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    PoshLustLAAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:19pm

    I was walking down Vine in Hollywood, on my way to Trader Joe’s after a long sweaty day working at a DV shelter in the Valley. I had to wear a back brace because I have scoliosis that was never addressed because I only had insurance on and off as a child. I was painfully aware of how horrible I looked, in pain, stressed by working in DV: it was one of the lowest and hopeless days for me emotionally.

    I walked by the Macau next to the Trader Joes’s on vine and there was a group waiting outside (patio type area), and one guy kept staring hard. All I could think was “Didn’t your mama tell you not to stare?”

    I had to pass buy the Macau again to get back to the Metro, struggling with my backbrace and carrying groceries, and it was the same guy: Trevor Noah. (This was just before he started TDS I think he had a show at the Wiltern). He made a joke to his friends as a I passed by, and like a living cliche I wanted the Earth to eat me. Actually I wanted to scream “What the hell is wrong with you?” But I said, “no, not going to act the fool today.” I regret not acting the fool. Who makes fun someone’s struggle?

    But you know what? I found myself watching the show and critqueing like someone in an abusive relationship who thinks they can help the abuser be a better person. He’s a bully who was probably bullied as a child, but we’re adults now, bro.

    I didn’t mean to drag the tone of this article down, I just needed to get it off my chest.

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      Aimée LutkinPoshLustLA
      2/27/16 3:22pm

      Terrible story! And tbh I’m not a fan, but this interview is great. Too bad people are complicated/shitty/still right sometimes. Sorry you had that experience.

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      candy_pantsPoshLustLA
      2/27/16 3:27pm

      Oh god that sounds awful. I felt like I was there with you. That horrible self conscious feeling but also trying to comprehend why someone is trying to make you feel that way.

      I have read that he had a tough upbringing but I don’t buy that as an excuse, for anyone. Everyone has shit in their life but not everyone takes it out on others. You can excuse a thoughtless hot headed moment when someone is going through something rough but that just sounds like nastiness in its purest form. Buns me out cos I liked what little I’ve seen of him.

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    ad infinitumAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:43pm

    The actor who played Colbert’s black friend on The Colbert Report (they had to hire an actor because the show didn’t have any black employees) wrote a truly depressing article about this years ago. One of the things he talked about was meeting a Daily Show writer, asking about the application process for the show, and being told that they tried hiring a black guy once and it didn’t work out, so they weren’t going to do it again.

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      Meggannaad infinitum
      2/27/16 4:07pm

      That actor, Jordan Carlos, is now a contributor on Larry Wilmore’s show and he’s really great on it.

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      ad infinitumMegganna
      2/27/16 4:23pm

      Is he really? That’s excellent.

      I don’t watch Wilmore’s show anywhere enough (I try to keep up TDS, Wilmore, and Colbert, and manage maybe 1-2 shows a week for each of them), but I really enjoy the ones I do catch. Wilmore is straddling that line between being deeply funny and providing incisive insight far better than Trevor Noah has been able to manage, at least thus far — and he’s assembled a team of crazy talented people to back him up.

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    stillmarthajones30Aimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:19pm

    LN: And change only comes when the conversation is happening in all forms at all times. Not just one tactic is going to do it. It’s got to be a convergence.

    Emphasis mine, because I know how y’all love to say,

    Well i just don’t understand why those negros are interrupting politicians, its so uncouth.

    And I don’t understand why they are so mean, that’s not going to do anything, and SEE ONE OF YOUR OWN JUST SAID IT.

    EVERY FORM OF RESISTANCE IS VALUABLE AND SERVES ITS PURPOSE.

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      College Granddadstillmarthajones30
      2/27/16 4:02pm

      Yep, blocking traffic is so fucking awesome. What I, as a poor black man, love the most is being late for work because people shut the buses down.

      Tell me, what is accomplished by that? How is, "I love black people so much I will make them sir on a bus" doing anything productive?

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      TheVageniusCollege Granddad
      2/27/16 4:55pm

      Conversation. People talk about it. And people read about it. And some people are educated in those conversations. Slowly. But every bit counts.

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    PunditGuyAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:04pm

    That gatekeeper notion would be a real a-ha moment for a lot of people, I bet. The studios probably don’t even realize all the ways in which the deck is stacked. That’s not a point of absolution, but it is a potential point of education.

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      DontBeSuchaBoobPunchTinaPunditGuy
      2/27/16 3:18pm

      That gatekeeper notion would be a real a-ha moment for a lot of people, I bet.

      It certainly was for me! And apparently for Trevor Noah, too, so I don’t feel TOO clueless.

      So I asked, “Why didn’t you audition?” And they said, “We didn’t know about it.” But they told me they’d sent it out to all the agents and managers. And they all went: “Oh, that’s where you made the mistake. We can’t get agents or managers.”

      I mean, damn. That sucks, and I don’t think there’s much, if anything, I can do as a consumer of entertainment to change it... this is going to have to be an internal industry movement.

      Glad to see some prominent voices such as Noah and Nyong’o taking it up.

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      MaxxumanDontBeSuchaBoobPunchTina
      2/27/16 5:04pm

      I wonder if by "We can't get agents or managers" they meant they can't afford them?

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    vertigoshtickAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 2:55pm

    Okay, Trevor Noah, you’ve earned two more weeks of me watching your show in hopes that it improves.

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      AltairaMorbius2200ADvertigoshtick
      2/27/16 3:06pm

      I feel like he’s a really smart guy that maybe isn’t that funny, but I haven’t seen too much of him since I never really caught the Daily Show excpet in online clips anyway.

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      delusivelightvertigoshtick
      2/27/16 3:12pm

      I think he’s doing better since he implemented the new format (standing instead of at the desk, and more of a stand-up type feel). Jon Stewart was a hard act to follow.

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    snarkylicious1138Aimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:02pm

    Pretty smart interview and definitely correct about the issue of gatekeepers. Even in small, indie communities, this is the obstacle that exists. Toss in funding and there’s a lot of lost artistic voices out there. Welp, back to looking for women in film grants.

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      Constant Colorssnarkylicious1138
      2/27/16 5:22pm

      It reminds me of how real estate agencies have been and continue to be perpetrators of systemic racism.

      There are all these seemingly innocuous industries which are quietly perpetuating inequality and you’d never have cause to even think about most of them until you had direct business with them.

      It’s disheartening because these are often private industries and are thus hard to regulate yet easy to ignore.

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      Gruff McGruffConstant Colors
      2/27/16 5:29pm

      Regarding your comment on real estate, let me share a short story. My wife and I (who are both black) had just moved to a major metro area. We stopped into a real estate office and said we were interested in finding an apartment. We asked about a particular heavily Latino neighborhood and the agent made a comment to the effect of “you don’t want to live there **wink, wink**.” I have no idea why she felt comfortable assuming my wife and I were prejudiced against Latinos like she is. Anyways, just thought I’d share.

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    Josh SalaamAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 4:00pm

    Maybe you should find a better messenger for how racist Hollywood/show business is than a 32-year-old comedian who was given one of the highest-profile jobs in television despite being a relative unknown and has proceeded to struggle in the job?

    I have no problem believing what Trevor Noah says, but you could not pick a worse person to be spreading the word.

    Well...maybe Jaden Smith.

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      I'm Fart and I'm SmunnyJosh Salaam
      2/27/16 4:31pm

      You don’t think a comedian who was literally born illegal during apartheid and became successful in a country where stand up comedy is very new would be a good choice for talking about racism? Jon Stewart was not great at the beginning, either. Noah is getting gradually better, and he’s actually done some pretty intelligent pieces. It will take time for him to adjust, just like it took Jon Stewart time to adjust.

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      Josh SalaamI'm Fart and I'm Smunny
      2/27/16 5:06pm

      Trevor Noah is very qualified—and consequently would be a terrific choice—to discuss racism in general and/or a variety of its specific manifestations.

      This is a piece about racism in a very narrow context i.e. American show business.

      It’s very hard to argue a guy that young, that unknown and from a different country was hampered too much by American racism, especially when confined to the very industry that just installed him as The Daily Show anchor.

      How many 32-year-olds have a job like that? And how many of those had virtually no American audience when they got the job?

      Stewart was 37 when he got the job and the show was basically irrelevant back then. Colbert’s 50. Fallon’s 41. Samantha Bee is 46. Kimmel was 36 when he got his gig, but like Stewart, he had to build it from effectively nothing.

      You could make a pretty strong argument The Daily Show was the biggest name in late-night television when Noah got the job, but he is, by far, the youngest and least-established anchor.

      Again, I’m not saying what he is saying is inaccurate or that he’s not in a good position to observe the racism at issue. I’m saying he’s an almost uniquely poor choice to be the messenger.

      Why pick one of the few examples of a minority who’s been fast-tracked to prominence, arguably without merit?

      And that’s what I mean about his struggles—it’s not that he will never be better, though I don’t think he’s funny whatsoever. It’s that right now, while the discussion is being held, he’s struggling. Which supports the idea he had no business getting the job in the first place, unfairly or not. Which weakens the overall message that racism is holding back minorities in Hollywood.

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    Breakfast for DinnerAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 3:20pm

    You spell NYong’o’s first name differently three different ways in the first four graphs (including the headline) - ‘Lupita’, ‘Lupta’, ‘Lupto’.

    Even allowing for the occasional, inevitable typo: c’mon!

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      mungbeanBreakfast for Dinner
      2/27/16 3:23pm

      I noticed that too! But looks like Aimée just churned out 5 articles today so it was probably an honest mistake!

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      Aimée LutkinBreakfast for Dinner
      2/27/16 11:49pm

      yeah it was just me. fixed! To be fair...to myself...the third typo is just copy from NYT. I only f-ed up once!

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    kainkusanagiAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 4:47pm

    Has anyone ever analysed the percentage of minority leading roles against the US census percentages of minorities? What I mean by that is this. If there is a majority of white people in the US and a movie takes place in the US, wouldn’t the majority of the cast be white? I honestly don’t know the statistics, but when people talk about Hollywood racism I often wonder if it’s racism or if it has more to do with percentages.

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      ad infinitumkainkusanagi
      2/27/16 5:37pm

      People have, in fact. And have concluded that the percentage of minorities featured in films and TV shows is significantly below the percentage of minority populations in the country every single time. To quote an NPR piece on a recently released study:

      —Just 28.3 percent of characters with dialogue were from non-white racial/ethnic groups, though such groups are nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population.—

      These are characters who have as little as a single line of dialogue — if they were looking at leading or even supporting roles, the discrepancy would be much greater. And that’s not even mentioning the geographic problem. The majority of TV shows and movies are set in large cities, which are statistically much more diverse than the national average, and yet they are routinely presented as being as lily white as, say, central Nebraska, if not even more so.

      Put more simply, yes, it’s racism. (And sexism — women make up more than 50% of the U.S. population but account for only a third of speaking roles. Again, not major or significant characters — simply roles that have any lines at all).

      ETA a link to the NPR article: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetw...

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      kainkusanagiad infinitum
      2/27/16 6:54pm

      Interesting statistics. Thanks for that. So the other question I have would be viewership race statistics. If the majority of viewers are white, is it racist to create shows that appeal to them? I’m not saying that white people can only enjoy white dominated shows, but I’m wondering if casting whites is more about the mass appealing to white viewers who naturally identify with their race, than because casting directors choosing whites out of racism.

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    VeraxusAimée Lutkin
    2/27/16 5:18pm

    “Oh, that’s where you made the mistake. We can’t get agents or managers.”

    I have often wondered about this. You can say you want diversity, but then you don’t get a diverse turnout, and you have to ask yourself “Why is that?” This is why. Those things don’t reach into communities with the diverse talent. Why not? How much amazing talent is being missed because of this? I’d bet a metric fuckton of talent.

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      TakahashiVeraxus
      2/27/16 8:24pm

      Yeah but it’s so much easier to blame it on historically disenfranchised populations.

      You’re a minority who grew up in an impoverished neighborhood and now you can’t get into a top rate four year university? Maybe you should try harder.

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      SquirmishesTakahashi
      2/27/16 9:14pm

      BOOTSTRAPS

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