10 Actors Who Openly Called Out Hollywood's Racism

Janet Hubert Actress Janet Hubert, the original Aunt Viv of the television series "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," held no punches when she talked to theGriot about how Black women are portrayed on TV. In a Jan. 29 interview with the media outlet she said: "I see every network’s got some big, fat, sort-of slightly chunky Black girl. We’ve got Wendy out there who’s wearing giant ta-tas…and we’ve got Sheryl Underwood who’s sitting on the toilet on the set. We’ve got buffoons, we’ve got coons, we’ve got jigaboos, we’ve got the new mammy. And I’m disgusted. I think the viewers are disgusted, too. I think we definitely need some representation of who we are. There’s no one who represents me that I see — and it’s disheartening.” Danny Glover Actor Danny Glover branded Hollywood studio executives racist after having a difficult time finding financial backers for his biopic on revolutionary Haitian general Toussaint L’Ouverture. L'Ouverture led the militarized movement against the French to abolish slavery in Haiti in the late 1700s. In July 2008, Glover told a Paris film seminar: "Producers said, 'It's a nice project, a great project ... Where are the white heroes?'" The Pan-African Newswire reports that Glover added: "I couldn't get the money here. I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. ... The first question you get is, 'Is it a Black film?' All of them agree, 'It's not going to do good in Europe, it's not going to do good in Japan.' Somebody has to prove that to be a lie." In an interview with the International Business Times earlier this month, veteran actor Samuel Jackson said that Hollywood, by and large, still avoids dealing with modern-day racism. He said the popularity of "12 Years A Slave" is an example of a movie that distracts viewers from the racism that still exists today. The actor said, “America is much more willing to acknowledge what happened in the past.” "Fruitvale Station," Jackson noted, "tackled the issue of race in a far more forthright and braver way than '12 Years A Slave.' It is a film about African-Americans – a dark period of history that they don’t like to explore in that particular way.” Harry J. Lennix In a November 2012 interview with Ebony magazine, actor Harry J. Lennix ripped Lee Daniels’ latest film, saying the director "n**erfies” former White House butler Eugene Allen’s story, and produces “historical porn.” Lennix said: "For example, Lee Daniels sent me the script for that film he’s making, The Butler, about the Black butler at the White House. I read five pages of this thing and could not go any further. I tried to read more of it, and I’m not a soft-spoken guy, but it was such an appalling misdirection of history in terms of taking an actual guy who worked at the White House. But then he 'ni**erfies' it. He 'n**ers' it up ,and he gives people these stupid, Luddite, antediluvian ideas about Black people and their roles in the historical span in the White House and it becomes… well… historical porn. I refused.” Steve Harvey The Hollywood Reporter writer Marisa Guthrie wrote a lengthy profile of Steve Harvey in March 2013, in which the TV personality addressed the issue of race in Hollywood: She captured Harvey's criticism of the industry in the following quote: "Hollywood is still very racist. ... Hollywood is more racist than America is. They put things on TV that they think the masses will like. Well, the masses have changed. The election of President Obama should prove that. And television should look entirely different. Kerry Washington should not be the first African-American female to head up a drama series in 40 years. In 40 years! That's crazy." George Lucas Star Wars creator George Lucas said Hollywood studios refused to back his 2012 film "Red Tails" - about World War II's Tuskegee Airmen - because the cast was all Black. Back in January 2012, Lucas told a rather stunned Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" that he had been working on the film for 23 years. Although bankrolling it himself, he went to the studios to create the prints and ads, and to be responsible for distribution. “I showed it to all of them and they said, ‘No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.'” When Stewart asked why, Lucas first responded, “Because it’s not green enough. They only release green movies.” The filmmaker then clarified, “It's because it's an all-Black movie. There's no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all-Black action pictures ever made.” Regina King "Ray" actress Regina King blasted the organizers of the Emmy Awards for leaving significant African-American television actors off their 2010 shortlist, insisting officials snub non-white stars every year. In September 2008, King wrote an open letter questioning the selection process for the ceremonies. An excerpt from the letter read: "I try hard in my daily life not to engage in uncomfortable situations regarding race. But sometimes it's very difficult to find other reasons that better explain why certain events play out the way they do. It is impossible for me to ignore the published statistics regarding the number of people of color mentioned, celebrated or honored in the history of the televised Emmys. Up to and including this year, there have been only 53 non-white actors nominated for Emmys out of nearly 1,000 possible nominations in the top four acting categories for drama and comedy. I've worked in television nearly all of my professional life and that statistic is quite sobering to me." Terrence Howard At a September 2011 event by the Congressional Black Caucus to honor the Tuskegee Airmen and to promote "Red Tails," Terrence Howard, one of the movie's stars, said the success of the film would be a critical litmus test for a system that devalued Black actors and Black stories. The actor said: "The … problem, and what becomes the undercurrent is that it’s an all-Black cast and the villains are white. Now, Hollywood, for a number of years has maintained the status quo by saying Black films do not have an international value. Therefore we’re able to pay Black actors less, we can give them less money to make their films … If this film, if George Lucas, who is basically the Parrish of the film industry, as Col. Noel Parrish did for the Tuskegee Airbase, he put his entire career on the line and stood behind these Black pilots, these American pilots. What George Lucas did, he put his entire career on the line … When they wouldn’t distribute it, he put $30 million into distribution. If this film is not successful, it will become a stumbling block for all time where they can say that Black films do not have value or merit. It’s important that this film is supported … if George Lucas does not profit from this, then the rest of the industry will see no profit in Black people." Lonette McKee Actress Lonette McKee - who has written seven of her own screenplays and appeared in "Men of Honor," "Luv," and three of Spike Lee’s films ("Jungle Fever," "He Got Game," "Malcolm X") - attributed the box-office failure of Lee's recent body of work to Hollywood financiers finding the director's outspokenness on Black people's behalf offensive. "I think that has everything to do with marketing and promotion," she said in a November 2012 interview."I think that Spike has been a very outspoken advocate for rights of Black folks. He broke the glass ceiling and he’s never been a brown-noser. He’s never been able to suck up to white people and I think he tells them like it is, and a lot of them don’t like it. So when he goes to these big white powers to do his films, I think that they give him a bad deal in terms of marketing and promoting. If they pump the marketing money into what you are doing, you will peak again. He’s been an outspoken advocate for Black folks and the white people with the money don’t like it." Shonda Rhimes In January, Shonda Rhimes decided to use her Diversity Award win at the Director’s Guild Awards to address the ongoing diversity problem in Hollywood, but fell short of labeling it racism. “We’re a little pissed off because there still needs to be an award. Like, there’s such a lack of people hiring women and minorities that when someone does it on a regular basis, they are given an award,” she said. She continued: “It’s not because of a lack of talent. It’s because of a lack of access. People hire who they know. If it’s been a white boys club for 70 years, that’s a lot of white boys hiring one another. And I don’t believe that that happens out of any specific racism or sexism or prejudice. People hire their friends. They hire who they know. It’s comfortable. You want to be successful, you don’t want to take any chances, you don’t want to rock the boat by hiring people of color because, well, look at us.” This isn’t the only time Rhimes has openly criticized the lack of diversity in the industry. In an interview with Salon, she seemed completely baffled that diversity is still a big deal and when achieved, it's something to be “proud” of. “I think it’s sad and weird and strange that it’s still a thing, nine years after we did 'Grey’s,' that it’s still a thing. It’s creepy to me that it’s still an issue, that there aren’t enough people of color on television. Why is that still happening? It’s 2013. Somebody else needs to get their act together," she said. "And oh, by the way, it works. Ratings-wise, it works. People like to see it. I don’t understand why people don’t understand that the world of TV should look like the world outside of TV.”

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