on this stage accepting this top honor.”4 In an essay in The Root, Danielle Belton describes the exchange of inspiration and admiration that took place at the African American Critics Association Award Ceremony when, prior to the Oscars’ Best Picture Award, John Singleton presented an accolade to Barry Jenkins for Moonlight. Belton writes that “probably one of the most deeply affecting moments during the awards ceremony was when acclaimed director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Baby Boy) could barely mask his pride and admiration for a man he admitted he hadn’t met, but felt he knew through his art: fellow director Barry Jenkins, the auteur behind independent film Moonlight. Singleton was presenting an award to Jenkins for Moonlight. Jenkins, in turn, thanked Singleton for inspiring him through his work on Boyz N the Hood, Singleton’s first, groundbreaking film.”5 Before ever meeting in person, they engaged each other through their films. Movies and images are symbolic vehicles that shape audience perceptions and exert influence beyond the screen.
As a marginalized group in Hollywood, Black Americans have a restricted ability to control their own self-images or to challenge disparaging stereotypes about themselves—stereotypes that not only influence individual people but also shape crucial social factors such as politics, racial attitudes, and treatment by authority, namely, employers and law enforcement. The capability to create images for mass consumption comes packaged with the power to effect change. Cinema can be a vehicle for both racist and antiracist ideologies. Hence, cinema can serve to counteract racist ideologies with progressive ones. With inadequate representation behind the camera, Black Americans are less able to shape the minds of viewers or create mass-disseminated cinematic images that effect change with regard to social issues around race relations in the United States, such as mass incarceration and police brutality.
In the post-2000 era, the wheels of integration into the Academy Awards also turned for Asian and Latino/a directors. Twice, Ang Lee won Best Director—for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012). On the heels of Ang Lee’s achievements, two directors of Latin descent, both Mexican, won Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity (2013) and Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015). For Birdman, Iñárritu also won Best Picture. Implanting seeds of retreat from a racist past, these victories provided the arsenal for one to believe, or at least hope, that Hollywood would turn a new leaf toward a long-awaited future of racial inclusion.
By and large, film directors’ symbolic acceptance in the Oscars aligns with Hollywood’s public reputation as a liberal-leaning industry. Across the broad spectrum of Hollywood professions, actors and executives alike have been linked to this liberal moniker. For instance, Bruce Davis, a white American and former executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture and Arts and Sciences, once described the Academy as “overwhelmingly made up of liberal actors, writers, directors, and producers.”6 Hollywood celebrities are also commonly associated with liberal political involvement. To name a few, Beyoncé Knowles, 50 Cent, Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith publicly supported the Democratic Party or donated money backing Democratic politicians.7 In 2003 alone, Hollywood companies donated over $30 million to Democratic politicians and contributed substantially less, $10 million, to Republicans.8 Part of the film industry’s liberal image stems from key players’ advocacy for liberal groups over conservative groups.
Beyond individuals, Hollywood movies have also garnered a reputation for portraying liberal themes, bolstering the perception that the industry upholds ideals of racial tolerance. In the midst of intense racial tensions in the United States, Hollywood social-problem films of the 1950s and ’60s assumed progressive stances on social issues about racial inequality and, in doing so, spearheaded a national dialogue on race relations with such movies as Guess Who’s Coming Home to Dinner? (1967), which featured an on-screen interracial romance between Sidney Poitier and the white actor Katharine Houghton. Beginning in the 1970s, progressive fictional portrayals depicted African Americans as leaders of the nation, preceding change in the general society. Indeed, before the community-organizing senator of Illinois, Barack Obama, became the forty-fourth president of the United States, numerous African American presidents preceded him in popular culture: James Earl Jones in The Man (1972), Tommy Lister in The Fifth Element (1997), Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact (1998), Terry Crews in Idiocracy (2000), Chris Rock in Head of State (2005), and Dennis Haysbert and D. B. Woodside in the Fox television series 24. Through taking progressive stances on social issues, Hollywood offered themes and characters that not only purged the old dispensation of racial exclusion but also provided symbolic gestures of liberalism.
Just decades ago, a dogged racial exclusion and invisibility plagued representation of racial minorities in Hollywood. In fact, the history of racial exclusion in Hollywood exceeds the level of exclusion in other industries such as music or television.9 Accolades for directors of color at the Academy Awards, political advocacy for the Democratic Party, and movies provoking conversations about controversial racial issues point to a symbolic inclusion for racial minorities that gives the appearance of a growing, albeit gradual, racial progress—as if presenting the case that a history of the film business once plagued by racial inequality is being supplanted by a more liberal future that fosters egalitarian ideals. Nonetheless, obvious questions follow: How could a film industry that appears to be so racially liberal be the constant subject of racial inequality? How does racial inequality persist within an American society that outwardly condemns racism and within a Hollywood film industry that presents a liberal public face?
Symbolic representation of racial minorities presents a public face of the U.S. film industry as a liberal entity. As the scholar of American popular culture Eithne Quinn writes, “there was a prevalent view among whites that the [film] industry, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, was basically racially progressive.”10 The appearance of growing symbolic inclusion can be deceiving. Despite the semblance of greater inclusivity, this portrait of a liberal Hollywood contrasts sharply with the lived realities of racial minorities working in the film industry. Progressive on-screen images or conspicuous awards ceremonies can obscure stagnant behind-the-camera working conditions for racial minorities.
Number Crunching
Ossie Davis, the director of the second-ever Black-directed film distributed by Hollywood studios, Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), highlights one recurring concern about representation in cinematic production: that employment is important to secure jobs. Davis says, “there is from time to time a big brou-haha—sometimes it gets quite excitable—over whether or not a white director can really ever make a film truly representative of black lifestyle and black culture. This question, in my opinion, is more about jobs—and ultimately about power—than it is about race.”11 In the film industry, work is a necessary step, first, to secure a livelihood and, second, to exert control over images in popular culture.
As Ossie Davis emphasizes, representation is largely about jobs. Adequate representation for directors has direct gains with regard to employment outcomes. Gainful employment in any major industry, including culture industries, is vital because for African Americans as a group, employment levels are persistently lower than for every other racial group. For example, in September 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a huge racial employment gap for young adults between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, with a 31.5 percent unemployment rate for African Americans compared to a 13.9 percent unemployment rate for white Americans. For men and women twenty years old and over, African Americans likewise had more than double the unemployment rates of white Americans, 9.2 percent compared to 4.4 percent.12 Even these numbers drastically underestimate the gap between Black and white unemployment, since they do not include incarcerated citizens, of which African Americans are disproportionately overrepresented.13
Closing the racial gap in unemployment requires effort from all sectors, including entertainment industries. Yet popular culture industries such as Hollywood are rarely included in discussions about places where African Americans have been historically overlooked in employment and where significant efforts to increase Black employment can be made. Hollywood still has much work to do with its inclusion of African Americans in all positions in cinema. The Hollywood workforce includes a range of jobs beyond directors: set designers, gaffers,
