Over the weekend—as I was watching Inception on cable, in a modestly interesting coincidence—I stumbled across this Tumblr post:
Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone’s white. That’s what we have to change. - Idris Elba
I can easily imagine a film like "Inception" with an all-Black cast. It would be more advanced, more subtle, more profound, and just better.
It comes with an image of six black actors who would fill the roles. Now, I could take issue with Elba's saying of Inception that "everyone's white"—we should ask Ken Watanabe or Dileep Rao how they feel about that characterization—but I understand his general point, more or less. You don't see a ton of big budget action flicks in which black actors are the leads (Will Smith's extensive history of success and Django Unchained and the upcoming Elba feature Pacific Rim notwithstanding).
What I find vaguely horrifying is the additional comment by the author of that Tumblr. Let's spotlight it again: "I can easily imagine a film like 'Inception' with an all-Black cast. It would be more advanced, more subtle, more profound, and just better."
That's racist! Or, at the very least, racialist.
No, seriously: imagine the following sentence:
I can easily imagine a film like "I Can Do Bad All by Myself" with an all-white cast. It would be more advanced, more subtle, more profound, and just better.
Try to conjure a mental image of the outrage that would ensue if that sort of racialist thinking were not only tolerated but celebrated. I simply can't.