"What if I got on stage and I said, 'Yeah, black people are like this. Muslims are like that.' You'd probably call me a racist, wouldn't you?"
And I say, "Yeah, yeah, I would. You should never do that. That's bad for your health."
"I feel like an outsider constantly. And I don't feel like at my own school, I can solely focus on being a student."
"Being in class as the only black woman was really hard."
"It feels isolating. It feels horrible... It feels like I don't belong."
"It's lonely, upsetting."
"There was a lot of underlying assumptions about other people because of what they looked like."
"It's so far from being a safe space that it almost feels like staying at home would be better for my mental health, for myself, than being in class."
"I'm in a room of 80 people, just sitting by myself, and everywhere I look, no one can help me, no one can jump in, no one can at least acknowledge what I'm saying has any truth."
Shadow and Act: What is a pilot presentation? Why did you opt for this route?
LW: A lot of networks read the script and loved it, but they either thought there wasn’t an audience for it or that it already existed. Of course I became extremely frustrated because I knew neither of those things were true. So I realized I had to show these network executives that TWENTIES was one of a kind and that there was nothing on TV like it. And I figured the best way to do that was to shoot a pilot presentation, which meant we would shoot a few pivotal scenes from the script, edit them together, and give people a sense of how the show would look and feel. Lucky for me, Justin Simien (writer/director DEAR WHITE PEOPLE) offered to direct it and Flavor Unit was willing to pay for it. Now I had the opportunity to show people what I was going for instead of trying to explain it to them. My plan wasn’t just to show it to executives, but to show it to the world so that the people could have a voice in this as well. And just so we’re clear: this is not a web series! I repeat this is not a web series. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing a web series. I’ve done one. My goal is to partner with a network that understands what I’m going for.
[...]
Shadow and Act: What do you want us to do after we’ve watched it?
LW: The good news is I don’t want your money. There’s no Kickstarter or IndieGoGo attached to this project. All we want you to do is commit to sharing TWENTIES with twenty of your friends. The more you spread the word the better chance we have of getting it on TV. We’ll keep pitching. You keep sharing. Let’s do this!
Last month the actor Forest Whitaker was stopped in a Manhattan delicatessen by an employee. Whitaker is one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation, with a diverse and celebrated catalog ranging from “The Great Debaters” to “The Crying Game” to “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” By now it is likely that he has adjusted to random strangers who can’t get his turn as Idi Amin out of their heads. But the man who approached the Oscar winner at the deli last month was in no mood for autographs. The employee stopped Whitaker, accused him of shoplifting and then promptly frisked him. The act of self-deputization was futile. Whitaker had stolen nothing. On the contrary, he’d been robbed.
[...]
The promise of America is that those who play by the rules, who observe the norms of the “middle class,” will be treated as such. But this injunction is only half-enforced when it comes to black people, in large part because we were never meant to be part of the American story. Forest Whitaker fits that bill, and he was addressed as such. I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.”
[...]
The other day I walked past this particular deli. I believe its owners to be good people. I felt ashamed at withholding business for something far beyond the merchant’s reach. I mentioned this to my wife. My wife is not like me. When she was 6, a little white boy called her cousin a nigger, and it has been war ever since. “What if they did that to your son?” she asked.
And right then I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I could take.
"There's a greater chance that, because of the lack of opportunities there are for minority actors, I will have to be in a Tyler Perry production . . . It's when I have to. Angela Bassett won an Oscar."
"These are people who presumably, they, the world should be their oyster. And instead, they're like, 'I gotta make rent. All right, do you want me to put the dress on, Tyler? Oh, you're gonna wear it? Okay, fair enough.'"
"Is there a guy named Pookie in the movie?"
"We are not racist. I have one African-American friend who I am very close with."
"To have somebody that didn't know anything about my culture telling what Latino was . . . How do we speak again? . . . How should I dress?"
"You're not one or the other. You're both, and you should be proud of both, and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it. There is nothing to be ashamed of."
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for this position!
African-American Community Calls For New Black Nerd Archetype, The Onion.
A coalition of African-American activists and scholars released a strongly worded statement Monday citing the "urgent need" for popular media to depict a new black nerd archetype that more accurately reflects the full spectrum of 21st-century American dorkdom.
"Outdated representations of African-American nerds are simply not cutting it anymore," the statement read in part. "Perhaps in the '80s and '90s it was possible for young people to identify with Steve Urkel's hiked-up pants, nasal voice, and lovable catchphrase of 'Did I do that?' But today's black nerds are different."
"They may not carry slide rules and calculators, but they do carry smartphones to make posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare," the statement continued. "Yet where are the modern-day nerds of color in our films and television programs?"
According to the Dweeb Diversity Coalition, nerds in the African-American community continue, like their predecessors, to be socially awkward, hilariously unstylish, and a source of embarrassment for their cooler black friends. But a recent survey of pop-cultural archetypes found that in the current TV lineup, almost all nerd characters are white.
[ . . . ]
The prominent African-American writer, philosopher, and activist [Cornel West] went on to stress that the highest-profile nerds in today's media—Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera chief among them—are exclusively white. According to West, this leaves many nonwhite nerds feeling as though they have no option but to follow in the footsteps of suspect characters such as the reactionary Carlton Banks, who still appears in syndicated reruns of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.
