Growing up I always thought it was really unfair that Hollywood films mostly have white actors and actresses and not enough people ‘of colour.’ However, isn’t that just because there are more white people than any other racial demographic in America? It’s like complaining that Bollywood films only cast Indian people. Spike Lee himself decided to take it upon himself to make movies showcasing black actors and actresses that dealt with problems within the black community. Examples include School Daze which is about the (absurd) issue of darkskin vs lightskin in the black community. Another example is one of my favourite movies Jungle Fever; made in 1990 nearly 30 years ago (fuck), it was still seen as a ‘problem’ for a black man to be interested in a white woman.
(Never mind the fact that they were just two individual people who got along -- in fact the first thing they were discussing was food. Yay! Cooking commonality! The guy shouldn’t even have been seeing her anyway; he was married.)
I’ve seen plenty of American movies where there are mostly black actors and others where there are mostly white actors. America appears as a very racially segregated country where people care too much about the superficial issue of skin tone. You have stuff in common with people based on who they are as people. The colour of someone’s skin is unbelievably irrelevant. I didn’t decide to have brown skin. I take no pride in stuff that I didn’t decide. We don’t need this thing called white or black pride. Take pride in personal accomplishments, like making a movie with a great story, whether it’s Think Like a Man or Beverly Hills Cop, or American Beauty or Whiplash.