Diversity in Film

In recent years there has been much needed and overdue focus on diversity of Academy award winners and nominees, specifically since the 2015 Oscars. There are actually new diversity rules that will take place in the coming years. I think it’s important to hold Hollywood accountable in creating films that are diverse in both casting as well as behind the scenes like in production and whatnot. However, the issue of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in film is more complex than simply how diverse a film production looks.  

A solution to underrepresented racial groups, specifically black Americans, has been to create movies that are generally focused on a common experience or struggle faced by the entire race. Or, if a struggle or painful experience is not the focus, then racial stereotypes are usually portrayed. The point that Smith elaborates on is to give black people and people of color the freedom to act in movies that aren’t focused on their racial experience nor stereotypical experiences. They write, 

This movie can’t be a metaphor for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race. This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain. This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt. This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say n-word in this movie who can’t say it to my face in public (Smith).   


Instead of tokenizing the black experience, Smith desires a movie in which they can see people of color kill dinosaurs and “royal folks” save their town; essentially what white people do in so many other movies. There is a versatility permitted to white actors that is not permitted to actors of color, but fortunately those lines are blurring. In the past, we have seen white actors playing ambiguous and multifaceted characters, in contrast to actors of color that are cast into stereotypical and one-dimensional roles. The point of “Dinosaurs in the Hood” is the plot of Smith’s movie does not revolve around black pain but instead the possibility of black children to be whatever they want to be instead of being typecast.  


I think that Sanchez’s poem “For Sweet Honey in the Rock” can be used as a vehicle into how we achieve the freedom that Smith describes. Sanchez writes, “calling out everyone who would listen/ it is time to move us all into another century/ time for freedom and racial and sexual justice”.  This points out the interconnectedness of our freedoms and how we cannot have one freedom if it’s not equitable. In other words, until everyone is free nobody is. Sanchez wrote this poem in 1999. Smith wrote theirs in 2014. I believe what Sanchez was calling for is what Smith desires too. We have this united purpose that Sanchez describes “this fight for the earth/ this fight for our children/ this fight for our life”. 

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