Apologies for the delay, folks; I had this post scheduled for PM instead of AM. Oops! —TPP
For all the insufferableness of “Pride” and its gyrating acolytes, America’s original pagan deity was, and will always be, race. There will come a time—and it’s already manifesting—when Americans will turn on LGBTQIA2+etc. movements with a vengeance. At a certain point, there’s only so much pederasty a people can take.
But race is a far more intractable problem. It is the dark (no pun intended) elder god come back to wreak havoc on Americans. In exchange for cheap cotton and cloth in the 1800s, we now pay a thousand invisible taxes in tribute to appease this insatiable monster.
Gavin McInnes argues that we’re living in a “black theocracy,” at least in a cultural sense. The gatekeepers of popular culture can’t seem to resist recasting traditionally European characters—like Anne Boleyn!—as ebony goddesses who somehow held twenty-first-century sensibilities in Tudor England. We’ve all seen the endless television commercials that seem suspiciously absent of anyone with a drop of European ancestry.
Contrast that with Night of the Living Dead (1968). The main character in that film, Ben, is played by Duane Jones, a black actor and university professor. George Romero cast Jones for the part not because he was trying to “make history” (although in 1968 it actually was rare and controversial to cast a black man as the lead in a film), but because Jones was simply the best man for the job. Jones himself backs up this assertion—it was never about race; he’s just a great actor.
I remember seeing Night of the Living Dead sometime in high school. It was one of the most powerful films I’d seen up to that point in my life—terrifying, yes, but also dramatic, with such a disastrous (in a good way) ending. I was on the edge of my seat. Not once did I think, “oh, man, they cast a black dude for diversity points.” I’m sure I recognized that Jones was black, but it did nothing to enhance or detract from the story—he simply was; in this case, he was Ben He was perfect for that role.
Interesting and original black characters are great. Black Panther (2018) was way overrated, but it wasn’t terrible; the late Chadwick Boseman was impressive in the title role. Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (2018) was a clever way to introduce an “ethnic” variant on Spider-Man that didn’t simply steal an existing intellectual property. Who else but Sidney Poitier could pull off Mark Thackeray in To Sir, with Love (1967)?
The examples are endless. It’s possible to write compelling black characters without turning (to use the most recent outrage) Ariel into a washed-out black girl with eyes on either side of her head.
But who am I? I’m an evil, white, cisgender man. Let this articulate black gentleman explain it:
I’ll stop here before I end up in the breadline.
With that, here is 23 June 2022’s “TBT: Fighting Back Against Critical Race Theory“:
The Portly Politico 