MORE THAN A TICKED BOX
‘StarWars’ star Boyega, others in Hollywood show covert racism still persists as hiring changes but workplace culture does not
As an industry, Hollywood has been saying the right things when it comes to improving diversity. But diversity alone isn’t enough if theworkplace remains a hostile environment for Black people and other people of color.
Without meaningful cultural change, movie studios and TV networks are only engaging in surface-level efforts and giving the appearance of inclusion without addressing the messier reality that racism is endemic to thewayHollywood does business.
John Boyega spoke to this in a recent interview, describing his “StarWars” experience as a bait-and-switch that allowed Disney to disingenuously pat itself on the back.
“What Iwould say to Disney,” Boyega told British GQ, “is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed aside.”
What he’s describing is performative diversity. And it gives multibillion-dollar corporations cover to say: Look howdiverse this project is— everything is fine! Everything is not fine.
“I call it the philosophy of, ‘Oh, let’s just give people some jobs,’ ” saidAymar Jean Christian, a professor atNorthwestern University and the author of “Open TV: Innovation BeyondHollywood and the Rise ofWeb Television.”
But hiring people of color (and those fromother marginalized communities including disabled and transgender people) doesn’t automatically create an equitableworkplace. Here’s howculture writer AliciaKennedy describes the predicament: “Allowing more people into corrupt systems doesn’t do anything to destroy those systems.”
The problems are evident when you look at financial compensation.
TheNetflix series “Dear White People” is a showabout Black students at a predominantly white university. In a social media post earlier this month, Black actor Jeremy Tardy explainedwhy hewould not be returning for the upcoming season: Lionsgate, the studio thatmakes the show, wouldn’t budge on his salary.
“This newswas disturbing,” Tardy wrote, “because one ofmy white colleagues— being a true ally— revealed that they too had received the same initial offer and had successfully negotiated a counteroffer.”
The two showrunners for “Dear White People,” Justin Simien and Yvette Lee Bowser, are Black. But they don’t determine the show’s budget.
That’s in the hands of Lionsgate, which told Deadline.comthe dispute with Tardy was “purely a financial negotiation regarding deal terms” and that the studio is “committed to equal treatment for all talent regardless of race, gender, age or sexual orientation.”
Tardy sees it differently, accusing Lionsgate— andNetflix— of hypocrisy: “These companies have recently released statements and even donations in support of the Black LivesMattermovement. I am calling out their shameful practices of discrimination and racial inequality with regard to howthey have historically undervalued and lowballed people of color.”
Money is a key decision driver inHollywood and a blunt indication of howmuch (or little) your talents and input are valued. Those perceptions can be riddled with racial bias, conscious or not, and it disproportionately penalizes Blackwomen and otherwomen of color who also experience the gender pay gap.
“If Caucasianwomen are getting 50% of what men are getting paid, we’re not even getting a quarter of what whitewomen are getting paid,” ViolaDavis said in 2018, noting that her white female peers deserve equitable compensation.
“But guess what? I deserve it too. So does Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, Halle Berry. We’ve put thework in too.”
Hiring award-winning Black actors but underpaying them? That’s performative diversity.
It’s not just actors. Last year Adele Lim, theMalaysianborn co-screenwriter on the hit “Crazy Rich Asians,” walked away from the sequel when she learnedWarner
Bros offered her screenwriting collaborator (a white man) somewhere between $800,000 and $1 million for the secondmovie; her offerwas a fraction of that, at around $110,000.
This is why just focusing on diversity precludes any conversation about what’s actually happening once people are hired.
Racism— covert or otherwise— is baked into the system. You see it in the knee-jerk justifications for chronically underpaying people of color or asking them towork in environments where they are subject to microaggressions— and then accusing them of not being tough enough, or talented enough, when they raise the alarm.
The very people hired in the spirit of diversity are being set up to fail.
Consider this: The majority of union hairstylists are white, and very few are skilled and knowledgable aboutworking with Black hair. The same goes for makeup artists, who fail to ensure they have a selection of foundations and powders that complement darker skin tones.
Hiring Black actors and then expecting them to shoulder the responsibility (and cost) of doing their own hair and makeup? That’s performative diversity.
“The quickest solution, beyond just hiring people in any job, is allowing people of color to be executives,” saidNorthwestern’s Christian. “Executives see themselves as representative of the audience, but they’re not, so there are different kinds of consequences for that in terms of who is greenlighting these shows and who is giving notes to showrunners.
“And it’s not just executives. I’m also talking about the agents and managers who are representing all of these people.”
Consider the subtleways the status quo is often reinforced. Jeff Lowell is a white executive producer whose TV credits include the sitcom “Two and aHalfMen” and theNetflix series “The Ranch.” Recently in a series of tweets— beginning with the disclaimer: “Middle aged showrunner rant”— he vented that young writers “are completely ignorant of television history,” such as “All in the Family,” “TheHoneymooners” and “The Odd Couple.”
Whatwas conspicuously left unsaid: The shows he listed are white shows.
Would a young writer today benefit fromwatching them? Sure. Is hewrong to ask his staff to familiarize themselves with certain shows? Of course not.
But a white boss publicly announcing that the best shows in television history are all white shows is not a neutral statement. Not only does it reveal a limitedworldview, it puts any writer in his employ on notice: If your touchstones as a person of color aren’tmy touchstones as a white person, you don’t belong in this industry.
Lowell said as much in his final tweet of the thread: “Let this serve as awarning to my staff— if you guys come back next season and I say ‘FelixUnger’ or ‘Archie Bunker’ and you look atme like I’m speaking another language, you’re fired.”
It’s hard to know if meant that entirely seriously, but eitherway this is what gatekeeping looks like. (Lowell has since deleted his tweets.)
And it’s insidious because it is amore nuanced form of racism— likely unintended, but does it matter?— that tends make white people (and institutions) defensive when called on it. But avoiding the conversation because it makes people uncomfortable isn’t the answer; too often inHollywood, white people don’t even questionwhy they consider white cultural references to be the default, and therefore the pool from which best examples are drawn.
Let’s flip Lowell’s premise around: At a time when studios and networks have pledged to better reflect diversity both on and off screen, shouldn’t Lowell’s job, as a showrunner, be dependent upon his knowledge of shows centering, or created by, people of color?
The writer Brandon Taylor has a novel called “Real Life” that came out earlier this year, and in it a Black character makes the observation that “when you tell white people that something is racist, they hold it up to the light and try to discern if you are telling the truth.”
In otherwords: It’s always up for debate — and inHollywood, it’s the white power players who cast themselves as the final arbiters. Boyega said as much in hisGQ interview.
Howdoes an industry come to grips with this reality? Howmotivated are companies and their boards of directors when it comes to rethinking a system that has been so personally profitable for a select few and allowed them to concentrate their power?
Michelle Silverthorn, the founder and CEO of InclusionNation and author of “AuthenticDiversity: Howto Change the Workplace for Good,” said networks and studios should be asking themselves, what is the deeper goal?
“Are you just saying diversity matters and then you’ll try a whole bunch of initiatives, see what sticks but have noway to
measure success?” she said. “And then if it fails you can say, ‘I tried, but it’s them— we gave them a chance and it didn’twork out.’
“If you are really invested in change— which, I don’t knowthey all are— what do youwant your executive team to look like? If you’re putting up all these statements that you’re an anti-racist organization and then I look at your C-suite and it’s all white men, then howanti-racist of an organization can you be?”
Instead ofworking to change “hearts and minds,” Silverthorn said, “Iwould like to see them put some rules into place, such aswe will not put amovie or showinto production unlesswe have 40% people of color who are in senior-level positions on that project, whether it’s editing or casting or whatever. Once you put a rule like that into place, people’s behaviors will change to meet that requirement.”
There’s a psychological cost toworking in an environment where your qualifications and achievements are forever questioned, where you are subject to veiled racism, which you’re expected to brush off even as it affects not only your daily experiences but your career path.
“It feels like death by a thousand cuts,” Silverthorn said, “and then when you get to the final cut, if you leave, you’re told you didn’twant it enough. You are the problem.
“We need to recognize that this is trauma being inflicted on people who are being told, ‘You don’t belong.’ When John Boyega talks about what itwas like to stand up for amovie thatwas not standing up for him? This is happening again and again.”
Hollywood prides itself as a tough business. If you can’t cut it, kid, those are the breaks. It’s a convenientway to camouflage or explain away racism and abusive practices.
And it’s a mentality of shifting blame, said Silverthorn, where it becomes:“We’re not going to change anything with our systems because our systemswork and they make us a ton of money. Every once in awhilewe’re going to saywe care about diversity, butwe’re not willing to do the actualwork to make it matter.”
Even when a project appears to tick all the right boxes, the backstage reality might tell a different story. The CBS courtroom drama “All Rise” debuted last year featuring a diverse cast aswell as a diverse group of writers.
Five of the show’s seven originalwriters have since quit, including Shernold Edwardswho told theNewYork Times: “We had to do so much behind the scenes to keep these scripts from being racist and offensive.” Would this story have come to light if the Black LivesMatters protests and activism of recent months hadn’t led to an increasing courage among creatives to hold institutions publicly accountable?
SunilNayarwas a co-showrunner on “All Rise” along with the creator, Greg Spottiswood, the latter ofwhomis white and also reportedly the source of much of the show’s discord. In that same story in the Times, Nayar said he felt he had been brought on board for the appearances sake.
“It became clear to me, when I left the show, that Iwas only there because I’m the brown guy,” he said.
A Blackwoman, DeeHarris-Lawrence, was hired in his place. The show’s producing studio, Warner Bros, elected to make no changes in Spottiswood’s employment status, and instead “provided him with a corporate coach, a Blackwoman, to advise him,” according to the Times. Diversity is the essential first step. But who gets second (and third and fourth) chances and who feels pushed out — more or less constructively evicted— has to matter just as much.
How motivated are companies and their boards of directors when it comes to rethinking a system that has been so personally profitable for a select few and allowed them to concentrate their power?