Lack of representation = systemic racism: Footloose is Exhibit A

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Learning that some of y’all grew up in towns with no black people - this explains a LOT about some of the things I’ve read on DCUM over the years!

Absolutely! Not just a town without Black people, but a town, city, region in the USA void of everyone but white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

The Indian unit was 300 men out of over 300,000 evacuated, and they worked on the supplies, not front-line fighting. There would be no reason to feature them in the movie. You people are absurd.

Why are we still uselessly reminiscing a war fought by imperialists and colonizers in the first place?

The British were imperialists and colonizers, yes. But now you want to erase their entire history including Dunkirk?

[Anonymous]

My HS in 1980 had 7-9 black people. Zero Indians. 10-12 Spanish, 10-12 Asian. We had 1,000 kids.

Today my old HS is 99 percent minority.

If you filmed a movie in my HS in 1980 you say why only white peoples. If you filmed it in 2023 you say why no white people.

Not racist at all the HS just reflects racial makeup of town

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Maybe the first poster should learn some history. People of color featured prominently in the battles Dunkirk portrayed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes

[Anonymous]

Friends in the 1990s - I lived in NYC from 1986-1999.

Bars and neighborhoods were very segregated.

I hung out with white Catholic college educated single people who worked on Wall Street between ages of 24-33 lived in Manhattan and grew up on Long Island.

There was no internet, cell phones. Bars and places catered to particular crowds

[Anonymous]

I wonder how much representation non-blacks get in movies made in Africa.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in upstate NY in the 80's. Ruralish and conservative. 200 kids in graduation class. One black. Not sure how into dancing she was .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Learning that some of y’all grew up in towns with no black people - this explains a LOT about some of the things I’ve read on DCUM over the years!

Not my fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Maybe the first poster should learn some history. People of color featured prominently in the battles Dunkirk portrayed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes

Not prominently. The vast majority of casualties and wounded were not people of color, they were white. This is their story to tell. Not scant minority of others. Stop trying to rewrite history and place other people at the center of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a lot black people in rural Kansas in the 80s. Or Nebraska or Iowa or Minnesota or South Dakota. I lived in one of those towns and there wasn’t any diversity, except for migrant farm workers.

Get over it, OP.

But there have definitely been some Black people in rural Kansas since the 1950s. Some people think Eisenhower was partly Black: https://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-black-roots-of-ex-president-dwight-d-eisenhower/

That doesn't make it true. There are several weird things going on in this very strange cultural moment we are living in. First of all, just because something may feel true to you or even a subset of people, that doesn't mean it actually happened.

No doubt, some famous people could reasonably have hidden Black ancestry. There is, however, a whole industry built on going around appropriating people and histories that have nothing to do with actual Black people. It is beyond terrible that Black Americans have been separated from their actual pre-Modern stories, and that so much of those stories were lost. That doesn't mean, because so much is unknowable, that you can just make stuff up and insist it be taken as fact. That's not history, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, OP. Though I’m not sure slotting in one or two token non-white actors as minor characters would have made that much difference. What’s really ground-breaking are stories with a critical mass of diverse characters. There were a few in the 80s, like The Cosby Show, but there’s been an explosion of that kind of content in the last few years, and I love to see it.

I’m white and went to a high school that was 99% white, so I never gave the whiteness of entertainment any thought. But my husband’s Asian, and he’s talked about what it was like to grow up never seeing people who looked like him on TV. Worse, the single Asian character usually turned out to be a stereotype of some sort. Our daughter has watched a few tv series from Japan and Korean, and it’s a whole different experience when the hero AND the villain AND the funny sidekick AND the police detective AND the nerd AND the background extras, etc, etc are all Asian. I believe watching shows like that will subtly change her sense of belonging in the world in ways that seeing a few token characters would not.

+1. Thank you for stating this so well. I enjoyed Footloose and all those movies. But it was HARD growing up and never seeing yourself anywhere on screen. Thank goodness things are a little better now.

+1 another Asian American. Our standards of beauty when I was younger was Caucasian. Today, it's so different, and my kids see beautiful faces of all kinds in the media.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Friends in the 1990s - I lived in NYC from 1986-1999.

Bars and neighborhoods were very segregated.

I hung out with white Catholic college educated single people who worked on Wall Street between ages of 24-33 lived in Manhattan and grew up on Long Island.

There was no internet, cell phones. Bars and places catered to particular crowds

ok, but none of the Friends roles worked on Wall St.

The roles in Friends were:

1. someone who worked in a coffee house then at a fashion house -- there are a lot of Asian people in NYC fashion industry. My friend who is 55 (Korean) was there.
2. someone who worked at a museum, and the only one to date a minority
3. an actor -- I'm pretty sure NYC had minority actors
4. a white collar worker in a boring office job-- were there no minorities working in boring white collar office jobs in NYC in the 90s? I'm Asian American, worked in Orange County, CA in the 90s, which was very white, and even we had several non white people in our office
5. A chef -- need I say more
6. A masseuse.. this is the only person who may never have dealt with a minority in their daily lives.

Again I loved that show, but it was white washed.

[Anonymous]

MTV launched in 1981. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” aired in 1984. People in rural Kansas could easily have been influenced by television and movies at that time.

Here’s what some believe to be the first known breakdancing video…from the 1940s:
https://youtu.be/gxn_pCig-js?si=dhTGwIAY_sV86aAF

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Learning that some of y’all grew up in towns with no black people - this explains a LOT about some of the things I’ve read on DCUM over the years!

Yes, today you're learning the US is 60-70% white and what that means. If you think urban centers like LA, Chicago, DC, NY, Philly etc. represent the country you're sorely mistaken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember when they were outraged Dunkirk had no black characters.

A friggin WW2 movie in Europe where the English were trying to escape for their lives……and they’re mad because that historical story has no major presence of black people. Truly insane how DEI is a de facto cult. You can’t even tell stories from history now as they were.

Black Americans fought in WWII. My own mother’s uncle fought in WWI — and sent home letters and pictures that we still have. The real cult is the effort to erase POC from history— and from fictionalized depictions of history.

Because there were some black soldiers in WW2 means they need to be overrepresented in WW2 films? Puhlease. 99% of the casualties in WW2 were either white or Asian. It was DUNKIRK for cryin’ out loud. If you want to make a super niche story about black soldiers during WW2 go ahead, but the war was overwhelmingly fought by whites and Asians, and they by far and away had the most deaths. It’s would just be extra weird and out of place to add in a lot of black characters into a story like Dunkirk.

Yeah but the movie Dunkirk left out the Asians as well. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58466527.amp

The Indian unit was 300 men out of over 300,000 evacuated, and they worked on the supplies, not front-line fighting. There would be no reason to feature them in the movie. You people are absurd.

Why are we still uselessly reminiscing a war fought by imperialists and colonizers in the first place?

Imagine being extraordinarily ignorant to the entire other half of WW2 in the Pacific, IndoChina, and the rest of the far East. Holy Toledo.