Last year, filmmaker Antoine Fuqua made statements shutting down anyone who somehow believed that Hollywood might be racist. These remarks may have been made and forgotten by those wo are hellbent on comfortable assimiliation, but I found myself disturbed by what I was hearing.
According to Fuqua, the racism in Hollywood is hardly an impediment to one’s ability to receive opportunities: “I wouldn’t use the term racist, as much as I would say the playing field is not even in Hollywood,” he said. “But ultimately, you have to put in the work. “It’s very easy to cry racism when you’re not qualified to do the work or your work isn’t transcending to where you want it to be. Hollywood is a business and you have to look at it that way.”
In my goal to interpret Antoine’s words in the most positive light, I believe he’s saying that, in order to be successful, one must work as hard as they can, understand the business model of the industry they are in, and ensure that their work fits the needs of existing gatekeepers and the marketplace.
What Antoine may also want to consider, however, is that there are thousands of black actors, actresses and filmmakers who work extremely hard. In fact, I dare say they work harder than whites in Hollywood, since they know that they have to be twice as good. However, the opportunities tend to go to white performers, not black ones. Additionally, the structure of the business model and perception of marketplace needs are driven by a white supremacist model in which the opinion of white guys in Hollywood overrides those of the black community.
In other words, white people get to decide what the marketplace wants, how the business model is going to be structured and who gets those opportunities first. This is why men like Tyler Perry had to wait for years to get a chance to prove himself, and TD Jakes has complained that Hollywood ignores the massive black church audience. White supremacy is built and maintained in part because it is a manifestation of the desires and perceptions of those people running the show. White people run Hollywood, so the creative and productive landscape becomes a creation in their own image.
These racially-biased outcomes typically have little to do with deliberate discrimination, but instead, are a function of hundreds of years of white people stealing free black labor to build things that make their children and grandchildren rich. So, you can have white supremacy even when there isn’t a single racist in the building. Most of the hard work was done by hundreds of years of shaping our society without much African American input. Years later, when we are granted our freedom with no reparations for that which was taken from us, we are expected to be able to compete in a world where access to capital is everything, and all of the capital once held by our ancestors lies in the hands of white Americans. That’s like entering a cooking contest with no cookbook and no access to ingredients or cooking utensils.
With that being said, I did an interview with a brother who had a lot to say about the racism that exists in Hollywood and the music industry. Leonard Rowe has been a concert promoter for many years, and has a great deal to say about Hollywood discrimination. Leonard says that black concert promoters are often shut out of the opportunity to promote leading black acts in Hollywood. He also says that part of the reason that Arsenio Hall was off the air for 20 years is driven in large part by Hall’s defiance and desire to speak on issues that relate to race.
More specifically, Rowe says that it was Arsenio’s desire to interview Louis Farrakhan that led to his demise the first time. This might seem to suggest that men like Antoine Fuqua are going to be given opportunities because they are more willing to tell the lie of white supremacy. But we are on the outside of that fence and don’t have to lie in order to feed our children. It might OK for us to start telling the truth.
Listen to the interview below, it says a great deal about what’s happening in both concert promotion as well as opportunities in Hollywood.
Dr Boyce Watkins is a Finance PhD and author of the book, Black American Money. To have Dr Watkins’ commentary delivered to your email, please click here. This article is culled from Financial Juneteenth.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
