Yup. Perhaps if he had cast In the Heights with all white people it would have been the kind of avant-garde show that Hamilton was. The fact that some of you rolled your eyes at the previous sentence is evidence of how unidirectional our public discussion about race is.
Bill Maher on Friday night urged Lin-Manuel Miranda to ‘stop apologizing’ and ‘stand up to the bullies’ after his film In the Heights was criticized for not having enough diversity, with Maher declaring: ‘This is why people hate Democrats.’
Miranda’s film, telling the story of a Hispanic community in New York City, was attacked for not having enough Afro-Latino actors.
On Monday the Hamilton creator issued a highly-apologetic statement, promising he would ‘do better’ in the future.
‘Please, stop apologizing,’ said Maher.
‘You’re the guy who made the Founding Fathers black and Hispanic!
‘I don’t think that you have to apologize to Twitter! For f***’s sake.
‘This is why people hate Democrats. It’s cringy.’
Maher is correct here. Democrats have been acting cringy in their ridiculous hyper, woke, super morality for quite some time.
This is going to hard to control with so much attention like AOC and the Senile Joe administration along with the willingness of media and social media.
But of course, most liberals are immune from being targeted. Like Megan Rapino, who herself to be a racist, but nothing will happen to her.
Folks in the US who identify as two or more races are 2.8% by population… and Afro-Latino would be but a subset of that number. One in a cast of 30 actors would be adequate inclusion. So what’s the real complaint here?
I see 2 theories Merlin:
1) The real complaint could be that Afro-Americans are the lib poster child race victims, so no one should be making any sort of entertainment with a racist undertone about anyone but Afro-Americans, if you want to fit in with liberals.
2) The second possibility revolves around the idea that if you use population as a proof or dis-proof, you need to figure the correct demographic dynamics. What is the percentage of Afro-Latin population in pre-dominantly Latino neighborhoods, is the appropriate question when using population percentages as a means to prove or dis-prove a demographics question. I don’t know what that percentage is, but I would guess that it is considerably higher than the portion of the 2.8% you quoted.
Yes, Tuerqas, but if you go to Staten Island the percentages shrink sharply. Probably in most of Manhattan, except perhaps the Harlem area, but I’ve read a lot white people have moved there lately, well at least, pre-pandemic.
I just used simple national census numbers. If you want to consider imposing broad national standards then you have to start somewhere. Trying to use neighborhood demographics puts you too deep in the weeds to make sense of anything. I’m pretty sure I can find a relatively high Afro-Latin percentage on the south side of Milwaukee, but they tend to not be A-level actors and don’t do much in the way of Hollywood or Broadway productions. Slice and dice demographics all you want, but they just don’t balance well enough to impose nationwide standards.
The current inclusion standards seem to have absolutely nothing to do with quantifiable things like population percentages and everything to do with the decibel level of their whining. Maybe their strategy is to scream loud enough that everyone else forgets how to count. Or gives them what they want just to STFU.
Mar and Merlin, to be clear, I think the answer was the first possibility. In the second possibility, I was just pointing out that using simple national census numbers is disingenuous. The film is set up in an Hispanic neighborhood in NYC. To say that the ‘national average of dual race Afro-Latinos’ should apply in one small minority community where the minority is the clear majority is just dishonest.
That said, I was really trying to make fun of liberals who seem to think that every rural town in the US has 13 percent black people when they make a show out in the country, but readily acknowledge that a comedy set in a predominantly black neighborhood would have one token white person in the show. Liberals use ‘simple statistics’ to justify anything racial, but especially concerning entertainment. So the failure was on me, not on either of you.