Trump Releases 60 Minutes Interview

[firstfloor]

If it was something she posted then it seems the moderators scrubbed any evidence of it from her posting history because I can't find the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, so I suspect it was something else like her being a previously banned member who had signed up under a different name.

Would you agree that the honourable members are entitled to know the facts of the case? I went back through her records looking for signs of malfeasance, and she seems to have been the perfect member. There be not some secret and sordid vendetta, I hope.

[Gondwanaland]

Would you agree that the honourable members are entitled to know the facts of the case? I went back through her records looking for signs of malfeasance, and she seems to have been the perfect member. There be not some secret and sordid vendetta, I hope.

Well she did get some softcore child sexualization images deleted by mods, so I wouldn't say she was 'the perfect member'.....

[seanD]

Would you agree that the honourable members are entitled to know the facts of the case? I went back through her records looking for signs of malfeasance, and she seems to have been the perfect member. There be not some secret and sordid vendetta, I hope.

Simple solution. PM one of the admins. If they say they don't discuss such matters to other members, promise them you won't say anything in public, or just keep PMing mods to find one that tells you.

[firstfloor]

Simple solution. PM one of the admins. If they say they don't discuss such matters to other members, promise them you won't say anything in public, or just keep PMing mods to find one that tells you.

Ok, thanks for the advice.

[seer]

Well she did get some softcore child sexualization images deleted by mods, so I wouldn't say she was 'the perfect member'.....

She was a devil...

[shunyadragon]

Evidence?

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/

The first quotation from Donald Trump ever to appear in The New York Times came on October 16, 1973. Trump was responding to charges filed by the Justice Department alleging racial bias at his family’s real-estate company. “They are absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said of the charges. “We have never discriminated, and we never would.”

To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.

In the years since then, Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. His statements have been reflected in his behavior—from public acts (placing ads calling for the execution of five young black and Latino men accused of rape, who were later shown to be innocent) to private preferences (“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” a former employee of Trump’s Castle, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, told a writer for The New Yorker). Trump emerged as a political force owing to his full-throated embrace of “birtherism,” the false charge that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. His presidential campaign was fueled by nativist sentiment directed at nonwhite immigrants, and he proposed barring Muslims from entering the country. In 2016, Trump described himself to The Washington Post as “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”

© Copyright Original Source

more to follow . . .

[shunyadragon]

[/cite=https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history]
Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020

Trump has repeatedly claimed he’s “the least racist person.” His history suggests otherwise.



If you ask President Donald Trump, he isn’t racist. To the contrary, he’s repeatedly said that he’s “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”

Trump’s actual record, however, tells a very different story.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks, from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US, to suggesting a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.

The trend has continued into his presidency. From stereotyping a Black reporter to pandering to white supremacists after they held a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to making a joke about the Trail of Tears, Trump hasn’t stopped with racist acts after his 2016 election.

Most recently, Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” — racist terms that tap into the kind of xenophobia that he latched onto during his 2016 presidential campaign; Trump’s own adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously called “kung flu” a “highly offensive” term. And Trump insinuated that Sen. Kamala Harris, who’s Black, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to run for vice president — a repeat of the birther conspiracy theory that he perpetuated about former President Barack Obama.

This is nothing new for Trump. In fact, the very first time Trump appeared in the pages of the New York Times, back in the 1970s, was when the US Department of Justice sued him for racial discrimination. Since then, he has repeatedly appeared in newspaper pages across the world as he inspired more similar controversies.
RELATED
No, Trump hasn’t been the best president for Black America since Lincoln


This long history is important. It would be one thing if Trump misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of his actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of his personality, character, and career.
Trump has a long history of racist controversies


Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s history, taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

• 1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to previous discrimination.
• 1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
• 1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.
• 1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
• 1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.
• 1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”
• 2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”
• 2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”
• 2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”
• 2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
• 2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US. He claimed to send investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.” The research has found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.
• 2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”

For many people, none of these incidents, individually, may be damning: One of these alone might suggest that Trump is simply a bad speaker and perhaps racially insensitive (“politically incorrect,” as he would put it), but not overtly racist.
RELATED
Donald Trump’s history of encouraging hate groups and violence, from 2015 to 2020


But when you put all these events together, a clear pattern emerges. At the very least, Trump has a history of playing into people’s racism to bolster himself — and that likely says something about him, too.

And, of course, there’s everything that’s happened through and since his presidential campaign.

As a candidate and president, Trump has made many more racist comments


On top of all that history, Trump has repeatedly made racist — often explicitly so — remarks on the campaign trail and as president:

• Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign was largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.
• As a candidate in 2015, Trump called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. His administration eventually implemented a significantly watered-down version of the policy.
• When asked at a 2016 Republican debate whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, Trump said, “I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.”
• He argued in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
• Trump has been repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him, and he regularly retweeted messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis during his presidential campaign.
• He tweeted and later deleted an image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, but Trump insisted that the star was a sheriff’s badge, and said his campaign shouldn’t have deleted it.
• Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as “Pocahontas,” using her controversial — and later walked-back — claims to Native American heritage as a punchline.
• At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump officially seized the mantle of the “law and order” candidate — an obvious dog whistle playing to white fears of Black crime, even though crime in the US is historically low. His speeches, comments, and executive actions after he took office have continued this line of messaging.
• In a pitch to Black voters in 2016, Trump said, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
• Trump stereotyped a Black reporter at a press conference in February 2017. When April Ryan asked him if he plans to meet and work with the Congressional Black Caucus, he repeatedly asked her to set up the meeting — even as she insisted that she’s “just a reporter.”
• In the week after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trump repeatedly said that “many sides” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence and chaos that ensued — suggesting that the white supremacist protesters were morally equivalent to counterprotesters who stood against racism. He also said that there were “some very fine people” among the white supremacists. All of this seemed like a dog whistle to white supremacists — and many of them took it as one, with white nationalist Richard Spencer praising Trump for “defending the truth.”
• Throughout 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked NFL players who, by kneeling or otherwise silently protesting during the national anthem, demonstrated against systemic racism in America.
• Trump reportedly said in 2017 that people who came to the US from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and he lamented that people who came to the US from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America. The White House denied that Trump ever made these comments.
• Speaking about immigration in a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He then reportedly suggested that the US should take more people from countries like Norway. The implication: Immigrants from predominantly white countries are good, while immigrants from predominantly Black countries are bad.
• Trump denied making the “shithole” comments, although some senators present at the meeting said they happened. The White House, meanwhile, suggested that the comments, like Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests, will play well to his base. The only connection between Trump’s remarks about the NFL protests and his “shithole” comments is race.
• Trump mocked Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, again calling her “Pocahontas” in a 2019 tweet before adding, “See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!” The capitalized “TRAIL” is seemingly a reference to the Trail of Tears — a horrific act of ethnic cleansing in the 19th century in which Native Americans were forcibly relocated, causing thousands of deaths.
• Trump tweeted later that year that several Black and brown members of Congress — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — are “from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and that they should “go back” to those countries. It’s a common racist trope to say that Black and brown people, particularly immigrants, should go back to their countries of origin. Three of the four members of Congress whom Trump targeted were born in the US.
• Trump has called the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” The World Health Organization advises against linking a virus to any particular region, since it can lead to stigma. Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, previously described the term “kung flu” as “highly offensive.” Meanwhile, Asian Americans have reported hateful incidents targeting them due to the spread of the coronavirus.
• Trump suggested that Kamala Harris, who’s Black and South Asian, “doesn’t meet the requirements” to be former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate — yet another example of birtherism.

This list is not comprehensive, instead relying on some of the major examples since Trump announced his candidacy. But once again, there’s a pattern of racism and bigotry here that suggests Trump isn’t just misspeaking; it is who he is.
Are Trump’s actions and comments “racist”? Or are they “bigoted”?


One of the common defenses for Trump is that he’s not necessarily racist, because the Muslim and Mexican people he often targets don’t actually comprise a race.

Disgraced journalist Mark Halperin, for example, said as much when Trump argued Judge Curiel should recuse himself from the Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage, making the astute observation that “Mexico isn’t a race.”

Kristof made a similar point in the New York Times: “My view is that ‘racist’ can be a loaded word, a conversation stopper more than a clarifier, and that we should be careful not to use it simply as an epithet. Moreover, Muslims and Latinos can be of any race, so some of those statements technically reflect not so much racism as bigotry. It’s also true that with any single statement, it is possible that Trump misspoke or was misconstrued.”

This critique misses the point on two levels.

For one, the argument is tremendously semantic. It’s essentially probing the question: Is Trump racist or is he bigoted? But who cares? Neither is a trait that anyone should want in a president — and either label essentially communicates the same criticism.

Another issue is that race is socially malleable. Over the years, Americans considered Germans, Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Spaniards as nonwhite people of different races. That’s changed. Similarly, some Americans today consider Latinos and, to a lesser degree, some people with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds as part of a nonwhite race too. (As a Latin man, I certainly consider myself to be of a different race, and the treatment I’ve received in the course of my life validates that.) So under current definitions, comments against these groups are, indeed, racist.

This is all possible because, as Jenée Desmond-Harris explained for Vox, race is entirely a social construct with no biological basis. This doesn’t mean race and people’s views of race don’t have real effects on many people — of course they do — but it means that people’s definitions of race can change over time.

But really, whatever you want to call it, Trump has made racist and bigoted comments in the past. That much should be clear in the long lists above.
Trump’s bigotry was a key part of his campaign


Regardless of how one labels it, Trump’s racism or bigotry was a big part of his campaign — by giving a candidate to the many white Americans who harbor racial resentment.

One paper, published in January 2017 by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta, found that voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, after controlling for factors like partisanship and political. [/cite]

[seanD]

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-racism-comments/588067/

The first quotation from Donald Trump ever to appear in The New York Times came on October 16, 1973. Trump was responding to charges filed by the Justice Department alleging racial bias at his family’s real-estate company. “They are absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said of the charges. “We have never discriminated, and we never would.”

To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.

In the years since then, Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. His statements have been reflected in his behavior—from public acts (placing ads calling for the execution of five young black and Latino men accused of rape, who were later shown to be innocent) to private preferences (“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” a former employee of Trump’s Castle, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, told a writer for The New Yorker). Trump emerged as a political force owing to his full-throated embrace of “birtherism,” the false charge that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. His presidential campaign was fueled by nativist sentiment directed at nonwhite immigrants, and he proposed barring Muslims from entering the country. In 2016, Trump described himself to The Washington Post as “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”

© Copyright Original Source

more to follow . . .

Trump is a celebrity. You don't have a successful career in Hollywood as a racist. The problem with liberals like you is you need nitpick everything about Trump in order to find racism. You have to look at things he did that might be racist but might not be, things that he's accused of doing that are probably not true or just rumors, and things Trump said that are taken out of context to make it sound racist (like what he said about gangbangers coming across the border). With Biden, we don't need to nitpick for things that might or might not be racist, we know he has a racist history. There's no dispute about that fact.

[shunyadragon]

Trump is a celebrity. You don't have a successful career in Hollywood as a racist. The problem with liberals like you is you need nitpick everything about Trump in order to find racism. You have to look at things he did that might be racist but might not be, things that he's accused of doing that are probably not true or just rumors, and things Trump said that are taken out of context to make it sound racist (like what he said about gangbangers coming across the border). With Biden, we don't need to nitpick for things that might or might not be racist, we know he has a racist history. There's no dispute about that fact.

Many celebrities in Hollywood are racists, but some cover it better than others, though your analogy that Trump is Hollywood figure is right on, and poetic justice..

My references of Trump as racist are also right on, but of course that is not all there is about Trump. He is also a habitual liar, materialist in the extreme, lacks any moral and ethical foundation, a admires everyone 'that thinks like me, and supports me regardless of the extreme beliefs they support.

There are far too many instances in Trumps racism to complain he is taken out of context.

Your very nave about racism among Hollywood celebrities:

Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-06-16/black-filmmakers-and-executives-speak-out-on-george-floyd-and-hollywood

Black filmmakers and executives get honest about their experiences in Hollywood

Filmmakers and entertainment industry professionals interviewed about George Floyd, race and Hollywood. Top, from left: Robin Thede, Will Packer, Melina Matsoukas, Jelani Johnson, Ava DuVernay, John Ridley, Deirdra Govan and Jermaine Johnson. Middle row: George Tillman Jr., Cynthia Erivo, Tendo Nagenda, Jeff Clanagan, Lorrie Bartlett, Datari Turner and Ashley Holland. Bottom: Lena Waithe, Rob Edwards, Tina Perry, Brandon Lawrence, Kasi Lemmons, DeVon Franklin, Nina Shaw and Darrell D. Miller.
(Los Angeles Times; Gillian; MACRO Management; Deirdra Govan; Nick Branch Photography; George Tillman Jr.; Tendo Nagenda; Datari Turner; WME; AMPAS; Tina Perry; CAA; Greg Gorman; Getty Images; DSMTFL; Darrell D. Miller.)
By RYAN FAUGHNDER,
STACY PERMAN
JUNE 16, 2020
5 AM

UPDATED5 AM

After George Floyd’s killing in the custody of Minneapolis police last month, Hollywood entertainment companies sent out a flurry of statements supporting the Black Lives Matter movement’s fight against police brutality and systemic racism.

Studios, music labels and streaming services promised donations to antiracist nonprofits and declared their commitment to diversity. Internal memos called for reflection on the industry’s poor record of inclusion and diversity.

Still, the entertainment industry’s long history of failures when it comes to race continues to weigh on the minds of many of the Black filmmakers, executives and others interviewed by The Times. Many note the stark absence of Black executives in studios’ ranks. The Writers Guild of America West’s Committee of Black Writers on Friday published an open letter to studios demanding that actions follow words.

The Times interviewed nearly two dozen Black entertainment industry professionals, spanning directors, producers, writers, designers, agents and executives. They discussed systemic racism in Hollywood, what needs to change and their frustration with years of talk and little action.

“This conversation needed to happen for a long time about racism and race in our industry,” said Cynthia Erivo, the actor, singer and songwriter who was nominated for two Oscars for 2019’s “Harriet.” “It feels like for the first time people are listening.”

How the attention to racism and police brutality is challenging Hollywood


Will Packer, producer, “Girls Trip,” “Night School”: I, like many people in the business, have been contacted by my white colleagues and peers, reaching out to say, “Where do we go from here?” I welcome that. We’ve been here and felt this before. For many of us, it’s a generational anger and a generational exhaustion. But at the same time, there is something different this time. I didn’t get this volume of calls around Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown or Eric Garner.



Ava DuVernay, director, “When They See Us,” “Selma”: You have certain people who are really reaching in, in a way that’s active and progressive, and you have folks that are going through the motions. And in this moment, there are no more motions. That kind of empty exercise is being duly noted by me and others.

Kasi Lemmons, director, writer, “Harriet,” “Eve’s Bayou”: I’ve had some time to think about these diversity reports that came out last year. Looking back 12 to 13 years, the numbers are so bleak especially in terms of what I am doing: writing and directing — and especially for directors of color and underrepresented women, they made less than 1% of the studio movies. That gave me pause. Because you expect or hope what seems obvious in an industry that deals with aspirations and inspiration, it feels like a perfect place for us to be our better selves.

DeVon Franklin, chief executive, Franklin Entertainment: How can what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or so many other countless Black men and women who’ve lost their lives, happen? Because there’s a dehumanization. That dehumanization is by no means completely at the doorstep of Hollywood. However, when you see the persistent images that Hollywood portrays of Black men and women in demeaning positions, being violent and so forth, it contributes to the dehumanization.

What actions can create meaningful change in the entertainment industry?


Darrell D. Miller, lawyer, entertainment department Chair, Fox Rothschild: What Hollywood can do, I think, is to actually act upon some of the changes that have literally been talked about for years: Bring more images, more voices, more talent, more producers in the rooms to create content more representative of our society.



John Ridley, screenwriter, “12 Years a Slave”: This is not charity, it’s not do-good work. These are amazing individuals. The talent is here, the will is here, the moment is definitely here, and I just get tired when people of good hearts and right minds say, “I’m going to donate.” But what are you doing? In terms of staffing showrunners, did you even interview a person of color for that position, or did you hire them because they were someone’s friend?

Lorrie Bartlett, co-head of talent department, partner and board member, ICM Partners: First of all, it’s [about] educating people and shining a light on unconscious bias, antiracism and antihate. It’s not enough to say, “Oh, but I’m not a racist.” There needs to be a real sense of understanding, by omission and silence contributing to a problem that exists. That is the first step.

Nina Shaw, a founding partner of Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein & Lezcano: There are lots of people asking me what I think they should do. My response is the same: You, as white people, should speak to each other. I want you to take ownership, I don’t want you to ask me what you should do. It’s always the same: Treat it like it really mattered to you. Every bonus now should be based on how diversity has been achieved.

Ashley Holland, agent, WME: Clients can demand this type of representation incorporated into their teams. If a powerful actor or director has someone trying to sign you, you can say you’re not interested in signing if there’s not a Black or brown person or woman on the team. If clients don’t make these kinds of demands, people don’t think it’s required.

Jeff Clanagan, chief executive, Codeblack Films: You can recruit at certain colleges. Try recruiting at the HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities). This conversation has to stay relevant in the same way that the #MeToo movement stayed relevant.

Melina Matsoukas, director, “Queen & Slim”: I want to make these stories on my sets. But the burden of diversity shouldn’t just be on Black filmmakers, it should be on everyone. Do you ask your white counterparts to open their sets and demand that they hire people of color on sets or the writers room? Is that happening?

The problem of white gatekeepers


Robin Thede, creator and star, “A Black Lady Sketch Show”: We don’t want a handout, we want to do the work. There’s a reason why you have an Ava DuVernay and an Issa Rae and a Lena Waithe, who are performing at a super high level. These people have worked their asses off. So no one is asking for the studios to just greenlight everything Black. That’s going to be awful. We want to be vetted just like everyone else. The problem is, Hollywood doesn’t see us.

Lemmons: I have witnessed people overlooking young Black people, just not seeing them. If there’s not a Black person in the room, or a women or indigenous person, are they seeing talent? Or are they seeing talent that looks like them?

Ridley: There are times when you have to explain to people in the room who are not of color why is it important that this goes into the story or that it be told this way.

Rob Edwards, screenwriter, “The Princess and the Frog,” “Treasure Planet”: Hollywood is a grim microcosm of larger society. I’ve been in this industry for 35 years. I’m not getting meetings to write a white project. I’m only called in to write about a sharecropper or a black baseball player. My dad’s a doctor. I share very little with that sharecropper experience, but I fear I’ll never be able to write about my own experiences because it never registers on any list of accepted Black narratives.

Datari Turner, independent film producer, “Uncorked”: We had a Black president of the United States before we had a Black person running a major studio in Hollywood. Tyler Perry has built an incredible business, an inspiring, big studio, but he still has to go through Viacom and Lionsgate to distribute his movies and TV that are run by white people. You have to have Black people run a studio. If we had a Black person running a studio, they would make more movies according to their tastes and how they grew up.

Profiling in the industry


Miller: I went to my first Vanity Fair Oscar party, and after going through five checkpoints I walked in and finally got to the door, and I was told the chauffeurs are around the corner. I’ve come to Hollywood and I’m at the top of my game. But I haven’t escaped the external reality.



Deirdra Govan, costume designer: I went into a high-end store, I was shopping for an A-list celebrity for a studio show. We had an account with the store. I spent $50,000, but from start to finish I was profiled and questioned. When I went to pick up the clothes, I was sequestered by security with the receipt in my hand. It was humiliating. The celebrity called the president of the store to say how inappropriate the behavior was.

Lena Waithe, creator, “The Chi”; writer, “Queen & Slim”: In our workplace, we’ve got to be nice to people, we’ve got to have dinner with them and sit next to them at premieres, you know what I’m saying? It is a truly traumatic thing for a lot of Black artists because you’re constantly having to rub shoulders with your oppressors.

The burden on Black executives and creators


Thede: The burden on Black people right now is to not only continue to fight the good fight, but also to educate people who want to join the movement. It’s a good thing, but it adds to the level of exhaustion. That’s why there was that moment of, “Check in on your Black friends.”



Jermaine Johnson, manager 3 Arts Entertainment: I do think that people, especially white people in positions of power, need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable; it is monumentally important to the change we need to make. At the top, so long as equality feels like oppression, then we need a reality check for ourselves.

Packer: I have to be successful, I’ve got to make sure I do my Kevin Hart comedies, I’ve got to make sure I’m respected and maintain relationships, and I also have to try to use my position and my power to tell stories that otherwise no one else would tell. If I don’t do any one of those well, I might be hurting the next Will Packer that comes through.

George Tillman Jr., director, “The Hate U Give”: When I go to pitch at different studios, if you have an African American lead, you’re going to get less money. You’ve got to jump up and down to convince them that this is something that’s universal.

The problem of how police are portrayed


Turner: Hollywood creates imagery for the world. Look on social media; you will see comments that 99% of cops are good, the majority cops do not do this. … A lot of this is because Hollywood has made more cop shows in the last 60 years than any other genre of film. “NCIS,” “Law & Order,” “SWAT,” the list goes on and on. The cops are always portrayed as heroes.

Jermaine Johnson: As long as they get the man, it doesn’t matter what civil rights they trample along the way. It’s always a point of frustration for me. Turn on any procedural and see that they cut corners, break rules, but as long as they get a guilty verdict it doesn’t matter how many people they interrogated illegally.

Jelani Johnson, partner, Macro Management: On some level Hollywood has always acknowledged the corrupt nature of police. Films like “Serpico,” “The Departed”and “Training Day” show how police can be corrupt but, always offer a “good cop” as a positive counterpart to the bad ones. Inversely, if you look at the relationship that black writers and directors have with police, you’ll find a much different story; a story more reflective of our community’s true relationship with the police.

Telling authentic stories


Tillman: The first scene in [“The Hate U Give”] is a scene I experienced when I was a kid growing up in the late ‘70s, where my parents and relatives were always telling me, “How do you conduct yourself around a police officer, how do you conduct yourself when you’re out of your neighborhoods?” That’s something my father was taught, he was teaching me in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I’m teaching my son in 2020.

Waithe: “Queen & Slim,” for obvious reasons, feels extremely relevant right now. But the truth is, it was relevant then, and it was relevant 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago. We’re artists who are showing you what it is like for a Black person to encounter a police officer, and oftentimes, it can end in death.

How to fix Hollywood’s pipeline problem? Do diversity programs help?


Tina Perry, president, OWN: I think it starts even earlier, with figuring out how to tell high school students what this industry is, what opportunities exist and the types of jobs that are available. I’ve had interns come to us from L.A. and South L.A., and they didn’t know all the potential ways they could work in the industry. There’s something about the exposure at an early age that’s really important.



Franklin: No studio would outsource their film slate to human resources. So the idea that most diversity initiatives are run through human resource departments is one of the reasons why they don’t work.

Jermaine Johnson: At a very basic level ... we need to pay interns. People of color can’t afford to do unpaid internships. I applaud some diversity programs for their aspirations, but there’s tokenism in them. Sometimes they are just press releases on how they are performing diversity. If you are doing it right, you don’t need to tell us every six months.

Tendo Nagenda, vice president, original film, Netflix: If you’re someone who’s college educated, you’ve probably gone into a lot of debt, so if you’re someone making $30,000, $25,000 a year working 80 hours a week, it’s not really a sustainable thing, especially if you’re coming from a family with financial hardship. I amassed an extreme amount of debt to invest in my career in the hopes that at the end of the rainbow, I would be able to pay it off.

Holland: I was the beneficiary of the 1.0 version of agency calls to address diversity. I was an intern during the second class at CAA when they switched over from friends’ [kids] as interns to a mechanism for recruiting and 50% had to be diverse. I’m the product of [diversity and inclusion] initiatives. Does that mean everyone is getting everything right? No.

Final thoughts


DuVernay: What I’ve found is the folks on the ground doing the work are not getting the influx of money from studios, networks and agencies, because those checks are going to the [high profile, legacy social justice organizations] you know. That tells me it’s performative. Performance doesn’t fix systems and structures. I don’t think it’s coming from a place of malice, it’s coming from a place of ignorance. People just don’t know what to do.



Erivo: The work people are doing right now happening across the world is kind of incredible for me. It’s really heartening because I don’t think we can effect the change needed if it’s not happening the world over. Again, the more we speak about this, the more stories we can tell, the more people can’t deny it’s happening.

Brandon Lawrence, agent, Creative Artists Agency: Going back to the prior days when we were taking it on the chin, frankly that is not going to fly anymore with executives in this business and beyond entertainment. People are tired of having to justify culture in the context of making money. When I think about America, I think culture is one of the biggest exports and Black culture is at the epicenter. It’s smart business to include Black people in the decision-making process.

Matsoukas: Racism in Hollywood is a pandemic born from over a century of erasure, segregation, white nepotism, redlining, the rewriting of history and pushing false narratives, cultural looting, and ostracism. The only way forward is to dismantle these practices within these institutions in an effort to bring true diversity to the entertainment and media industry.

© Copyright Original Source

[seanD]

Many celebrities in Hollywood are racists, but some cover it better than others, though your analogy that Trump is Hollywood figure is right on, and poetic justice..

My references of Trump as racist are also right on, but of course that is not all there is about Trump. He is also a habitual liar, materialist in the extreme, lacks any moral and ethical foundation, a admires everyone 'that thinks like me, and supports me regardless of the extreme beliefs they support.

There are far too many instances in Trumps racism to complain he is taken out of context.

Your very nave about racism among Hollywood celebrities:

Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-06-16/black-filmmakers-and-executives-speak-out-on-george-floyd-and-hollywood

Black filmmakers and executives get honest about their experiences in Hollywood

Filmmakers and entertainment industry professionals interviewed about George Floyd, race and Hollywood. Top, from left: Robin Thede, Will Packer, Melina Matsoukas, Jelani Johnson, Ava DuVernay, John Ridley, Deirdra Govan and Jermaine Johnson. Middle row: George Tillman Jr., Cynthia Erivo, Tendo Nagenda, Jeff Clanagan, Lorrie Bartlett, Datari Turner and Ashley Holland. Bottom: Lena Waithe, Rob Edwards, Tina Perry, Brandon Lawrence, Kasi Lemmons, DeVon Franklin, Nina Shaw and Darrell D. Miller.
(Los Angeles Times; Gillian; MACRO Management; Deirdra Govan; Nick Branch Photography; George Tillman Jr.; Tendo Nagenda; Datari Turner; WME; AMPAS; Tina Perry; CAA; Greg Gorman; Getty Images; DSMTFL; Darrell D. Miller.)
By RYAN FAUGHNDER,
STACY PERMAN
JUNE 16, 2020
5 AM

UPDATED5 AM

After George Floyd’s killing in the custody of Minneapolis police last month, Hollywood entertainment companies sent out a flurry of statements supporting the Black Lives Matter movement’s fight against police brutality and systemic racism.

Studios, music labels and streaming services promised donations to antiracist nonprofits and declared their commitment to diversity. Internal memos called for reflection on the industry’s poor record of inclusion and diversity.

Still, the entertainment industry’s long history of failures when it comes to race continues to weigh on the minds of many of the Black filmmakers, executives and others interviewed by The Times. Many note the stark absence of Black executives in studios’ ranks. The Writers Guild of America West’s Committee of Black Writers on Friday published an open letter to studios demanding that actions follow words.

The Times interviewed nearly two dozen Black entertainment industry professionals, spanning directors, producers, writers, designers, agents and executives. They discussed systemic racism in Hollywood, what needs to change and their frustration with years of talk and little action.

“This conversation needed to happen for a long time about racism and race in our industry,” said Cynthia Erivo, the actor, singer and songwriter who was nominated for two Oscars for 2019’s “Harriet.” “It feels like for the first time people are listening.”

How the attention to racism and police brutality is challenging Hollywood


Will Packer, producer, “Girls Trip,” “Night School”: I, like many people in the business, have been contacted by my white colleagues and peers, reaching out to say, “Where do we go from here?” I welcome that. We’ve been here and felt this before. For many of us, it’s a generational anger and a generational exhaustion. But at the same time, there is something different this time. I didn’t get this volume of calls around Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown or Eric Garner.



Ava DuVernay, director, “When They See Us,” “Selma”: You have certain people who are really reaching in, in a way that’s active and progressive, and you have folks that are going through the motions. And in this moment, there are no more motions. That kind of empty exercise is being duly noted by me and others.

Kasi Lemmons, director, writer, “Harriet,” “Eve’s Bayou”: I’ve had some time to think about these diversity reports that came out last year. Looking back 12 to 13 years, the numbers are so bleak especially in terms of what I am doing: writing and directing — and especially for directors of color and underrepresented women, they made less than 1% of the studio movies. That gave me pause. Because you expect or hope what seems obvious in an industry that deals with aspirations and inspiration, it feels like a perfect place for us to be our better selves.

DeVon Franklin, chief executive, Franklin Entertainment: How can what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or so many other countless Black men and women who’ve lost their lives, happen? Because there’s a dehumanization. That dehumanization is by no means completely at the doorstep of Hollywood. However, when you see the persistent images that Hollywood portrays of Black men and women in demeaning positions, being violent and so forth, it contributes to the dehumanization.

What actions can create meaningful change in the entertainment industry?


Darrell D. Miller, lawyer, entertainment department Chair, Fox Rothschild: What Hollywood can do, I think, is to actually act upon some of the changes that have literally been talked about for years: Bring more images, more voices, more talent, more producers in the rooms to create content more representative of our society.



John Ridley, screenwriter, “12 Years a Slave”: This is not charity, it’s not do-good work. These are amazing individuals. The talent is here, the will is here, the moment is definitely here, and I just get tired when people of good hearts and right minds say, “I’m going to donate.” But what are you doing? In terms of staffing showrunners, did you even interview a person of color for that position, or did you hire them because they were someone’s friend?

Lorrie Bartlett, co-head of talent department, partner and board member, ICM Partners: First of all, it’s [about] educating people and shining a light on unconscious bias, antiracism and antihate. It’s not enough to say, “Oh, but I’m not a racist.” There needs to be a real sense of understanding, by omission and silence contributing to a problem that exists. That is the first step.

Nina Shaw, a founding partner of Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein & Lezcano: There are lots of people asking me what I think they should do. My response is the same: You, as white people, should speak to each other. I want you to take ownership, I don’t want you to ask me what you should do. It’s always the same: Treat it like it really mattered to you. Every bonus now should be based on how diversity has been achieved.

Ashley Holland, agent, WME: Clients can demand this type of representation incorporated into their teams. If a powerful actor or director has someone trying to sign you, you can say you’re not interested in signing if there’s not a Black or brown person or woman on the team. If clients don’t make these kinds of demands, people don’t think it’s required.

Jeff Clanagan, chief executive, Codeblack Films: You can recruit at certain colleges. Try recruiting at the HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities). This conversation has to stay relevant in the same way that the #MeToo movement stayed relevant.

Melina Matsoukas, director, “Queen & Slim”: I want to make these stories on my sets. But the burden of diversity shouldn’t just be on Black filmmakers, it should be on everyone. Do you ask your white counterparts to open their sets and demand that they hire people of color on sets or the writers room? Is that happening?

The problem of white gatekeepers


Robin Thede, creator and star, “A Black Lady Sketch Show”: We don’t want a handout, we want to do the work. There’s a reason why you have an Ava DuVernay and an Issa Rae and a Lena Waithe, who are performing at a super high level. These people have worked their asses off. So no one is asking for the studios to just greenlight everything Black. That’s going to be awful. We want to be vetted just like everyone else. The problem is, Hollywood doesn’t see us.

Lemmons: I have witnessed people overlooking young Black people, just not seeing them. If there’s not a Black person in the room, or a women or indigenous person, are they seeing talent? Or are they seeing talent that looks like them?

Ridley: There are times when you have to explain to people in the room who are not of color why is it important that this goes into the story or that it be told this way.

Rob Edwards, screenwriter, “The Princess and the Frog,” “Treasure Planet”: Hollywood is a grim microcosm of larger society. I’ve been in this industry for 35 years. I’m not getting meetings to write a white project. I’m only called in to write about a sharecropper or a black baseball player. My dad’s a doctor. I share very little with that sharecropper experience, but I fear I’ll never be able to write about my own experiences because it never registers on any list of accepted Black narratives.

Datari Turner, independent film producer, “Uncorked”: We had a Black president of the United States before we had a Black person running a major studio in Hollywood. Tyler Perry has built an incredible business, an inspiring, big studio, but he still has to go through Viacom and Lionsgate to distribute his movies and TV that are run by white people. You have to have Black people run a studio. If we had a Black person running a studio, they would make more movies according to their tastes and how they grew up.

Profiling in the industry


Miller: I went to my first Vanity Fair Oscar party, and after going through five checkpoints I walked in and finally got to the door, and I was told the chauffeurs are around the corner. I’ve come to Hollywood and I’m at the top of my game. But I haven’t escaped the external reality.



Deirdra Govan, costume designer: I went into a high-end store, I was shopping for an A-list celebrity for a studio show. We had an account with the store. I spent $50,000, but from start to finish I was profiled and questioned. When I went to pick up the clothes, I was sequestered by security with the receipt in my hand. It was humiliating. The celebrity called the president of the store to say how inappropriate the behavior was.

Lena Waithe, creator, “The Chi”; writer, “Queen & Slim”: In our workplace, we’ve got to be nice to people, we’ve got to have dinner with them and sit next to them at premieres, you know what I’m saying? It is a truly traumatic thing for a lot of Black artists because you’re constantly having to rub shoulders with your oppressors.

The burden on Black executives and creators


Thede: The burden on Black people right now is to not only continue to fight the good fight, but also to educate people who want to join the movement. It’s a good thing, but it adds to the level of exhaustion. That’s why there was that moment of, “Check in on your Black friends.”



Jermaine Johnson, manager 3 Arts Entertainment: I do think that people, especially white people in positions of power, need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable; it is monumentally important to the change we need to make. At the top, so long as equality feels like oppression, then we need a reality check for ourselves.

Packer: I have to be successful, I’ve got to make sure I do my Kevin Hart comedies, I’ve got to make sure I’m respected and maintain relationships, and I also have to try to use my position and my power to tell stories that otherwise no one else would tell. If I don’t do any one of those well, I might be hurting the next Will Packer that comes through.

George Tillman Jr., director, “The Hate U Give”: When I go to pitch at different studios, if you have an African American lead, you’re going to get less money. You’ve got to jump up and down to convince them that this is something that’s universal.

The problem of how police are portrayed


Turner: Hollywood creates imagery for the world. Look on social media; you will see comments that 99% of cops are good, the majority cops do not do this. … A lot of this is because Hollywood has made more cop shows in the last 60 years than any other genre of film. “NCIS,” “Law & Order,” “SWAT,” the list goes on and on. The cops are always portrayed as heroes.

Jermaine Johnson: As long as they get the man, it doesn’t matter what civil rights they trample along the way. It’s always a point of frustration for me. Turn on any procedural and see that they cut corners, break rules, but as long as they get a guilty verdict it doesn’t matter how many people they interrogated illegally.

Jelani Johnson, partner, Macro Management: On some level Hollywood has always acknowledged the corrupt nature of police. Films like “Serpico,” “The Departed”and “Training Day” show how police can be corrupt but, always offer a “good cop” as a positive counterpart to the bad ones. Inversely, if you look at the relationship that black writers and directors have with police, you’ll find a much different story; a story more reflective of our community’s true relationship with the police.

Telling authentic stories


Tillman: The first scene in [“The Hate U Give”] is a scene I experienced when I was a kid growing up in the late ‘70s, where my parents and relatives were always telling me, “How do you conduct yourself around a police officer, how do you conduct yourself when you’re out of your neighborhoods?” That’s something my father was taught, he was teaching me in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I’m teaching my son in 2020.

Waithe: “Queen & Slim,” for obvious reasons, feels extremely relevant right now. But the truth is, it was relevant then, and it was relevant 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago. We’re artists who are showing you what it is like for a Black person to encounter a police officer, and oftentimes, it can end in death.

How to fix Hollywood’s pipeline problem? Do diversity programs help?


Tina Perry, president, OWN: I think it starts even earlier, with figuring out how to tell high school students what this industry is, what opportunities exist and the types of jobs that are available. I’ve had interns come to us from L.A. and South L.A., and they didn’t know all the potential ways they could work in the industry. There’s something about the exposure at an early age that’s really important.



Franklin: No studio would outsource their film slate to human resources. So the idea that most diversity initiatives are run through human resource departments is one of the reasons why they don’t work.

Jermaine Johnson: At a very basic level ... we need to pay interns. People of color can’t afford to do unpaid internships. I applaud some diversity programs for their aspirations, but there’s tokenism in them. Sometimes they are just press releases on how they are performing diversity. If you are doing it right, you don’t need to tell us every six months.

Tendo Nagenda, vice president, original film, Netflix: If you’re someone who’s college educated, you’ve probably gone into a lot of debt, so if you’re someone making $30,000, $25,000 a year working 80 hours a week, it’s not really a sustainable thing, especially if you’re coming from a family with financial hardship. I amassed an extreme amount of debt to invest in my career in the hopes that at the end of the rainbow, I would be able to pay it off.

Holland: I was the beneficiary of the 1.0 version of agency calls to address diversity. I was an intern during the second class at CAA when they switched over from friends’ [kids] as interns to a mechanism for recruiting and 50% had to be diverse. I’m the product of [diversity and inclusion] initiatives. Does that mean everyone is getting everything right? No.

Final thoughts


DuVernay: What I’ve found is the folks on the ground doing the work are not getting the influx of money from studios, networks and agencies, because those checks are going to the [high profile, legacy social justice organizations] you know. That tells me it’s performative. Performance doesn’t fix systems and structures. I don’t think it’s coming from a place of malice, it’s coming from a place of ignorance. People just don’t know what to do.



Erivo: The work people are doing right now happening across the world is kind of incredible for me. It’s really heartening because I don’t think we can effect the change needed if it’s not happening the world over. Again, the more we speak about this, the more stories we can tell, the more people can’t deny it’s happening.

Brandon Lawrence, agent, Creative Artists Agency: Going back to the prior days when we were taking it on the chin, frankly that is not going to fly anymore with executives in this business and beyond entertainment. People are tired of having to justify culture in the context of making money. When I think about America, I think culture is one of the biggest exports and Black culture is at the epicenter. It’s smart business to include Black people in the decision-making process.

Matsoukas: Racism in Hollywood is a pandemic born from over a century of erasure, segregation, white nepotism, redlining, the rewriting of history and pushing false narratives, cultural looting, and ostracism. The only way forward is to dismantle these practices within these institutions in an effort to bring true diversity to the entertainment and media industry.

© Copyright Original Source

I may be naive about what goes on in Hollywood, but I'm not naive about how fake and non-credible the left's interpretations of racism are. From your previous post...

2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”

How is that even remotely racist? That's just one example of the absurd racism inventions you guys come up with.

[Mountain Man]

How is that even remotely racist? That's just one example of the absurd racism inventions you guys come up with.

You're obviously not hearing the "racist dog whistles" that liberals are suspiciously very well attuned to.

[shunyadragon]

I may be naive about what goes on in Hollywood, but I'm not naive about how fake and non-credible the left's interpretations of racism are. From your previous post...

I am still laughing concerning your poetic justice of comparing Trump to Hollywood.

How is that even remotely racist? That's just one example of the absurd racism inventions you guys come up with.

One example out of hundreds of direct racist acts and words by Trump.

[seanD]

I am still laughing concerning your poetic justice of comparing Trump to Hollywood.





One example out of hundreds of direct racist acts and words by Trump.

Yes, one example out of hundreds of fake racism incidences that leftist like you call racism that isn't racism. Because of that, the left has lost all credibility in what they interpret as racism. In the meantime, you support an actual racist with an actual history of racism.

[mikewhitney]

I was skimming through Shuny's list and saw somethings that were sorta almost racism but then I saw he mentioned Trump calling Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers. The list was disqualified for any further review.

I have heard Blacks who have attested Trump's concern and decent treatment of Blacks and other communities. I favor this testimony rather than the weird list Shuny provided -- the far left extremist propaganda.

[seer]

more to follow . . .

We were speaking of Tucker Carlson idiot...