Remember all those promises that if Barack Obama was elected president, racism would end forever?
On Tuesday, just two days before Thanksgiving, entertainment website The Wrap actually published an article with the title "Hollywood Is Dreaming of a Black Christmas":
2013’s holiday season boasts three Christmas movies with mostly African-American casts, and while all these films are ostensibly being marketed to viewers of all ethnicities, distributors are clearly courting a black audience and relying upon those ticket-buyers to support these releases.
So far, it’s a strategy that’s working: “The Best Man Holiday,” released by Universal on Nov. 15, topped “Thor: The Dark World” to win its opening Friday, eventually coming in second for the weekend with a strong $30 million take. Even with a 60 percent dip on the following weekend, the film is expected to take in at least $75 million — not bad for a sequel to a film that came out in 1999.
Here are the money paragraphs:
Christmas films are by no means guaranteed to have a shelf life, but when they hit the bulls-eye, they become standards that are re-played and re-watched and, perhaps most importantly for the industry, re-purchased again and again and again.
And it’s about time, frankly, that Christmas movies stopped being so consistently white.
Now I don't disagree with the point here: movies shouldn't be consistently based on any ethnic group.
But how does advocating they should be based on one and not another - in a nation as culturally diverse as ours - not be considered racist?
Isn't it inherently racist to be promoting one demographic group over others?
Fortunately for the fastest growing ethnic group in our nation, the author does address this, but in a somewhat derogatory fashion:
With movies like “Instructions Not Included,” Pantelion Films have tapped into a market that’s starved for glossy, audience-friendly movies in Spanish, so why shouldn’t every demographic out there have its own choice of big, sparkly, sentimental Christmas movies?
Or, why shouldn't Christmas movies - like anything else offered in America! - be marketed to Americans rather than to a specific demographic group? Isn't that when racism ends, and we all start behaving as one nation again?
A look at this author's bio will give you a clue why he likely doesn't want that:
Alonso Duralde, TheWrap's lead movie critic, has written about film for Movieline, Salon, MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on What the Flick?! (The Young Turks Network). Senior Programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival, he is also a consultant for the USA Film Festival/Dallas, where he spent five years as artistic director. A former arts and entertainment editor at the Advocate, he was a regular contributor to "The Rotten Tomatoes Show" on Current.
Picture becoming clearer?
I don't know about Duralde, but I'm dreaming of an American Christmas - where neither the color of one's skin nor the demographic group you belong to means a darned thing.
We just recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's march on Washington.
Does it really mean nothing to the left in this nation other than an opportunity to divide us further along racial lines?
Whatever the answer, I'm sure King is rolling over in his grave observing the class warfare being waged by liberals in this country almost 50 years after his death.
