ahalpert
Well-known member
I showed you studies where identical resumes for candidates of different races faced different rates of interviews and hiring. White people got hired more even though the hypothetical black candidate was equally qualified. The same goes for lending. The same goes for house value appraisal. I doubt these studies have been conducted for the film industry because the sample sizes would not be big enough and most film industry hiring is through recommendations and word of mouth.
There are black individuals who benefit from DEI policies and can quickly rise through the ranks as a result. And that's kind of the purpose. After more black folks are embedded in the power structure, you won't need DEI policies anymore. Most of the individuals who succeed in those structures, at least from what I've seen in the corporate world, are the type of people who would be headed to the c-suite anyway if they were white. They're competent, conformist, and know how to play the game.
I have no idea why someone would want to put together an all-female crew. I don't see why white men should be a smaller proportion of the crew than they are of the general hiring pool.
They also shouldn't be firing you on such short notice without a kill fee and not paying you for prepro. These seem like the kinds of thongs that unions could be useful for.
In a perfect world, i would rather see race/gender-blind hiring. I don't think that's feasible with the way film crews get assembled.
I think that class-based hiring benefits would probably be preferable to race- and gender-based systems. If you're rich, you probably don't need the leg up. Poor whites face many of the same problems and disadvantages as other marginalized communities. And the whole point of anti-racist policies is that the class standing of black people has suffered due to unfair policies and bias. So, if they're disproportionately poor then they would be disproportionately helped by a class-based policy. And if the policy works to boost their standing over time, it will benefit their group less and less and fade away on its own. But I think a class-based system is also difficult to implement and that the politics are challenging because we've been brainwashed into thinking that we're all middle class.
I'm not saying that white men should only be 29% of film crews. I'm saying that this particular quota, which I support, would allow them to be over-represented on set by 200-300% of their ratio in the general population. Ergo, white men still have a damn good shot of getting hired.
This is grade school logic, brother. In sports, your skill level is indisputably demonstrable and quantifiable. What's your batting average? Nobody can argue with that. That's why sports is more of a true meritocracy. But skill level in other industries is much more subjective.
Furthermore, black people are not the majority in this country and don't have a history of exploiting and disenfranchising white people. And white people are still embedded in the power structures of sports as the owners, coaches, quarterbacks. If there were bias against non-black people in basketball, we would expect to see talented players of other races in high school and college be passed over by professional teams.
There are so many good african-american basketball players because so many of them play basketball, as opposed to soccer or swimming. I generally expect the composition of a profession to reflect the composition of its entry pool. Show me where white people are being shut out and I'll support their inclusion. This is simply not true in the film industry because they are being hired at rates disproportionate to their participation.
Let's say that the government issued reparations checks of $10k to every black American to compensate them for the loss of income they suffered from redlining, Jim crow, and slavery. Do you think that would be racist because they didn't give checks to white people too? It's race-based but the whole point is to counteract prior racist policy (formal or informal). That's what these quotas aim to accomplish. They're not a permanent requirement. After the composition of the industry changes, they will go away.
Most of the crews I've been on have been majority straight white guys, far more represented than they are in film schools. I've seen people be dismissive and disrespectful to women and minorities. I've overheard a lot of sexist language and jokes in front of women that was intended to make them uncomfortable. I've heard many people, including you, imply that white men are superior at filmmaking.
My wife is mixed-race. She gets treated completely differently by police than i do. She was accused of plagiarism in school and of being a troublemaker even though she was a better student than I was and better behaved. (My best friend in middle school was black and when we would misbehave together, he would get sent to the principal and I would be left in class.)
If you think black people in this country have the same opportunities as white people, you are delusional. You belong to the most privileged group in this society and frankly, I think you're a whiner. I'm not going to bother explaining any more basic facts about our society that we all know are true.
