Uh, OP, everybody is a little bit racist, liberal and conservative alike. This is hardly news.

What's your deal anyway? You seem more worried about sticking it to liberals than you do about the issues that are being discussed. Really, you're obsessed with proving how bad liberals really are as human beings. Maybe you should look at that obsession.

Anonymous wrote:He totally interrupted her, and then talked over her when she tried to interrupt him back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njFBkJSpUrY

If you honestly think a man would generally be just as sensitive to a female prostitute's point of view than a woman would, I think you're nuts.

But I guess I'm not really that surprised that the only black woman got talked over in a room filled with 7 mostly white guys and a white woman.

I don't think Damon is racist, but he definitely did a little whitesplaining soft shoe there.

I think PP above had a good point about the panelists perhaps being at cross purposes: Damon didn't want to have to change the rules of the contest to make it about picking the best directors FOR THIS SCRIPT, he wanted to pick the best directors, period. Whereas Brown was basically saying, given the script we have, we have to pick the best directors for this script who will be able to deal with sensitivity to racial and gender dynamics, and I don't think our best options are necessarily the teams of two white guys.

This is bull.

A Soldier's Story and Amistad were directed by Jewish white guys. You can be a good director regardless of what you look like. So women don't always need to direct movies about women and black directors don't need to limit their movies to stories about black people.

I also think they left Effie Brown in kind of a difficult position because at the end the white woman basically told her "it's up to us to fix the script." How exactly is Brown supposed to imagine that is going to happen with this crew of white people who just talked over her and told her what diversity is? What exactly is she supposed to imagine they are going to say to her when she explains ways that the black prostitute character doesn't work. Because it doesn't sound like it's going to be, "you're right, Effie, this is written as a two-dimensional stereotype, not an actual human."

Anonymous wrote:People are upset because Damon is for "giving someone this job based entirely on merit and leaving all other factors out of it." Really?

I love how some folk love to call out merit as if only white people have "merit" in any area. Fuck personal experience, personal point of view, a white man is always going do better of telling someone else's story due to his "merit". Exactly how do you get this "merit"? BY BEING THE ONLY FUCKING ONE THAT EVER GETS PICKED BY PEOPLE WHO LOOK JUST LIKE YOU, HAVE THE SAME VIEWPOINT, EXPERIENCE AND POINT OF VIEW. But, hey, at least you have merit.

Anonymous wrote:Ehh. Does the person making the film matter as much as the subject? I think Hollywood is putting out more diverse films than ever.

Let's see does it matter if the person just works at the McDonald's or owns it.
You cannot be that short sighted can you?
It's about the POWER POSITION.
SMDH!!!

Anonymous wrote:That comment hardly makes him racist.

What it makes him is stupid.

Plus, they have Affleck there to represent the POV of the white pimp.

He totally interrupted her, and then talked over her when she tried to interrupt him back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njFBkJSpUrY

If you honestly think a man would generally be just as sensitive to a female prostitute's point of view than a woman would, I think you're nuts.

But I guess I'm not really that surprised that the only black woman got talked over in a room filled with 7 mostly white guys and a white woman.

I don't think Damon is racist, but he definitely did a little whitesplaining soft shoe there.

I think PP above had a good point about the panelists perhaps being at cross purposes: Damon didn't want to have to change the rules of the contest to make it about picking the best directors FOR THIS SCRIPT, he wanted to pick the best directors, period. Whereas Brown was basically saying, given the script we have, we have to pick the best directors for this script who will be able to deal with sensitivity to racial and gender dynamics, and I don't think our best options are necessarily the teams of two white guys.

Anonymous wrote:Well, Jezebel's headline does sort of explain part of the problem here: "Matt Damon Interrupts Successful Black Woman Filmmaker to Explain Diversity to Her."

He didn't interrupt her. They were having a discussion on whom should be awarded a grant to make a film.

Her "point" is rather insipid. She favored a directing team of a white woman and an Asian male b/c they seemed more "diverse" than the other teams, thus giving them a better understanding interracial and power dynamics dynamics between a prostitute and a pimp. The only real life experience that might be useful would being a former pimp or prostitute.

It's like saying you need to be white and British to understand Shakespeare.

Whitesplaining and mansplaining. And I ordinarily like Matt Damon.

I wouldn't call it racist, but it definitely qualifies as whitesplaining! And liberal or not, he's a rich white movie star from Boston, so...I don't find it particularly shocking that he would say something like this.

Something like racism isn't a yes or no question, it's more of a continuum. Someone can be generally open-minded and aware, but still have areas of ignorance and bias. It's how, for instance, someone can have friends from a particular minority group but not want someone from that minority group to be their doctor because they think people from that group tend to be less intelligent. It's entirely possible that Matt Damon generally supports social justice/racial equality, but has a blind spot in this area that's a little more personal to him.

Also, there's a difference between a contest that tries to determine who is the best filmmaker, and then gives that filmmaker a script to direct as a prize, and a contest that tries to determine the best filmmaker to make that particular script. I think some of the disagreement described may have come from two different understandings of what the objective of the show is.

Liberals love to eat their own young. I am one, but this aspect of internet liberal lynch mob culture now is really disturbing. And pointless. These are the same people who gave Chrissie Hynde sanctimonious lectures about how she should discuss her own rape.

People are upset because Damon is for "giving someone this job based entirely on merit and leaving all other factors out of it." Really?

Anonymous wrote:Well, I DO think it's a little weird for Damon to tell black film producer Effie Brown that "when you're talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not the casting of the show." I'd never try to tell a black person what diversity means, or correct them on how to achieve it. I'd talk about my opinion, sure, but making it sound like I had the right answer and their contradictory answer (after years in the business!) is to me disrespectful, mansplaining, and whitesplianing.

I do think he seemed to be missing Effie Brown's point. She was saying that the directors of the movie would have to be familiar with and sensitive to minority viewpoints in order to pull off a film in which the only major female black character was a black prostitute beaten up by her white pimp. Damon -- part of a white male duo team -- said, hey, these other white males teams mentioned that issue, too, of course they will be equally as sensitive to it. We don't need the directors to be diverse, just the actors. But Brown' point is that you probably won't get the same sensitivity to the issue with two white guy directors, even if they lip service the issue.

Like, Straight Out Of Compton was not directed by white dudes. Neither was Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X, or Boyz in the Hood.

I'm a PP. This is well articulated. I think this is valid that Matt wasn't 100 percent seeing Effie's point and could have addressed her concerns more smoothly. He could have said some variation of...we have a talented team, including you Effie, to make sure these very real issues are raised and thought about. We need to think about this stuff and I'm so glad you brought it up. However, I think our main selection criteria has to be picking the most talented director. What do you think?

Then what's she going to say? No, pick the minorities who aren't as good. She was trying to make a valid point.