoers,

 No it isn’t. Your analogy sucks.

 

 if you believe the results of a new study by the University of Southern California. It shows that the 100 highest-grossing films of last year underrepresented nonwhite characters in speaking roles.

 Oh no. I can’t wait to hear about how awful and racist America is. The funny part is that Hollywood is who casts actors, and Hollywood is as liberal as it gets. But it is always entertaining to watch libs freak out at other libs for not being liberal enough. Holy shit, I can’t believe I’m about to defend Hollywood…

 

One big reason, according to the numbers in the study, was a lack of nonwhite Hispanic characters in the 3,932 speaking roles analyzed. Just 4.9 percent of those parts were filled by Hispanic characters, though they are 16 percent of the U.S. population.

I’ve never taken the time to be offended by the fact that Hispanics are underrepresented in my imaginary space battles. Thanks NPR.

But Hispanics also buy 25 percent of all movie tickets, leveraging $1 trillion in spending power. Which means Hollywood isn’t paying much of a price for ignoring a loyal constituency.

And all this time I thought that Hollywood was only ignoring me by optioning my novels and then letting them sit in development limbo.

Wait a second, me and my movie going children all fit into that 25%, because we are legally Latino and would show up that way on this survey, but you wouldn’t know what we are by looking at us… Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll get back to that.

Other numbers are less problematic.

In other words, every other possible ethnic combination came out okay in the numbers, but Social Justice Warriors need something to flip out about.

White characters were slightly overrepresented at 74.1 percent (they are 72 percent of the population, according to the 2010 U.S. Census);

Oh shit. Movies about imaginary things were off of reality by 2.1%?!?

black characters were also overrepresented at 14.1 percent (12.6 percent of the population);

Wait… What? Shoot. I was all ready to get my outrage on.

and Asians were at 4.4 percent (4.8 percent of the population).

Damn your Asian privilege!

Overall, nonwhite characters filled just 25 percent of speaking roles, though nonwhite people are 37 percent of the U.S. population and buy almost half of all movie tickets.

I’m in a unique position, on one hand I’m a really successful writer who understands storytelling, and on the other hand I’m a retired auditor who made a great living being a statistical bullshit detector. Off the top of my head I can think of a whole bunch of reasons these numbers might skew. I don’t have any raw data, but a couple of guesses:

  • The popularity of British/Australian/Canadian actors in American films. When NPR isn’t looking under every rock for racism, they’ve also done interviews about why directors love those types of actors for what they bring to the roles. Basically, these commonwealth types are sneaking over here and stealing our jobs!
  • Many speaking roles belong to the bad guys, and Hollywood is so scared of Social Justice Warrior’s perpetual outrage that they are hesitant to cast anybody who doesn’t look like Dick Cheney as antagonists. That’s why books that have Muslim bad guys have them mysteriously turn into white supremacists or some sort of pseudo-Blackwater when they’re made into a movie.
  • It might have something to do with much of Hollywood being scared of doing original things, and instead doing reboots and remakes. So if something stared a white guy when your parents watched it, the new version probably stared a white guy too. There are some obvious switches, like Will Smith in Wild Wild West or Denzel Washington as the Equalizer (I’m really looking forward to that one, because nobody does Retired Badass like Denzel).
  • Movies based on comic books make up a huge part of the market, and these comic books and their characters have been around for such a long time that they predate any of these demographics. Hispanics didn’t make up 16% of America’s population when Stan Lee was making these characters up back in the sixties, not that Stan Lee probably would have cared, because he strikes me as the kind of guy who’d say Shut Up and Enjoy Your Awesome.

And as much as people might hope successful minority-centered films such as 12 Years a Slave and The Butler may have shown increasing diversity in film roles, the study shows the percentages haven’t changed much in seven years.

 

Did anybody outside of NPR actually watch The Butler?

 

We see similar numbers in television. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation looked at diversity in the 2012-13 TV season, discovering that prime-time TV shows on the broadcast networks had 78 percent white characters, 12 percent black characters, 5 percent Asian characters and 4 percent Latino characters.

 

Wait… So what they’re saying is that other than Latino all of the others were within the margin of error of the actual population?

 

But since they are citing GLAAD, anybody want to take a crazy guess by what percentage gay characters are over represented on TV? In real life gays only make up between 1-3% of the population (don’t blame me, take it up with Gallup), but according to GLAAD 42% of FOX’s programming has gay characters, ABC is at 33%, ABC Family is at 50%, and FX is at 40%. I mean, since NPR is acting like entertainment should correspond exactly to real life demographics, do they really want to go there?  http://www.tvguide.com/news/glaad-lgbt-characters-1071960.aspx

 

These are almost exactly the same levels of underrepresentation for Latino/Hispanic characters that the USC study found in movies.

So my earlier guess was correct. The Social Justice Warriors need something to be outraged about, so they’re constantly on the lookout. This time it is Latinos. Tomorrow it will be something else.

The USC study also found Hispanic women most likely to be shown nude or baring lots of skin (37 percent of Hispanic female characters had such roles), while Hispanic men were the second most likely group among males to be shown that way, at 16 percent of their characters.

That’s because us passionate Latins are smoking HOT.

No, seriously. Hollywood, that bastion of moral integrity and arbiter of virtue has good looking people take their clothes off. This is my shocked face.

As an auditor, when I see somebody cite one stat without the comparable stats I become suspicious. So 37% of female Hispanics had such roles, but what percentage were the others? Hell, Game of Thrones has all the white women get naked.

Also, “nude or baring lots of skin” there is a hell of a lot of difference now, isn’t there? If you take just shows shot in Miami like Dexter and Burn Notice, count the hot Latinas in the background shots in bikinis and you’ve got your 37% right there.

Now if I was a suspicious auditor I’d notice an article—so nitpicky that it gets into two decimals earlier—leaving out all sorts of data when it was conveniently trying to portray one group as being hyper-sexualized might possibly be trying to establish some kind of narrative.

The study doesn’t suggest many reasons why these numbers have played out this way, but I have a few theories.

Mine are better.

First, Hollywood doesn’t seem to be paying a price for its mistakes. To continue the analogy from above, if you keep going back to the restaurant after it gives you an awful seat, where’s the incentive to treat you better? If nonwhite consumers keep flocking to movies that underrepresent them, filmmakers have little reason to improve.

Yes, Latinos, NPR just called you stupid. How DARE you enjoy movies and be entertained? You should totally boycott them to salve some white suburban liberal’s white guilt!

Annoying twits put their perpetual outrage ahead of their enjoyment. Everything has to be filtered through their obnoxious white guilt. Meanwhile the rest of planet Earth is throwing piles of money at a movie with a sentient tree and a talking raccoon.

Secondly, Hispanic filmgoers don’t seem to embrace movies with high-profile Hispanic characters en masse in the same way black movie consumers do. Black-centered films like 12 Years a Slave and The Butler were championed by black people across the country as must-see viewing.

 

You ever catch that the Social Justice Warriors don’t like when a group of people turn out to be individuals instead of a homogeneous collective? Damn it. You all check the same box on an EEOC form! You should totally think the same, have the same opinions, and like the same things! Latinos are SUPPOSED to go watch Latino movies. Blacks are SUPPOSED to watch black movies… Noticing a trend yet?

 

But, perhaps because there are so many different cultures and nationalities defined as Hispanic in America, such waves of support don’t seem to happen as often for the few movies featuring Hispanic stars.

No kidding? And now the author accidentally pulls back the curtain just a bit to reveal the soft racism of the left.

Maybe those lumped into the “Latino” bucket are an incredibly diverse group of humanity who are going to watch whatever the fuck they feel like?  Offically “Latino” includes people originating from the bottom half of one continent, top to bottom of another, a bunch of islands across every hemisphere, the Iberian Peninsula, and from that you get a few dozen competing cultures, thousands of years of history of badasses conquering shit, exploring the world, and making babies and bringing back wives from every genetic population on planet Earth, and NPR is upset that they don’t all fit in the same box?

 

But keep in mind, it is my side that gets called racist.

 

 

Also, it’s not always clear to audiences when a Hispanic actor is playing a Hispanic character. Zoe Saldana is Puerto Rican and Dominican, but in last year’s Star Trek movie, she played Lt. Uhura — a character who is of African descent in the TV series.

 

First off, you may have noticed that the movie diverged a bit from the TV show. Second off… is NPR trying to say that Puerto Ricans and Dominicans can’t have African ancestors? Does the staff of NPR ever leave their college campuses?

 

They left off a bit. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Zoe Saldana isn’t EASILY IDENTIFIABLE as Puerto Rican because she is GREEN.

 

Jennifer Lopez played a character called Leslie Rodgers in last year’s Jason Statham movie Parker and her mother was played by Patti LuPone. Though her ethnicity was never stated, Lopez’s character wasn’t easily identifiable as Hispanic.

 

If you rented a Jason Statham movie expecting nuanced discussion about race relations, you done fucked up. You rent Jason Statham movies to watch Jason Statham kick people in the face.

And is NPR implying that somebody who is genetically Latino can’t have an Anglo surname?

Oh, but wait… She isn’t EASILY IDENTIFIABLE as Hispanic. Because the SJWs are really all about keeping everyone in their proper place. Don’t worry, you let leftists run things long enough and eventually they make everybody wear these super helpful armbands for easy identification.   

This kind of colorblind casting can have two effects on diversity. Supporting characters such as spouses, parents and siblings are less likely to also be Hispanic, and audiences that want to support Hispanic characters may be confused about which roles fit that bill.

I want you to read that paragraph and think about it really hard. Colorblind casting is somehow a bad thing.

Audiences might be confused what fucking box they should assign characters to? In other words, to the modern SJW, judging somebody by their character instead of the color of their skin is racist.

Finally, the USC study found that black directors were more likely to cast black people in speaking parts (white directors cast black characters in 10.8 percent of speaking roles, compared with 46 percent of roles for black directors).

The real question is what kind of movie was the director casting? What was the setting? What kind of characters did the story call for? If I was directing an episode of the Wire set in the projects of West Baltimore I’d probably cast more black actors than if I was directing an episode of Downton Abby.

Also, auditor hat on. How many black directors are there? What is the target audience of their films? Could the most prolific of the black directors be Tyler Perry and Spike Lee, who would skew the stats because they’ve cast more black actors for movies targeting a black audience?

Yeah… You know what Mark Twain said about statistics. Unless you’re a Social Justice Warrior, then racism.

But two of the most prominent films of last year led by Hispanic directors — Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity and Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim — had just one major part for a Hispanic actor between them.

 

Why do Latino directors have to have some sort of Latino solidarity? Why is NPR against ethnic mixing and free association? Why is NPR in favor of keeping everyone in their ghetto? Why does NPR get a dime of tax money to produce this bullshit?

 

Why is NPR interested in ethnic purity, where Latino directors pick Latino actors and direct Latino films, and white directors pick white actors for their white films? Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro are both brilliant artists making art. Why don’t you let them make their art, rather than lecture them about your artificial Social Justice bullshit? Nope. Instead SJWs try to paint artists as some sort of race traitors for not complying to their arbitrary rules.

 

Guillermo del Toro gave us Idris Elba rocket punching Godzillas with a giant Voltron. Your argument is invalid.   

 

 

And that character, played by the Mexican-American actor Clifton Collins Jr., was a Chinese-American technician.

 

Wait… Earlier they were complaining about Jennifer Lopez’s character having an Anglo last name, but now they’re upset that another Latino who has a real life Anglo last name was playing a guy named Tendo Choi, in a movie where a black British actor played a man named STACKER PENTECOST?

 

Make up your mind, NPR!

 

Once again the SJWs try to suck all the fun out of everything.

 

Side note, Pacific Rim might help prove one of my earlier points about British actors sneaking over here and stealing all our jobs, since the “American” lead is from Newcastle upon Tyne, which I’m pretty sure isn’t in Nebraska.

 

The study’s numbers suggest that Hollywood continues to have difficulty featuring a world that’s as diverse ethnically and culturally as real life.

SJWs don’t want real diversity, like opinions, thoughts, tastes, or beliefs, but rather they demand simple, easily categorized, skin-deep diversity so they can keep everybody in their proper box.

But the reasons behind the lack of representation may be more complex and interconnected than anyone realizes.

NPR is looking to manufacture some outrage. They’re just pissed that Latinos aren’t conveniently confirming to their proper racist boxes. When NPR says that some of the Latin actors aren’t “easily recognizable” that means that they aren’t conforming to accepted liberal suburban Ivy League stereotypes. NPR wants Latinos to play beaners in sombreros, hotel maids, or gang bangers… Playing a computer technician, Alderan’s congressman, or captain of the Galactica is just crazy.

Latinos will continue getting roles in movies, just like they’ll keep writing books. Those that find an audience and succeed in entertaining them will get more work. Shockingly enough the entertainment industry is all about entertainment. And while us entertainers work, hustle, and make art, Social Justice Warriors will continue to bitch uselessly about “diversity”. In time more Latinos will have success in entertainment and NPR will still be whining about how come there aren’t more left handed, transsexual, robots represented.

The real problem the SJWs have with Latinos is that we actually are diverse, and not just bullshit skin-deep, check box diversity. Most of us here just think of ourselves as Americans and go about our lives. So I’m just going to assume that missing 11.1% of Latinos do exist in these imaginary movie worlds, it is just that they look more like my kids than they look like Machete.

 

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257 thoughts on “Fisking NPR about Latinos in the movies”

  1. I know that you’re a *retired* accountant, but I’m disappointed that you didn’t actually run the numbers…

    Hispanic 16
    White 72
    Black 12.6
    Asian 4.4
    Sum – 105

    And, it’s good to know that at least 105% of Americans fit handily into only four buckets….. 🙂

    1. What I find especially laughable is that Latinos are NOT defined as a race any longer. So what we see is that all racial groups are represented more or less proportionately and the Cultural/Geographical Hispanic category is underrepresented. Did NPR norm the data from the 2010 Census to see if perhaps Hollywood actors might not self identify in the same way?

      1. What’s even funnier is that sexualiy is now supposed to be completely a matter of self-identity… but race is, to the left, not identity but what you’re assigned to.

    2. Yes, and whites (72%) plus non-whites (37%) collectively make up 109% of the U.S. population.

      At least GLAAD’s figures add up to 99%, off only by rounding error.

      1. That’s the part that bothered me.

        “Overall, nonwhite characters filled just 25 percent of speaking roles, though nonwhite people are 37 percent of the U.S. population”

        Now, I’m no mathematician ( oh, wait, yes I DO have a math degree. ) Not only that, if 25% of the speaking roles were for non-whites, then 75% were for whites. That means movies were off reality by only 3% ( easily margin of error. ) AND that 3% favors the minorities. Hey, we’re making progress, right!?!

        Best line of this whole thing, Larry: “Holy shit, I can’t believe I’m about to defend Hollywood…”

      2. “Non-whites” at 37% must be the complement of “White non-Hispanic.” That number for “whites” includes “white Hispanics”. I’ve seen these statistics so many times I’ve got them memorized.

        Conflating different measurements to spin a political narrative? Naw. Couldn’t be.

  2. So, does this mean I’m obligated to go to movies starring Caucasian people so I can “support” them? I’m sorry, but there are too many of them that I have no interest in supporting.

  3. I generally go to movies to be entertained, not to “support” characters of a specific type. Uhh … if I _did go with the explicit intent of supporting Caucasian characters, wouldn’t the SJWs call me racist.

    1. No, no, no. it’s only racist when White People Do It. You can’t be a racist if you’re not white. It’s just not allowed, that’s our defining trait.

      1. It’s all just a form of secular Original Sin. Seriously, go to an SJW blog (if you dare) and mentally replace every mention of “racism” or “privilege” with “sin.” It’s the same exact thing.

        I begrudge no man their religion, but I do wish they’d choose to believe in one that’s a little more life-affirming than the sacred SJW narrative.

  4. “And that character, played by the Mexican-American actor Clifton Collins Jr., was a Chinese-American technician.”

    Wait ’til they see “Galaxy Quest”, with an actor of Lebanese origin portraying a character with an Asian surname. That will REALLY blow their “minds”.

      1. The Political Correctness Officers have successfully replaced the perfect useful and inoffensive term ‘oriental’ (which meant a yellow-skinned, dark-haired man with the epicanthic eyefold) with the awkward and stupid term ‘Asian’ meaning everyone from Yekaterinburg to Magadan to Peking to Singapore to Damascus to Tyre to Constantinople.

        So one is left with the choice of sounding stupid or sounding rude.

        1. Yeah, why the hell did Oriental become a bad racist word? It was a functional working descriptor for the English language forever, on its own doesn’t have an connotations of inferiority/superiority or anything like that, and isn’t any sort of insult.

          Somebody from Bangladesh looks as different from somebody from Osaka as I do, and our cultures are all extremely different, but both have to check the Asian box on those stupid EEOC forms. Because that makes sense to some Prog bureaucrat somewhere.

      2. Seems like it would be as annoying to people from east Russia or India as the term American is to some Canadians.

      3. “Yeah, why the hell did Oriental become a bad racist word?”

        Because the way the scam works is the Thoughtpolice take some perfectly innocent word that is not offensive to anyone, like,say “he” or “chinaman” or “Black” and DEGREE it always to have had been offensive, and denounce any previous generation that used it of being filled with hate, and denounce anyone who is currently using it to be not one of the Cool Kids, and all the Cool Kids use a new and stupider word that mean nothing and pretend they always used it.

        This has several immediate benefits. First, as everyone lies and is forced to pretend to believe a lie no one believes, everyone’s manhood is cropped. Liars are weakminded. This eliminates truthfulness.

        Second, it establishes who is in the faction as a Cool Kid and who is expelled. The rules for expulsion are deliberately fluid and vague and irrational, so that anyone at any time can be accused and convicted. This eliminates fairness. Unfair men are cynical, and cynics never rebel. Unfair men who expect nothing but unfairness are weakminded.

        Third, all prior generations are eliminated from consideration. This cuts men off from the past, severs the roots of civilization. Wisdom, which only comes through cumulative experience, is eliminated. Unwise men are weakminded.

        In a bondage fantasy by John Norman (which I have read so you don’t have to) everything in his made believe culture is organized to humiliate and break the spirit of the slavegirl, so that she regards herself as an animal and worthless, so she never rebels.

        Political Correctness is much more efficient than whips and brands and servile bowing, because the slaves of Political Correctness, in addition to being weakminded because they are liars, weakminded because they are cynics, and weakminded because they are fools, in addition suffer absurdly overinflated egos because of self esteem, which is the sin of pride. And pride makes you weakminded.

        Political Correctness, as Orwell predicted, make the THOUGHT of rebellion impossible. All the chains and whips are internalized.

        John Norman is a pervert but only in the sexual sense. The Left are perverts in every sense. Norman is healthy compared to them. They want death like Norman wants sex, and they want to die, but more than that, they want you to die. Everything happy, beautiful, normal, sane, holy and lovely in life they want destroyed. They do not have the normal will to live of a healthy organism.

        Not every soul in the mob wishes this, but it is what the mob as a whole screams for. I wish I were exaggerating.

      4. “DEGREE it always to have had been offensive,” should read “DECREE it always to have had been offensive,

        O, for an edit button.

  5. You rent Jason Statham movies to watch Jason Statham kick people in the face.

    Isn’t Statham engaging in cultural appropriation for using martial arts?

    1. Also, I think I remember reading somewhere that Statham favors krav maga, so it’s a bit harder to find folks to get worked up over appropriating a culture half of Hollywood is convinced shouldn’t exist in the first place.

    2. “You rent Jason Statham movies to watch Jason Statham kick people in the face.”

      I saw that movie… and I LOVE watching Jason Statham kick people in the face… but that movie sucked, and it sucked because it had Jennifer Lopez in it. I won’t insist that she *made* it suck, but her character was horrible and the narrative choices surrounding her character were horrible.

      1. Her acting choices were really odd, I agree.

        But her character was played by Jennifer Lopez and the movie set in Miami so not is full of it here.

  6. See I just did the numbers for the article and if the population percentages they state are accurate we have at least 105% population not counting Native Americans, %16 latino, 72.1% White, 12.1% Black, 4.8% Asian. So apparently not even their numbers are good at lying.

  7. Okay I have one disagreement. I can’t really call Gravity…ART. I call it crap. As in, about as entertaining as watching a pile of crap dry out

    1. Haven’t seen it. But I’m not going to tell him how to do his job, because somebody bought it. 🙂

      1. If it’s the gravity movie I think it is then you might like it. Mainly as a movie that you can make fun of and ridicule the whole way through. I am also pretty sure that movie could set most physicists, real astronauts, and engineers, into some manner of rage, hysterics or possibly depression due to loss of faith in humanity.

        My Dad, Brother, and I pretty much just had fun mocking it and pointing out nonsense, as well as making fun of how murphy’s law hates the main character.

        On a fun note: I tend to call murphy’s law, Isaac Clark syndrome, after the main character of the dead space video games.

  8. The more that I read about SJW”s the more I am convinced that they have no real understanding of the world. To them Black’s have a homogeneous culture where ever they are in the world, so do Latino’s and Asians. If you don’t fit in their box they yell at you to get back into it and if you try to interact with other boxes they yell at you. There was a case just a day or so ago where a SJW on Tumblr told a Pakistani woman that she was to white to participate fully in her culture. Seriously spend some time on r/tumblrinaction if you want to lose your faith in humanity or at the very least your toucan.

    1. If you want to see the most vile, racist tweets possible, follow a black conservative on Twitter and watch the SJWs attack them nonstop.

  9. The article said “It shows that the 100 highest-grossing films” not films made, or films started, cast, etc. it also said “But Hispanics also buy 25 percent of all movie tickets,”

    So apparently those 25 percent of movie ticket buyers who are Hispanic are merely not choosing to buy tickets to movies staring Hispanics…

    1. Plus highest grossing is kind of a silly marker too, because were thousands of movies made last year. Since sales are dependent upon how the movie is received, how many Latinos were in movies that didn’t make the cut? How does that break down? Do you know if they actually existed and just weren’t commercially successful? How about the fact that there are whole Spanish speaking TV networks available in the US? What acting pool does that draw from?

      1. It also doesn’t mention how many of those Latinos bought tickets for movies with Latino actors that no one else went to see.

        They’re comparing apples to orchards.

      2. If I haven’t seen any comments bring this up, I have a word to say about things like “the whole Spanish speaking TV networks”…which is doubly funny considering that Spanish-speaking TV in the United States wasn’t even on my radar!

      3. I notice they don’t also whimper about the sheer number of telenovellas that get imported overseas that have ridiculous amounts of ‘sexist representation.’ It was to much amusement back in the day that the law enforcement and the news in the Philippines noted that whenever Marimar showed, that crime would drop to something like 10% – I can’t remember if it was 10% of the normal, or to 10% overall.

        I think Pacquiao VS Merryweather’s first fight there was 0% crime. EVERYONE WAS LOCKED ONTO THEIR TV. Or their neighbors. Or someone set up a TV in a local basketbal court and everyone watched there.

  10. “It’s not always clear to audiences when a Hispanic actor is playing a Hispanic character.”

    …Okay. So, by that logic, just assume the appropriate percentage of white actors whose character ethnicity isn’t established are actually playing Hispanics and you’re good!

      1. Hat Assignment Bureau:
        White – must wear a Fedora or a Cowboy Hat
        Black – must wear a Hoodie or a Base Ball Cap – off center
        Latino – Sombrero
        Asian – Baseball Cap – backwards
        Indian, American – Bandana or other headband.
        Indian, east – No hat allowed, no turbans
        Arabic – Turbin
        African – wood mask required to avoid confusion with Black.

        Sub-specialities
        Scandinavian – must have horns
        Russian – must have bear fur

        Note: hats must be worn unless specifically denied.

  11. Right now there’s a liberal somewhere who is having a meltdown over how some of the native American characters on Longmire are portrayed as wealthy and well connected politically, movers and shakers. And how Lou Diamond Phillips character is a business owner!

    1. A couple things here I feel to add.

      One- If Hispanic directors aren’t being all inclusive then wouldn’t that hint to them potentially being the least racist category, thus achieving the liberal goal of little or no racism?

      Second- I know some Hispanics, one used to design computer virus’ to sell to the anti-virus companies, you know so they can have their programs up to date to battle stuff that pops up. So with that said, there’s one point at least for Hispanics to be just fine in a computer related acting role.

      Well there’s probably more but I think I will leave it at that for now.

      1. “thus achieving the liberal goal of little or no racism?”

        BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

        Oh, that’s a good one.

        Liberals don’t want little or no racism. They need racism. Their policies are too stupid to work with 300 million people, and they have just enough mental squirrel-power to realize this, so they have to put people into boxes. It makes the math easier, who cares if it denies fundamental humanity to people?

    2. Lou is .. OMG not entirely Indian – he’s parts Cherokee, Filipino and Scots-Irish.
      So, is he allowed to pay only Indian and Filipino or can he say, pay Latino (oops too late, he already did).

      1. @Achillea – My father used to tell me about this guy who worked at the US Embassy in Paris. Had a very German name, the kind that make you think of tall, pale, blond and blue-eyed.

        Except when you meet the man, he’s pureblooded Japanese. He was adopted by a German couple who migrated to the US while he was a child. The *blinkblink* moment he often (always?) got would make me think of the adage “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover…” Or title in this case? *grin*

        1. IIRC H. Beam Piper had fun with character names not matching their actual appearances. [Grin]

          1. If I ever write some urban fantasy I might do that.

            I had fun with a RPG character though as a nod to this fellow my dad told us about. Parents were converts to Judaism before he was born, so his name was Isaac M. Hartzstein.

            The M stood for ‘Makoto.’ (And yep, pureblooded Japanese, because I could.)

          2. That reminds me of a standup comedian I saw a long time ago on TV: Henry Cho. His parents are both Korean and he was born and raised in Tennessee. He came out on stage and cut loose with a fairly thick Southern accent, “Howdy, how’re y’all doin’? Bet you weren’t expecting to hear that voice come out of this face, were ya?” 😀

        2. There was a Cuban refugee family in my home town with Spanish names, but they all were red-headed with that very pale skin that freckles and sunburns but never tans. They were obviously NW European by genetics and Cuban by culture (but upper class; the father was a doctor, and one of the boys was near the top of my high school class.) Most likely, they were descended from Irish emigrants several generations back, and possibly also German Catholics.

          It’s culture that counts, not skin color – but even small countries often have more than one culture. That’s far too complex for the leftist mind.

      2. Henry Cho was hilarious. His description of playing war games with the other kids on his block also cracked me up: “OK, Henry, it’s the neighborhood versus…YOU.”

        😛

      3. Paul,
        Or their names matching. Every Piper story I read had a ‘Swede’ Rodrieguez, a Mohammed ‘Mo’ Leibowitz, and a Faruk Yakamora. He had the most overtly diverse characters in the world.

  12. Awesome fisk, Larry! That NPR article is insane. They’re completely oblivious to their outrageous racism.

  13. Hey, they want more movies with hispanic performers? I can point them to a site with lots of movies featuring hispanic performers. Somehow, though, I don’t think these movies (well, videos really) were included in that University of Southern California study.

    1. Yep. I can think of a prominent Catholic press where LOTS of movies starring latino actors are featured prominently. They also have italians! Also, far more Indians* than you’d expect. Why these actors even look Latino– but still no sombreros.

      *Indians from…India

  14. Thanks for putting this up today, Larry. Slow day at work. But I swear that all the SJWs in the media get their daily assignments from a randomizer. They have a template that says something like:

    “Find injustice in [Industry] where [Minority] is underrepresented because of oppression by [Traditionally Conservative Group]”

    They probably have computers send out prompts and then trade their responses for journalism awards.

  15. The following list of actors (and this is just off the top of my head) have had major roles in the most lauded and commercially succesful films of the past 60 years: Penelope Cruz, Louis Guzman, Danny Trejo, Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lorenzo Lamas, Fernando Lamas, Miguel Ferrer, José Ferrer, Need I say more.

    1. And JLo, who they specifically referred to in the article by saying this:

      “Though her ethnicity was never stated, Lopez’s character wasn’t easily identifiable as Hispanic”

      Seriously??? Like people don’t know.

        1. Wait… A Latino with an Anglo last name in Cuba? Waaait… Unpossible!

          A good friend of mine is Cuban. His last name is Custer. 😀

        2. When I lived in Miami, I knew several blonde-haired, blue-eyed Cubans. You could spot them when they cursed at you in Spanish. And my father-in-law, who lives in south Florida, is often assumed to be Cuban, even though he’s Italian (looks just like Mario from the Nintendo games).

    2. I think that Zeta-Jones is Scottish. I always assumed she was Hispanic, but I think she’s actually all Scottish.

      1. My bad… Welsh – Scottish… what’s the difference? (Checks to see if my home address is secure…)

        😉

        1. At least you didn’t call her *English*. The Scots and Welsh really dislike being called English. [Very Big Grin]

    3. Where do the passing-for-white Mexican-American actors Anthony Quinn, Martin Sheen, and Charlie Sheen fit in to the leftists’ racial classification?

  16. …and Larry Correia just rocket-punched NPR. Break out the popcorn, and stand by for the rain of hippie-tears!

  17. “There are some obvious switches, like Will Smith in Wild Wild West”

    Or every kid movie that has been remade into a black kid movie *cough*Annie*cough*karate kid*

    In addition, they seem to be only looking at the top 100 grossing films, so they’re leaving out any barbershop (or less successful barbershop) type films that didn’t do as well but clearly had a specific audience. They are also switching from top 100 films to all movie ticket buyers which is apples to oranges, as far as I can see.

    As far as tv goes, I used to watch vamp diaries and they kill off people on that show constantly, but every time a black character was killed off, people bitched and moaned. I always thought the actors probably preferred working and being killed off to not being cast.

      1. I guess it was inevitable after that ‘hard knocks life’ song came out, but Cameron Diaz is no Carol Burnette! And I didn’t even see any bad guys in the preview (like Tim Curry), so I’m sure it will be schlock.

  18. I don’t know, I think Hollywood has made great strides recently in portraying members of my own ethnic group both positively and accurately. But then, I am a talking raccoon.

  19. Larry, you just don’t understand! There must be outrage and rage-tears or nobody will respect or understand… heh. Hehe. Couldn’t do that with a straight face. Damn it. No wonder I’m not a highly successful Latino actor.

  20. Hello, they left out a movie by a Latino Director starring several Latino actors – Machete Kills came out in 2013 – and the last time I checked, Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo, Antonio Banderas, Michelle Rodriguez, and Carlos Esteves are all Latinos. But I guess they don’t count.

      1. Wrong sir, that movie had 3 distinct messages.

        1 Charlie Sheen would be way more entertaining than Bill Clinton ever was as a president.

        2 Mel Gibson plays a very good evil overlord.

        3 Machete…. Kills

      2. Haven’t seen the second one, but the first made a statement about illegal immigration so hamhanded, it just ain’t kosher.

  21. What’s astonishing is that they entirely forgot about Telemundo and the other 47 Spanish language channels available in full HD.
    I bet if you were to tally the Spanish language offerings by Verizon or Comcast, you’d find that about 20% of the channels are offered in full-Spanish.

    1. Guaranteed the person who wrote this article didn’t even consider the Spanish language channels in their research because those aren’t “real” channels. The only channels worth getting statistics on are the English language channels. In order to accurately characterize those other channels they may have actually had to understand another language and who as time for that?

      1. Or those channels feature nearly 100% Hispanic actors and actresses and the actresses are exactly how you’d expect them to be. Even the girl reading the weather is dressed like she’s going to the club.

  22. But two of the most prominent films of last year led by Hispanic directors — Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity and Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim — had just one major part for a Hispanic actor between them.

    Larry addressed Pacific Rim in the main article, but I’d also point out that Gravity had a grand total of 2 “major parts” by my count… even leaving the “major” qualifier off, it still only has 7 cast parts listed on IMDB.

    Clearly, in order to get the proper proportions, Cuaron should have paid close attention to intersectionalism, and of course make it very clear to the audience that this was what he was doing..

    1. Okay, with only 7 parts it is going to be REALLY hard to capture all of human genetic and social diversity. 🙂

      1. Checklist Diversity is HARD without a huge ensemble cast. And remember, you need at least TWO gay characters in a relationship in order to show the audience they’re gay, or else you’re homophobic.

        And even if you check all the boxes, if they don’t like you they’ll accuse you of tokenism.

        1. At various times I’ve had SJW reviewers refer to just about every minority character I’ve ever written as a token. Even if they are pivotal, important, well fleshed out characters with back stories, who are extremely popular to the readers, they’re still tokens. Why? Because I’m not one of their tribe, obviously.

      2. At various times I’ve had SJW reviewers refer to just about every minority character I’ve ever written as a token.

        Obviously, karma demands a new character in MHI: Token. The Gnome.

        Or is that to stereotypical?

        I so suck at this SJW stuff.

      3. Sayeth Mike in Seattle “Obviously, karma demands a new character in MHI: Token. The Gnome.

        Or is that to stereotypical?

        I so suck at this SJW stuff.”

        I was having a conversation the other day in which I stated that the G-nomes were all poseurs compared to something or other. Can’t remember what it was. I was having fun with it however

      4. “At various times I’ve had SJW reviewers refer to just about every minority character I’ve ever written as a token.”

        You don’t act or think like they think a member of your group should act and think, and you look white enough -> to them that means that you are white (as is every other member of a minority who does not fit their stereotype of how a member of that group should act to be ‘genuine’ and when that combines with ‘looks white enough’ then that makes them white, if they can’t ‘pass’ then they are uncle Toms or whatever the currently preferred race traitor name happens to be).

        And since every PoC character written by a conservative or libertarian white writer is a token, you can only write tokens. See, it’s quite logical. Sorta.

  23. “Holy shit, I can’t believe I’m about to defend Hollywood…”

    Admit it, Larry, you’re just doing this so Ridley Scott will forgive you for your Prometheus comments. /sarc

    Also loved where they referenced whites as being 72% of the population and a couple lines later referenced non-whites as 37%. Even using modern math 72+37 = 109%. Blithering idiots.

  24. Then you have people like me who really screw up the numbers. Why? Because no one lists “human” on the gorram race forms! That means I have to choose from a wrong colour (my skin is a peachy colour, so not white), pretend that I’m “Caucasian” (even though my family didn’t come from the Caucasus region), or “two or more races.” I usually justify that last one by saying either:
    “Well, I’m human and it ain’t listed here. But I’m also homo sapien, and if white is a race then obviously those are two races right there! I mean, that uses the same logical system, right?” or
    “I have a bit of Klingon blood in me. It’s not so much that my blood is pink, but I’m very proud of my cultural and racial heritage. You have a problem with that?!?”
    (Side note: and where’s my racial representation there, huh? Only the Star Trek folks are diverse enough to show that)

    Also, shouldn’t it also be considered racist that British actors and actresses play a statistically high number of villains and baddies in film?

    Finally, are they saying that because I’m Scotch-German I should only watch films starring Scottish and/or German actors?

  25. I’m assuming the 105% is due to multi-ethnic actors getting more than one box checked.

    Also, cows are underrepresented in movies. There are 87 million cows in the US, nearly a quarter of the US population. Do we see cows in 25% of movies????

    More seriously, I’ll note that movies make more of their revenue showing outside the US, plus DVD sales generate more revenue than ticket sales.

    The article failed to tell us who to blame. How can I be angry if I don’t know who to be angry at?

    1. Yes, we need Bovine equality. Why, the only movie I’ve seen recently with a cow is the 1988 ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, and the cow was in a non-speaking bit part. So I guess I have to remove it from my list of favorite movies, even though it does have Uma Thurman in a nude scene.

      1. That tornado chasers movie from the 90’s (Twister?) had a flying cow which mooed as it flew past the windshield of the characters’ car. About the only thing I remember from that movie. But I think that might count as a speaking part.

        And oh yes, ‘City Slickers’, also from the 90’s. There was a calf who got rescued from a river at one point. It got a bit more character development than cows usually get.

        So, we need more westerns. Especially cattle drive westerns. They had parts for cows.

      1. Brief note here, because I haven’t gotten around to writing a review, but I loved that Faye and her grandda were so emphatic about the cows being Holsteins. Yes, nearly every dairy cow in the Western world is black and white NOW, but back in the 1930s Holsteins were one of several breeds, not the most favored, and a lot of people were still milking “cows” full stop. You did a good job with that whole background part.

    2. When I was a kid in the 1950’s, it seemed like most of the movies were westerns with cows. Hollywood is just evening things out by excluding cows now. (8-))

  26. So is white Hispanic vs. Non-white Hispanic really a thing now?

    *brain explodes*

    And then there’s this:

    This kind of colorblind casting can have two effects on diversity. Supporting characters such as spouses, parents and siblings are less likely to also be Hispanic, and audiences that want to support Hispanic characters may be confused about which roles fit that bill.

    That’s just straight up racism right there.

    1. “Supporting characters such as spouses, parents and siblings are less likely to also be Hispanic.” Wow, by today’s standards it’s racist to have inter-racial families.

      1. Yes it is. Look at how they tried to use Romney’s grandson as proof that he was racist. And there are adoption agencies, especially in Blue cities, that would never allow a non-white child to be adopted by a white family, because it would be too confusing for the child as they grew up. Oh, and don’t forget the sperm bank that does not allow women to select sperm donors that are not the same race.

    2. Most of the crap that comes out of the left is. Someone made a comment on an article the other day on failbook.[news programs’ failbook page] Someone made an asinine comment so I just had to pop back with. ‘oh look a raging racist in absolute denial about it’ Honey you might want to see a shrink because that denial, not only is it not just a river in egypt but indicative of deeper issues’ I’m a bad bad man

  27. When they want to talk about how diverse America is, they redefine raced based on which country most of your ancestors came from. When they want to complain we’re not racially diverse enough, they bring out the color wheel.

    1. Remember, liberals are the source of racist things they rail about, like the “One Drop” rule or the “Paper bag” rule. They have very strict rules for their racism.

    2. I have occasionally complained about how Finns managed to get shafted in these games: during the 19th century and early 20th some race theorists considered my people to be Asians more than Europeans, and put us in a category labeled ‘Mongolians’. Which, from what I have read, seem to have resulted in at least occasional discrimination. So Finns fought for decades to get rid of that label, and to be counted as fully European. Which was done in the end. So, since we are now rich white people (the rich part is, btw, a fairly recent development, until well into the mid-decades of last century Finland pretty much was one of the back of beyond places populated mostly by poor farmers and most saw no real hope of us ever fully catching up with the civilized nations – lots of immigrants into other, richer countries, who then worked as servants), well, hey, we can have the white guilt now.

      Well, in the same boat with groups like the Irish – one generation in the poor discriminated not-quite-white-enough and the next generations get into the you-have-white-privilege-and-you-should-feel-guilty-about-it group, and there is hardly any time to enjoy that damn white privilege with no guilt some people like the British or French or Germans had. Not fair! 😀

  28. Hmmm, they’re upset about a 2.1% over-representation of whites, but not a 1.5% over representation of blacks.

    Even though the white error rate is 2.8% while the black error rate is 10.6%!

  29. SJW rules for minority portrayals in film:

    1) Stereotypes are hateful and harmful! Directors need to avoid putting actors into ‘typical’ roles (wisecracking homeboy, sassy Hispanic maid, Asian nerd)

    2) Minority roles should represent their culture! For this, you need to feature a few archetypical personalities, such as the wisecracking homeboy, sassy Hispanic maid, Asian nerd…

  30. Bender B. Rodriguez is Hispanic. He was hencho en Mexico. I suppose that his shiny metal ass isn’t easily identifiable, so he doesn’t count.

  31. Fisking … fisking … Aha! There Will be Dragons! I knew I recognized that particular phrase from some book.

    Nice deconstruction of a “you should be outraged” article. Those numbers are laughable, the logic is unsound, and the entire thing just smacks of the idea that everyone should be judged by their skin color and only act in accordance with a set of “rules” that go along with that.

    Someone needs to write a dystopian sci-fi where everyone’s actually divided up this way. I touch on it in my current book, but it’s not core to the plot, so it doesn’t come up.

    1. The word “fisking” is older than There Will Be Dragons. I remember it from back when I first started paying attention to blogs, shortly after 9-11. There was one journalist, named Robert Fisk, who was so infamous for publishing idiotic articles that required point-by-point rebuttals. So infamous, in fact, that the act of rebutting a stupid article point-by-point, with your rebuttals mixed in between the quotes from the original article, became known as fisking in his, um, “honor”.

  32. At risk of fisking the fiskmaster….”Annoying twits put their perpetual outrage ahead of their enjoyment.”

    Don’t you know being outraged IS their enjoyment?

  33. OH no!!! A black guy scored the winning bucket in an NBA game. AGAIN!?!

    Blacks are only 13.8673655858993% of people in America.

    HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN IN AMERICA??????????????????????

    Cuz normal people aren’t like “Eric Deggans, black author of Race Baiter: How Media Wield Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation.”

    However the sub-normal morons at NPR need to look into the NBA. There’s something going on there. And what about hockey? That’s a Klan rally for sure. And there’s too many Latino pitchers in baseball according to Deggans Critical Race Theory, although it’s possible Latinos in Latin America like baseball a lot. Really a lot. Plus are Latinos. In Latin America.

    People like Deggans need to look at the top-grossing films in Third World countries. He might get a slight shock.

  34. “Follow the Money”.
    The SJW staff at NPR gets huge amounts of “gubmint” cash to be outraged. Simply put, no outrage equals no money. They got mouths to feed at home, and their Liberal Arts degree will not bring home the bacon any other way.

  35. I really had to laugh at the GLAAD “study.” Wonder what would have happened to the stats if they’d have included Telemundo and Univision, one of which regularly shows up in the top four or five in the weekly Nielsens.

    1. Kind of like Global Warming studies for the US that count places like Death Valley, Las Vegas, Miami and Huntsville. But, exclude places like Fargo, Fairbanks and the entire state of Maine.

  36. they are just trying to justify their jobs through fear mongering, a perfectly acceptable strategy, just ask any politician.

    Thanks for the stories & posts.

  37. Guess the author of this missed the Fast and Furious series. Incredibly diverse, incredibly popular. Just not with critics.

  38. Ok, now I’m pissed.

    Their making a movie out of the Equalizer? Starring Denzel Washington? Screw that.

    It’d be much better as a series. Starring Denzel Washington.

      1. Yes, the Equalizer was an excellent show. I’d be down with seeing it starring Denzel Washington. But maybe a TV show would take him out of circulation too long.

  39. Larry, of course they don’t want people judging other people by the content of their character. If we as a nation did that, we might notice what happens to people when the Great Society protects them from the life experiences that develop temperance and prudence.

  40. “Guillermo del Toro gave us Idris Elba rocket punching Godzillas with a giant Voltron. Your argument is invalid. ”

    Well, technically, Stacker didn’t rocket punch. It was Raleigh and Mako. But this line is so unbelievably awesome it made me giggle like a crazy person.

  41. “Overall, nonwhite characters filled just 25 percent of speaking roles, though nonwhite people are 37 percent of the U.S. population and buy almost half of all movie tickets.”

    How do they know these moviegoing statistics? Is there someone standing at the gate of every movie theater in America with a little ticker, knocking it off whenever a “nonwhite” person passes through?

    1. Well, actually yeah. That’s pretty much what happens.

      I worked in a movie theater back in college and every once in a while, we’d have someone from the the studios come in and just stand by the doors of one of our theaters and count the number of people who came in. And yeah, they used one of those little hand clickers. Now they were mostly there to confirm the ticket count, as in if we sold 100 tickets, there better be only 100 people going in that theater. But they were probably recording demographics on their clipboards as well.

      This was pre-smart phone era, so I can only guess that there are demographic apps for phones and tablets that the studios would use today. Tap a box for race, gender and age. Wouldn’t take much longer than hitting the clicker.

  42. I haven’t read all the previous comments though I’m sure they’re entertaining. I just wanted to say this however:

    If those NPR folks can convince Robert Rodriguez to make more Machete or From Dusk Till Dawn movies, I’m all for it!

  43. “If you rented a Jason Statham movie expecting nuanced discussion about race relations, you done fucked up. You rent Jason Statham movies to watch Jason Statham kick people in the face. ”

    That and in the hope of nekkid-or-nearly-so.

  44. Two Words: Hollywood Shuffle

    “…easily identifiable as Hispanic.”

    That right there is the most racist thing I’ve heard outside of a Klan documentary.

    Good job again, Larry.

  45. In my perfect world Earth has in high orbit a massive battlestation that drops six-foot long, precision-guided, tungsten rods on idiots below (the West coast of the US looks like a bloody moonscape, and LA and DC are goram shield volcanoes). The name of the place is Babyl, er, SS Larry %&(*# Correia.

  46. Am I the only one tickled by the irony of an article about racist Hollywood focusing solely on US population and movie attendance statistics, and ignoring the rest of the moviegoing world?

  47. Wait…have you seen a picture of Guillermo del Toro?

    He looks like my Czech-descended college roommate. He’s as pale as I am, and I’m a cave-dwelling blonde.

  48. “And is NPR implying that somebody who is genetically Latino can’t have an Anglo surname? ”

    You’d think George Zimmerman would’ve taught them that.

  49. I loved your post. After reading it, I decided to read more about the author of the post. Almost every post on his twitter is about race… it is just disgusting. I just wish we could all be humans, but I’ll settle for being American for now.

  50. I’m not from America and I got to ask:

    Why is there so much focus and endless chatter about race?

    In Europe (and elsewhere) I’ve met and talked to Korean-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Christians, muslims, straights and Gays, and I gotta tell you, there was very little difference between them. Sure, they looked different, but they were pretty much alike in how they spoke, walked, dressed, entertained themselves, etc.

    I just don’t understand it. Whenever I open an American news website I run into stories about race, racism, lack of diversity, and so on, and the US is by far one of the most tolerant countries in the world. Why is there such an attempt to keep you divided and bracketed?

    1. Why is there such an attempt to keep you divided and bracketed?

      You’ve practically just answered your own question. It’s the “divide and conquer” strategy. The politicians stir up racial animosity so they can get the voters angered at a target that isn’t the politicians themselves, which lets them pull all kinds of crap without paying the political price for it.

      To name one example I heard about, though I couldn’t quote you which district it was: somewhere in Dallas, in a city district that’s overwhelmingly one ethnicity, there was a city councilman who had been convicted — not accused, convicted — of fraud, embezzling the money from his district that was supposed to go to things like roads, schools, whatever it was. Next election, did his constituents ditch the guy who’d stolen from them? Nope: they reelected him by a huge majority, because he was from “their” ethnicity!

      That’s why the politicians keep pulling this “look over there! Racism!” stunt: because too many voters keep falling for it.

      1. I’ll do you one better. A few months ago, you may recall the apprehension of one Leland Yee, a California senator charged with corruption and, in a particularly ironic turn of events for the anti gun icon, international arms dealing with filipino terrorists. Larry covered this hilarious turn of events back in April if you’re inclined to look it up. But the reason I brought this one of the first things out of his mouth afterwards was accusing the fbi of racial profiling.

      2. I’ll go one better for politics. There was a white guy running for some low level local position (in Texas, iirc) who ran his campaign as if he were black. Blacks were featured prominently on all of his campaign literature, and he never released a picture of himself.

        He won.

        Then people found out he was white, and, well…

        There were some complaints…

    2. Jonathan – In a large part, its because a lot of Americans don’t spend time in other countries (remember that the USA is larger than Europe, area wise) and so we don’t have an in-person appreciation of the (averaged) differences between living as an American and living as Japanese, Norwegian, Burmese, etc, etc. What we do see and live with are the differences between Polish Catholics and Mexican Catholics, between people from Boston, people from Houston, people from San Fran, and people from Hill, Utah (etc, etc.) So these are the things that are important to us. People who have gone other places (Peace Corps, military, etc) generally come back with an appreciation of the greater similarities between all Americans, in contrast between Americans and people of other nations.

      Most of us, generally, don’t care that much about racial backgrounds. We do care if we get treated “badly” by other people, and there is a lot of room for “rudeness” with all the different subcultures running around. (In Georgia, it’s polite to chat with the cashier about the weather. In Boston, you are WASTING TIME. Be polite, get your business done and get out of the way!) Which plays into the hands of politicos trying their best to get re-elected.

      *shrugs* Worst nation in the world, worst system of government. Excepting, of course, all the other ones we’ve tried so far.

    3. Liberal elite loves to play divide and conquer.

      They are terrified – and they ought to be – that lower and middle class blacks, whites, Hispanics, etc., will realize that (a) they have a lot more in common with each other than with the hoity toity liberal elite, and (b) that nobody has done more actual damage to blacks and Hispanics than the hoity toity liberal elite.

    4. Statist progressives need endless conflict and outrage. If everyone gets along, then there is no need to have the government meddle in everything.

    5. Johnathan– Part of the problem is that the folks writing this stuff don’t KNOW what it’s like in the rest of the world. Sure, they may go there, but they stick to airports and tourist destinations and maybe speak to a tour guide to prove how freaking enlightened they are.

      Seasoned world travelers either keep their mouths shut so they can continue to be friends with the cool kids, or don’t listen to NPR at all. The whole thing about Americans being racist is a political tactic to shut down communication based on where people come from- in other words a way to MAKE racism a fact in the USA. It’s called divide and conquer.

  51. Interesting article. I agree with most points. I do want to point out, however, that in these types of discussions no one mentions American Indians. We actually are still around and aren’t all on reservations. Also, there are very few American Indians in movies but I don’t feel like that makes me less of a person. I still choose to be successful even if I don’t see people of my race being portrayed as successful in Hollywood.

  52. according to GLAAD 42% of FOX’s programming has gay characters, ABC is at 33%, ABC Family is at 50%, and FX is at 40%.

    GOOD GRIEF!

    I haven’t watched network TV since the 1990s, but I had no idea it had gotten that bad. But at least this validates my decision to stay away. And I will stay gone!

    If you rented a Jason Statham movie expecting nuanced discussion about race relations, you done fucked up. You rent Jason Statham movies to watch Jason Statham kick people in the face.

    ROFL!

  53. The crazy thing about the way they break some of this down by saying, say, %’s in a specific film is that some films should be all white, or all black or all hispanic, or what have you. Films are about something! If they are about my office they should have a different racial makeup than if they are about my family. Films about Japan should have a different makeup than films about medieval england. Unless you are going full on BBC colorblind casting (even when it makes no historical sense), a good chunk of movies should favor one race over another.

  54. The best thing about Hollywood this week was Variety wringing its collective Lefty hands that the mean nasty JOOOOOOS! in the studio corner offices were going to start a new blacklist against Penelope Cruz and company for supporting Hamas on Twitter.

    Variety being tone-deaf enough to support Penny baby and her Lefty approved Hamas-love at a time when ISIS is cutting the heads off children in Iraq and mounting them on sticks for the crime of being Christian.

    But the best thing this week above all is the Drudge headline right now: “OBAMA DROPS BOMBS”.

    I await word that the newest bombing of Iraq, with its inevitable collateral damage and civilian casualties which I have no doubt will outnumber those in Gaza by the end of today, is really Bush’s fault.

    1. Ya see, the reason Israeli bombs are bad, and ours are good, is that our bombs are being dropped on crazed fanatics who love to kill women and children, whereas the Israeli bombs are being dropped on… oh wait, never mind, let me get back to you in a bit.

      1. Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? American bombs are dropped because of the orders of a Post-Racial And That Means BLACK And Don’t You Forget It president, whereas Israeli bombs are being dropped by Evil Jooooos. American bombs were just as evil, you will recall, when Evil Chimpy McBushitler was dropping them.

        There is literally nothing that the Left will not call a crime when done by their opponents, and no crime that they will not condone and celebrate when done by one of their own.

      2. Tom Simon is correct. The intersectionalist orthodoxy that squats within the modern core of liberalism like a cowbird believes things The Feminist Wire writes about the Middle East like “the US faced an unknown number of threats each day from the dangerous, brown, foreign Other” or Hugo and Nebula-nominated Saladin Ahmed Tweeting “…I have a son who’s Black AND Arab. The apex of terror for racist America.” 43 minutes later Ahmed added “17 year old Arab male: Terrorist 17 year old Black male: Thug 17 year old white male: Our Precious Future.”

        Such people whine and rant about Gaza in direct proportion to how much they give over crickets about ISIS, which ironically practices the very “ethnic cleansing” social justice cows usually faint over.

        The truth is if it’s not white Westerner “colonialists” doing the killing it goes into a PC memory hole. The funniest thing about that is ISIS is an Arabic supremacist Hashemite-deferring colonialist revival movement. The Hashemites are a family from S. Arabia from which the one-time post WW I king of Iraq came from and from which the king of Jordan to this day rules. The reason ISIS so despises Shia “Persians” who they insultingly refer to as “rafidi” is because, like their hatred of Jews, Arabic supremacists are angry their former colonial subjects no longer are their subjects.

    2. I saw that on Twitter yesterday. A picture of Bush in front of the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner with the caption “A gentle reminder”. I replied, “Yes, his third and fourth terms have really sucked.”

  55. A couple of commenters brought up the fact that America has entire channels devoted to Spanish-speaking television programs. No one has mentioned where these programs come from, though: they come from Spain, from Mexico, from Latin America, and who knows where else. Heck, I’d be a little surprised if there weren’t any Spanish-speaking programs being produced in the United States!

    And this is a point that I wanted to make: that we, the United States, has a culture, and a traditional way (Hollywood) to make movies within that culture. Does it really make sense to be hypersensitive of other cultures, when other cultures are making their own movies?

    While I’ve never really seen Spanish or Latin movies, I happen to enjoy watching Japanese anime. I suppose this may mean I’m “appropriating” their culture, even if Japan appropriated our manufacturing–heck, even our movie-making (the founder of Japanese animation was a fan of Walt Disney)–and so I’m not supposed to enjoy it, because my skin color is white-ish, I guess, and because I wasn’t raised to speak Japanese. And because diversity! We can’t have diversity if we share the aspects of cultures that make us unique!

    The funny thing is, there’s one thing about Japanese anime that I like better than American series: the tendency of every season to have a story-arc that’s concluded by the end of a season. We don’t have a series of disjointed episodes (that *might* have a story extended to two or three episodes); nor is it an endless soap opera that never gets resolved…in other words, I like the format, because stories are told that aren’t too long, and aren’t too short, either…which brings us back to “It’s all about the Story!”

    Oh, and I never worried about Japanese anime making sure they had Americans, Asians, Europeans, etc all in perfect representation. And, off the top of my head, I don’t even know why I should care if the only time they show Americans, it’s generally to show them as cowards and cowboys? These stories are from Japan, so they are going to have Japanese stereotypes and prejudices, both overt and subconscious They have stories to tell, and by golly, anything else is fluff compared to this mission!

    1. Actually, Univisión is based out of New York and Telemundo is based out of the Miami metro area. Both of them have major production facilities in the Miami area, and the shows they produce there are broadcast across Latin America. So, in fact you’re more right than you know, it’s going the other way. Even in “foreign language” broadcasting, America is creating the shows, and the rest of the world receives them.

    2. There are four spanish speaking TV stations working out of Chicago– that I *know* of. Granted, three of them are religious affiliates– one Evangelical and two Catholic. They tend to get to the scenes of newsworthy events before the Big Networks do– and are the only local TV news outlets to bother to cover Catholic news in the City at all.

      There are about a dozen Spanish speaking talk radio stations. It is interesting to note that Chicago can barely keep one English talk radio station going, even with subsidies. Granted, I’m not counting conservative talk radio in English– that doesn’t count, but it does just fine without subsidies. Which says something in Chicago libby land.

  56. “Meanwhile the rest of planet Earth is throwing piles of money at a movie with a sentient tree and a talking raccoon.”

    Because Rocket Raccoon and Groot, Drax, Gamora, and Star Guy are Space Opera, and Space Opera is AWESOME!

  57. Why indeed , should NPR get a dime of our tax money for any thing it produces …it is all progressive Bravo Sierra !
    Keep up the fisking Larry, I like reading your thoughts(and your books! )

    1. (erk. Sneezed.)
      So are some of the Knights. And the general populace are about as mixed race as you can get. Pretty much, don’t watch the series if you want Arthurian accuracy, but is one of those ‘watch it if you want to be entertained.’

      Oh and the series ending is probably something the SJWs would approve of in some context. Which is probably why they might not have heard of this.

      1. Personally, I love the safety handrails at Camelot. Somehow I thought they were less concerned about OSHA rules back then.

  58. The never-ending daily dose of intersectionalism on Twitter, Nebula nominee Kate Elliott retweets this:

    Retweeted by Kate Elliott Denny Upkins @drupkins · Aug 6 Why do we publish intersectional scifi, and who do we think reads it? @thefuturefire discusses this and more: http://dennisupkins.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/accessing-the-future/

    That brings you to a post by Dennis R. Upkins titled “Accessing the Future.” Upkins quotes co-editor of the anti-white anti-Western SFF anthology “We See A Different Frontier,” Djibril al-Ayad, where he asserts “the most finely tuned pieces of work in a given social/progressive theme are also, always and inevitably, intersectional. Put out a call for stories about the experience of colonialism, or about body politics, and the overwhelming majority of the best stories submitted will also care about gender, race, sexuality, class, ability and every other angle of privilege and discrimination. I couldn’t have asked for a better illustration of intersectionality than this. It’s wonderful. We just can’t talk about ‘feminism’ or ‘postcolonialism’ without including gender, sexuality, disability, class, Anglocentrism, and many other vectors of privilege.

    “From this perspective, we want to reach the same audiences with our intersectional content that mainstream publishers target. But we’re absolutely not asking our authors to target their stories, based as they are on a variety of experiences, backgrounds and perspectives including culture, language, race, sexuality, health, at an imagined, homogeneous, white-male-cis-het-abled-American readership. People outside that mainstream need to read stories that matter to them too, and if the truths those stories tell shock and alienate the privileged reader?

    “Fuck that reader.”

    That echoes Damien Walter at The Guardian claiming “The best science fiction literature explores a future of fluid gender identity.”

    There’s the source of your pie-chart/slash digs at cis-male white folks. These people can’t use the word “diversity” without a racial attack to go with it. Don’t be Anglocentric and racially privileged… or something.

    1. Just out of curiosity, I checked where this so-called “book” is on Amazon’s sales list, and I got a downright Schadenfreudian laugh:

      Kindle version: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,810 Paid in Kindle Store
      Paperback version: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,185,145 in Books

      Only 2 reviews and it’s been out for about a year. Heh heh heh….

      1. And yet despite that these are the people who will be on the LonCon3 WorldCon panels. We See a Different Frontier and what might be considered a companion volume called Long Hidden were edited by Djibril al-Ayad, Fabio Fernandes, Daniel Jose Older and Rose Fox. The four together never shut up about the failings of white people. Each anthology was given it’s own post at John Scalzi’s blog though the truth is SFF fans don’t care to read these face-slapping anthologies, or any of the PC’s bigoted rot.

        You don’t have to look much farther to figure out why core SFF is dying and who’s killing it. Given the fact about 30 – count ’em – 30, intersectionalists are nominated for Hugos at LonCon3 this year, WorldCon is making itself obsolete from sheer hostility towards its own audience. The idea I’m going to read SFF written by someone like this Deggans at the NPR associate site this fisked post was posted at is ridiculous. The guy hates me sight unseen and he makes little secret of that fact. Okay, I’m a privileged Anglocentric racist. Fine. Guess what? I’m not buying your books.

      2. Well, that Kindle rank can’t tell you too much. I’m regularly above and below that depending on how long it’s been since the last single sale. Seriously, you can be at one million, someone will drop a buck on you, and the next day you’re at 100,000 or higher, and then the day after that you’re at 200,000.

      3. Actually, Dr. Mauser, the rankings tell you a great deal, and you put your finger on it exactly. They tell you that your sales are so bad that each individual copy sold is an event. In other words, you have such a small population in your statistical universe, statistical methods cannot even be applied.

        I speak feelingly, for my own sales are in that particular hell. I was doing a bit better at one point, but in March, 2013, I fell down a flight of icy stairs and was unable to release any new books for more than a year. Somehow I don’t think our friends the Award-Winning Intersectionalists have that excuse.

  59. I’m confused. I thought that Hispanics were a subset of white. At least that’s the impression I got from the Zimmerman case…

    /sarc

    Basically, these commonwealth types are sneaking over here and stealing our jobs!

    RSC sez “all ur jobz r belong to us!” 😛

    1. No, no, no. Only evil Hispanics are a subset of white, because only whites are evil, you see. And all whites are evil, except for those who have advanced degrees in Intersectional Studies, and spend their entire lives apologizing for their own existence and trying to sabotage all the other white people. They get a free pass.

  60. Since Homo the Sap came from Africa originally, doesn’t that mean that everyone can check “African-American”? The Native Americans can then also check “Asian”, and Latinos from the Americas (minus the white ones) can claim all 3 plus being “Latin”…. That way, ethnicities can total over 200%.

    Nothing like taking it to the extreme.

  61. “This kind of colorblind casting can have two effects on diversity. Supporting characters such as spouses, parents and siblings are less likely to also be Hispanic, and audiences that want to support Hispanic characters may be confused about which roles fit that bill.”

    …Did the author just basically say inter-racial marriage is a bad thing? If he isn’t saying that, why mention spouses at all?

      1. Hardly. I am asking a question, not stating an opinion.

        If I wanted to be offended by the article I would not need to get this detailed an analysis of it. For instance I could start with the fact that the author seems to expect Latinos to all be of similar skin tone, which is patently ridiculous even when you apply it to a single country like Mexico. Having lived in Mexico I could point the author to my friends there who range from darker skinned than 90% of African-Americans to far paler than my own Dutch self. Either way getting offended because of this article gives it too much credit.

    1. @Jared

      I believe Paul was answering your question as to why the author mentioned inter-racial marriage. He wasn’t saying you were looking for a reason to be offended.

    1. “headstrong, independent woman their masculinity is unnecessary and misogynistic male objectification Lack of diversity white dudebro only one person of color diversity person of color blond white men white LGBTQIA diversity her sexuality sexual object rape culture straight male’s straight white man diversity tokens sex objects PoC, and/or LGBTQIA male protagonist diverse non straight/white/male white male three straight black dudes Asian, Native American, Middle Eastern, or Hispanic trans person people of color slut-shaming socially progressive diversity”

      I edited out the unimportant parts so no one would get the idea Tor would ever hire some dumbfuck intersectional racist sexist supremacist QUILTBAG radical moron PC feminist freak from Battlecreek.

      1. Honestly, the bit about Drax calling Gamora a whore bothered me at the time, and I do think they could have done that scene better. Every other bit of that obnoxious rant was ridiculous however. My brain cells survived intact, but only be employing the MST3K defense – Mock everything.

        As someone else put it over there – their argument is now that a white actor in ‘green face’ counts as white, but a non-white actor in ‘green face’ or ‘bark’ doesn’t. Utter bull. Heck, someone was trying to argue that because the movie only has one (half) human character period it automatically fails at diversity because he is white. The stupid, oh how it burns.

      2. @Jared I remember once actually getting a LTTE printed in “The Stranger” after their resident race baiter Charles Mudede declared that the Donkey in Shrek was a “Magical Negro” character. He decided this because since Donkey was voiced by Eddie Murphy, he was therefore black. I posited that this standard would be very confusing, considering characters like the clearly white Elmyra Duff, voiced by the black actress Cree Summer.

        Then I stopped wasting my time on a worthless liberal City Paper were the comics are deliberately drawn badly in order to make them acceptable to sophisticated liberal adults.*cough*

    2. Wait, so “Bitch” is now an Empowering word, and the writer is upset that it’s being used as an insult?

      And by her say so, she can pre-empt obvious male objectification by declaring it doesn’t count. “There’s a HUGE gaping hole in my logic, that will destroy my entire argument, so if I point it out first, you can’t use it against me.” She uses that a lot in this article.

    3. I was part of the 3.887% of the Polish diaspora that went to see GotG. My white privilege gives the movie 4 stars but my sense of justice and empathy for the pain of gays, non-whites and women gives it only 2 stars.

      I was offended there were no transgender to the point I boycotted a third trip to the Happy Fake Blood Melted Butter Popcorn Counter. I counted 198 words that could be analogous to the word “slave,” which made me frown a lot.

      Thankfully my narcolepsy made me miss the use of words I won’t repeat here but which I learned of later. White people need to start making better SF movies because this isn’t the Victorian Patriarchy. We’ve gotten past colonizing people of color and questionable role models like Sherlock Holmes and ladies in bustles.

      I ache for gay people and wish I was one but my mom won’t let me, plus I have enormous face-bunions. Diversity should be our watchword but this movie failed. I have “diversity” tattooed on my ribcage (well, almost. It was so painful I had it shortened to “diva”).

      As a feminist, for me this movie doesn’t rock or have any awesomeness. I was not grateful for the fat-shaming and ablelisms they used like “lame” and “retard-farm,” because it reminded me of the retard-farm where I was raised and my face-bunions.

      I can’t believe a wise PoC President like Mr. Obama let this movie show in America. What happened to his PoC warmth and sensitivity?

    4. “I enjoyed the hell out of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.”

      He/she should have just left it at that!

      “And no, Drax and Star-Lord being shirtless doesn’t count as a male objectification. ”

      Speak for yourself, dude. I didn’t even notice green girl’s outfits being particularly revealing, certainly I’ve seen worse, but I sure as heck noticed shirtless Chris Pratt. Come on.

      And he is seriously arguing lack of diversity in a movie about somebody green, somebody blue, a talking tree, a racoon and other assorted aliens? WTF? I don’t know why I’m even surprised at these people anymore. It is an ensemble movie, about all of the characters, not just Starlord or Gamora. Man.

      1. Like I said, reading that blog post on Tor killed a significant number of my brain cells. The pinkies see the whole world through their Gender Lens. I find myself seriously questioning their mental health.

      2. I agree about the mental health issues. It’s not politics but a hateful obsession. It’s nothing more than the other side of a thing like Stormfront. Why are we surprised the SF faded into the background given the SFF-less stories nominated for Hugos and Nebulas that are far more interested in attacking white men than writing genre? I’m surprised Macmillan allows a website associate to write such racist trash. In some insane world far away, Tor thinks this is profitable. If turning SF into a racist sexist feminist barracks is profitable, then sure, go ahead. Tor is the kind of thing you’d find in “The Marching Morons.” Tor should be featuring work ABOUT a thing like Tor, not BEING Tor, if you know what I mean. These people have taken an innocent word like “diversity” and made it a watchword for racism, which is analogous to “black” vs. “negro.” “Diversity” used within SF is practically a racial slur.

  62. Here at http://woodwardiocom.livejournal.com/915223.html Jonathan Woodward calls for kicking out the “dinosaurs” whom he claims are racists from Worldcon. And here at “Further Thoughts on Fandom and Reverse Racism,” he explains why only whites can be racists and why the world is divided into “whites” and “people of color.” http://woodwardiocom.livejournal.com/915517.html

    A perfect example of the mentality in operation, and proud of its own ignorance.

    Especially amusing on the earlier of the two posts is lillibet’s claim that “The standards of compassion and respect do not change. Our ability to apply them expands,” (speaking of Political Correctness) and then going ballistic when I point out to her that a “liberal” of a century ago, such as Woodrow Wilson, would have been “expanding” them by increasing racial segregation.

    1. “…the greatest expertise on the topic will generally not come from white people” is intersectionalism 101, not to mention supremacist racism.

      “Campbell actually believed that… ‘Men of Northern European extraction are the best!’ So, smart SF fans of Northern European extraction… need to learn to admit their ignorance and listen.”

      And somehow painting one guy onto tens of millions isn’t racist in that moron’s mind.

      It used to be shit that stupid was stuck in a diary and put under a pillow. Now we have the internet. I’m guessing Woodward got the shit kicked out of him a lot when he was a kid. I know my old neighborhood would’ve reacted that way to his smug line of racist horseshit and I would’ve sold tickets and beer.

    2. Oooh, look, he learned a new word, “Straw Man” in order to dismiss anyone who points out the broader implications of his positions.

      I think the problem with Lillibet is a lack of imagination. you weren’t putting words in her mouth, unless she was alive in 1914, but in an imaginary person from then who shares her name and the equivalent positions. She, of course, fails to believe that her current positions are not universally true and eternal, so she can’t understand the concept, and seizes on the metaphor as her objection. Note that she doesn’t actually respond to the point of your comments, but that is DELIBERATE.

      I don’t see any actual discussion of any points you raise, because they claim they are at best, outside of the very narrowly constructed scope of their broadly stated arguments, or they attack the format. This is what Liberals do instead of logic, although they may use the trappings of logic (terms like Straw man). It means nothing except “You shut up.”

      It’s a wasted of time to bother with them. You could have pointed out when she said “You’ve said nothing to upset me” that she was previously upset about you “Putting words in her mouth.” Either that didn’t actually upset her, or she’s lying. But, that falls into the trap of changing the argument into discussion what someone said, rather than the actual idea being discussed.

      “Discussed” being a very charitable term here. Since nobody actually engaged a single point you made, but just went right for saying why it shouldn’t even be considered.

  63. Very entertaining and informative Sir. But please get back to writing. And ask the editors and publishers to speed up releases?

    Please?

    Everyone else, let the man write, I’m suffering from withdrawal.

  64. Steve, I’m missing your political commentary lately. Nothing on the midterms? Nothing on the Twitter files? Nothing on Paul Pelosi? Nothing on FTX?

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