SOME JOY, SOME PAIN, SOME SAME OLE, SAME OLE IN HOLLYWOOD

A repost

This is why I don't jump and down when I see a black actor in a stereotypical role. I can't think of too many black actors and actresses that haven't been in some down right painful-to-watch stuff early on in their careers.

Denzel Washington turned down a movie when he was just starting out called, "The N*gger They Couldn't Kill" which featured lynch rope gags. He asked the Jewish men that asked him to do this flick if  "The Jew They Couldn't Gas" wouldn't be just as funny.  All of sudden the producers didn't think he was being "too serious" and "couldn't take a joke"  But they were offended by Washington's decision to call them on their racist bullsh**

However Denzel did do a movie where he, as an adult, surprised a white father with his dark chocolate existence. I still shudder when I think of him in that movie

Queen Latifah played feminine neutralized, half-way gangsta black slang using Taxi driver to Jimmy Fallon's goof ball police detective in "Taxi" She played a just out of jail street tough woman living with some white family headed by Steve Martin too.

Taraji P Henson, who wound up in EMPIRE after PERSON OF INTEREST killed off the only black character it had, is playing around the edges of stereotype right now. Actually, anybody who has been in a Lee Daniels' Anything has been compromised as far as I'm concerned. I'm never going to forgive him for turning the book PUSH in the modern day "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" that was "PRECIOUS"

Furthermore, there was a moment in Lee Daniels' "THE BUTLER" where three of four of the black actors (not actresses) in a kitchen scene(?) were bi-racial  -- Cuba Gooding Jr, Lenny Kravitz, and Jesse Williams.

When Jesse Williams went on to be on the cover of Ebony to represent blackness, which I wouldn't have had a problem with if ALL three of the people on the cover weren't bi-racial too.

Jesse ain't perfect in his blackness. Neither is any-black-body else, especially in Hollyweird.

That's okay.

We are all making progress. And compromise is the name of the game if you are black. Williams is one of the people bringing honest conversation to the table. And that's one of the more important steps toward telling ourselves and others better stories about black and brown people.