America Behind the Color Line by Henry Louis Gates

Author:Henry Louis Gates [Gates, Henry Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), CUR000000
ISBN: 9780446533904
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2007-10-14T13:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Black Hollywood

Until recently, Hollywood screen icons were mostly white. Today they come in Technicolor. In 2002, for the first time in the same year, two African Americans even received the top Oscar awards—and a third received an honorary Oscar for a lifetime of achievement in film—forcing many of us to wonder if racism in Hollywood is a relic of the past. Halle Berry’s widely quoted acceptance speech declared that Hollywood, one of the most contentious battlefields in the Civil Rights Movement, had at long last opened its doors to people of color. Hollywood is famously surreal, a million miles away from Harvard, where I teach. I’m here to discover what it’s like on the inside, for black people: as an A-list film star, a top director, a struggling actress, and whether or not Halle’s and Denzel’s recent Oscars do spell equal opportunity for black people in Hollywood. Where does fantasy end and reality begin?

I have to confess that Los Angeles has grown on me. It’s like a sprawling F. A. O. Schwarz for adults: the sun always seems to shine, it never rains, and everyone is dressed to kill. The people here wear the faces of America’s future: black, caramel, sepia, beige, white—multicultural eye candy.

It’s so easy to fool yourself into thinking that you’ve left the East Coast’s hierarchy of race and class behind, that it’s different here. In Los Angeles, people tell you over and over: the only color that matters is green . . . it’s money, not race, that powers the machine.

Is Hollywood like the U.S. Army, color-blind in its pursuit of excellence and, in this case, profit?

My first appointment was with a man whose enormous success is certainly a sign that some things have changed. I met Chris Tucker, the star of Rush Hour. When the film grossed $241 million, comedian Chris Rock called Tucker “the biggest star in the world.” Chris moved smoothly from the regional black comedy circuit to Hollywood’s A-list. He has what executives call crossover appeal—his movies are as popular with suburban whites as they are with blacks. From humble beginnings in Atlanta, Chris now inhabits a very different world.

I spoke with Chris in his home in an exclusive gated community in the San Fernando Valley. “Do you think we’re on the verge of a renaissance for black people in Hollywood . . . is it wide open?” I asked him.

“There’s a broader audience now for black people in Hollywood. But Hollywood is still a tight niche. You flip in through the door to get a movie, and then getting a hit movie is like trying to get into heaven . . . That’s why there’s only a few black comedians you can name, a few black actresses you can name. You can name a few white actors at the top who are really making a whole bunch of money, really doing good.”

Had he experienced racism before making it onto the A-list—or since? “When you make films in Hollywood, you experience everything .

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