Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations. If you've been on the blog, you know how this Tumblr works, too. Including the moderation policy.
Jing Tian is the latest name to join the cast of Legendary‘s Pacific Rim sequel. The actress, who is also set to appear in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall and Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island, joins a cast that already includes John Boyega, Scott Eastwood and Cailee Spaeny.
Freedom, a parody commercial about #Blackexcellence, dunking on the patriarchy, and Beyoncé to help you all channel your inner Simones and close out two weeks of the Rio Games.
Most adult Comic-Con attendees knew who I was supposed to be (mostly). But the first child who wanted her picture taken with me had no idea what Hamilton was. She was young, black, and very excited to pose for a photo with a “princess.” So were her parents. She was bouncing and grinning, giving me the reaction generally reserved for Tiana from The Princess and the Frog. I was just thrilled. Even if she didn’t know who I was supposed to be, in a con filled with Belles, Arielles, and Auroras, she got to see a woman in a big, beautiful dress that looked like her. That’s all that mattered.
I wrote about Hamilton cosplay and character diversity at SDCC for Fusion today. Check it, here.
One woman at FOX’s party assumed I was Serayah. “Is that Taylor Swift’s friend, the one from Empire?” I heard her say when she thought I was out of earshot. Her companion confirmed that, yes, indeed I was. Later, I overheard someone guessing that I was “one of the stars from the slave movie at Sundance.” I can only assume she was mistaking me for Aja Naomi-King in Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation. Later I was ID-ed as Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther), Danai Gurira (Black Panther), and Jessica Williams (The Daily Show).
I don’t look like any of these women. The only thing I have in common with any of them is that we’re all black. Hell, we’re not even all the same shades of black.
The casual racism of thinking all black people “look alike” is sadly nothing new — but what I was experiencing at Comic-Con was a trend. One I couldn’t figure out how to explain until I started my trip back across the country to New York, once again easily blending into the crowds. That’s when I realized it’s easy to blend in when no one unconsciously tries to justify why I’m somewhere in the first place.
The parties I attended weren’t for actors (the “talent”) only. Guests also included producers, screenwriters, publicists, film critics, and any other number of people in the entertainment industry (plus fans who managed to score invites). In other words, one doesn’t walk in assuming that every person there is some sort of celebrity. In fact, the friends I did the party circuit with — three white men and one white woman — weren’t mistaken for talent at all. Nor should they have been, given that none of them resemble any celebrity that I can think of. At Con events, they were just faces in a crowd, the faces people expected to see.
A reason to write. A reason to protest. More reasons to change the system, to confront institutional racism and brutality. #Love it! this series, #Hate it! the reality that continues to feed it.
