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, office workers, lab technicians, visual artists, colorists, and carpenters, to name a few. Major culture industries, therefore, should not be overlooked in efforts to close the racial employment gap.
Figure 1.2. 1963 March on Washington. Courtesy of National Archives.
Beyond images and gestures characterized by symbolic representation, numerical representation is preoccupied with questions of demography and parity, measured by proportions and employment numbers. The central aim of equality becomes to make the proportion of African Americans in Hollywood equal to or greater than their share of the general U.S. population. In this vein, sociological research has highlighted racial inequality in the occupational careers of African American writers, actors, and directors.14 For instance, studies by William and Denise Bielby and Darnell Hunt and colleagues have concluded that African American writers are well underrepresented in relation to the U.S. Black population. Recent studies have thoroughly documented various aspects of minority underrepresentation and marginalization in film directing, concluding that Black directors are underrepresented in relation to Blacks’ proportion of the U.S. population and are otherwise marginalized in the profession.15
A number of academic studies have demonstrated the significance of employment in power roles for other positions on film sets. Employment of African Americans in prominent positions of control, especially as Hollywood directors or producers, increases both the number of work opportunities for Black talent behind the camera and the number of on-screen speaking roles for Black actors. In a 2014 study of the one hundred top-grossing movies of the year, Stacy Smith and colleagues found that when no Black director was behind the camera, less than 11 percent of characters on-screen were Black; however, when a Black director was behind the camera, 46 percent of characters on-screen were Black. The presence of a Black director increased the number of Black actors more than four times over.16 The director Tim Story describes his efforts to diversify acting roles: “I make it a point to do those movies where I can actually put Black people as well as Latinos in those parts.”17 In addition, Chris Rock explains how he personally uses his platform to provide opportunities for entry into work for other African Americans: “I try to help young Black guys coming up because those people took chances on me. Eddie [Murphy] didn’t have to put me in Beverly Hills Cop II. Keenen Wayans didn’t have to put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Arsenio [Hall] didn’t have to let me on his show. I’d do the same for a young white guy, but here’s the difference: Someone’s going to help the white guy. Multiple people will. The people whom I’ve tried to help, I’m not sure anybody was going to help them.”18 By Story’s and Rock’s estimations, as well as through the testimonies of other Black directors and film scholars, the best advocates for African