Oh, what happens when political correctness causes racism and sexism to clash. What began as an innocent email exchange between an actress wanting to learn and understand the view of a minority for a movie role, has been turned into another made up example of America’s new favorite trending term, “white privilege.”
It all began last March when actress Tilda Swinton sent an email to Margaret Cho, asking the Asian-American comedian why Asians were upset Swinton was cast as the sorcerer "the Ancient One" in the Marvel Comics movie Doctor Strange. Her character in the comics was a Tibetan male, but movie studies don’t want to upset the Chinese government, since showing your movies there is very lucrative.
There was much discussion as to why an Asian character was given to a white actress to begin with, and Cho has often been outspoken about the lack of Asian representation in the media, so Swinton thought she would best be suited to answer the question.
Not so. According to Cho, the email made her feel like a “house Asian,” so Swinton released the entire email exchange to the feminist website Jezebel for the public to weigh in on the matter. Turns out Jessica Prois, executive editor at The Huffington Post, decided to add her two cents in an article that accused Swinton of pulling a “white privilege” card and slapping her on the wrist because she dared to ask a woman of color about race relations. Apparently Ms. Prois believes the “emotional labor of explaining relations is inherently problematic and privileged. It shouldn’t be on minority communities to do the work of turning white people into race scholars.”
So white people should talk about race relations but should refrain from asking minorities to weigh in because…well…that’s extending white privilege by having minorities do the “emotional labor of explaining.”
Prois also took issue with Swinton’s “textbook white feminist” approach because Swinton asked Cho to celebrate gender rights achievements instead of focusing on race. In her email, Swinton wrote on the barrier broken by switching up the gender and “not wanting to engage with the old 'Dragon lady' trope, they chose to write the character as being of (ancient) Celtic origin.”
Though substituting “the wise old sage archetype with a woman is an encouraging move,” Prois believes Swinton “failed to recognize the difference between a lack of representation among white people and minority groups.” Prois took it upon herself to speak on Swinton’s behalf by actually suggesting the actresses’ train of thought seemed to be, “Shouldn’t we all just be glad they chose a woman instead of a man,” to which Prois responded, “in fact, no.”
Prois found that Swinton’s request that the email exchange with Cho be private was also “an example of misguided white feminism…essentially asked for a private tutoring session on race from a woman of color.”
Seriously you can’t make this stuff up, but leave it to the folks at The Huffington Post to make something out of nothing.
Does it mean anything that the traditional male role was not only to an actress, but a bisexual one? Both Swinton and Cho consider themselves bisexual, perhaps that’s some common ground they can both agree upon and consider a win in that department. Instead, it’s another example of the Left tearing itself apart over which form of discrimination is the worst.
