l loved seeing the 50th Anniversary for the March on Washington. I will say my equality wish is for it to be present in television, movies,writing, and comics. Hell, I will settle for commercials for now.(sighting the latest Cheerios stupidity a few months back – look it up on YOUTUBE if you don’t know what I mean)
I haven’t seen equality surface yet in media..not really. Yeah sure , you have one little token character here or there in television or movies…but nothing really substantial. I just think its ingrained in our psyche to see a character or story played out as a Caucasian. Imagine a black British James Bond, Doctor Who, or Edward from Twilight , heaven forbid, (but yeah we got a Native American in there!)
Hell, I’m half black and I write consciously seeing my main character be it a man or woman as white…how messed up is that. I have to consciously think of my characters differently when it comes to race. It just comes naturally to think of them as white. And that’s the whole point. It comes natural to us as a society because it’s all we know.
We grow up with a social media targeted majorly to one race. So each new generation thinks that is the norm out in the world. They become comfortable with it and everything else is alien. So that “alien” is just a filler or sideshow to pull in once in a while to say a line and go about your merry way or get killed off (case in point Walking Dead..great show btw) .
Now they are making some slow progress, don’t get me wrong. In the Ultimate Universe version of Marvel they killed off Peter Parker and have made Spiderman a black boy (even though his last name is Morales, what’s with that.) The Nick Fury from that Marvel world is also black (and it carried over to the Avengers movie with Samuel Jackson…I bet you guys didn’t know he’s been white in the normal Marvel world since forever) Anyways, what I am trying to say in my own roundabout way is that there are many little facets in society that affect our overall perception of what’s really going on in the world. These facets mean a lot because they add up. Media is just one of those facets I would like to see evolve.
I think back to the ridiculous movies and commercials and news footage from the forties & fifties when television and media took off. It painted an America as super wholesome and super gleeful and happy to be alive every moment of the day. When people behind the scenes were hiding their bigotries, true sexual tendencies, alcohol dependencies or spousal abuse they endured on a daily basis.
Then the sixties came and everything changed because they realized the world was bigger than there own little world they lived in, in there own little isolated neighborhood, and they were forced to reflect on what was right and wrong from civil rights to the Vietnam War. And it was all played on what? Yep, television.
Great little article, Philip. . .but unfortunately it will take people like ourselves to change things, and unfortunately again, we just don’t have the time to do it, let alone, educate. What I would like to change is the “ethnicity” in applications in general, particularly the “hispanic” since I don’t consider myself a hispanic. I am of Mexican-decent but I wasn’t born in Mexico or any Latin-based country, and I find that offensive. I was born here in the US so I consider myself a “chicano” or “chicana” because that’s what I am; hell, I can barely speak Spanish! So in the past few years (when I’m required to fill out an application) I’ve actually taken the liberty of crossing out the word “hispanic” and replacing it with the word “chicana”. I know I’ve ventured off this topic a bit, but I guess what I was trying to project is that “I feel you” 100%. . .:)
Ha ha…Gracias Chicana…for your comment….received and noted…I will never call you Hispanic…