Racism by the Numbers

In the “post-racial” era of Barack Obama, there are those who like to believe that race is no longer a factor in determining ones ability to succeed in America.  Many would argue that race plays even less or a role here in Canada.  This is despite mountains of anecdotal evidence to the contrary and a near-consensus among academics who study these questions.  But one form of evidence that I’ve found to be the most compelling is statistical data.  It may be a cliché but most of the time, the numbers don’t lie.

For example, a study commissioned by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada found that, in 2001, blacks earned an average income that was just 80% of the average income for non-visible-minority Canadians.  This was despite the fact that 26% of Blacks over the age of 15 had a bachelor’s degree or higher (compared with 14% of the non-visible-minority population).  Moreover, a 2005 study of the police service in Kingston, Ontario found that blacks were 3.7 times more likely than whites to be stopped and questioned by law enforcement.  A 2002 Toronto Star study of the Toronto Police Service yielded similar results.  A quick Google search shows that study upon study has reached the same conclusion throughout Canada, the US and the UK.

Skeptics may read these numbers and say, “well perhaps blacks are less talented on average by the time they reach the age of employment due to diminished opportunities as children and adolescents.”  Or, “perhaps blacks are more likely to live in high-crime areas and are therefore more likely to be questioned by the cops.”  Both valid hypotheses that could offer non-racist explanations for the behaviour Canadian police officers and employers.  But how would one explain this?  A 2004 paper published by the Cambridge-based National Bureau of Economic Research found that resumés with black-sounding names were 50% less likely to get call-backs from potential employers.  It would appear as though the numbers are trying to tell us something.

Another indicator of racism that’s been getting a lot of attention lately is the portrayal of characters from different races in film.  Hollywood’s latest blockbuster, Avatar, appears poised to break all kinds of box-office records before it leaves theatres, but one of the few criticisms of the film so far has been its portrayal of the N’avi, an Alien race from an Earth-like planet called Pandora whose habitat is threatened by a group of (mostly white) humans with a penchant for interplanetary colonization.  Many have inferred parallels between the N’avi and the Native Americans, whose land was usurped through equally nefarious channels.  Seen through this lens, the film is a poignant critique of imperialism.  However, this isn’t new in Hollywood.  Imperialism as it was practiced in previous centuries is no more glorified in modern film than is the institution of slavery.

Instead, what some observers have taken issue with is that, in spite the fact that the N’avi occupy the moral high ground, the hero of the film is still a white human male.  This recent article from the Huffington Post

discusses the ubiquity of this common Hollywood archetype and lists a number of popular Hollywood films with a similar storyline, including The Last Samurai, Pocahontas, and Dances with Wolves.  I would add to that list 2006’s The Last King of Scotland.  In this case the filmmakers went so far as to take a story based on actual events (taken from the presidency of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin) and insert a fictional white character to serve as the protagonist.  Such is the importance of having a white hero, even when all the other major characters are non-white.

A common element in each of these films (Avatar included) is that, in addition to fact that the marginalized and vulnerable group (usually cast as the other) needing a white hero to rescue them from their fate, that white hero always manages to seduce the others’ most beautiful woman.  Despite these prodigious helpings of sexual attention, the hero is tormented by the crimes of his people and the audience is often made to feel more sympathy for him than for the people actually being victimized.

But if there is one thing the Hollywood establishment loves more than a strong, benevolent, virile white hero, it’s a weak, vulnerable, asexual, diabolical black villain.  That’s why I’m not at all surprised at the early Oscar buzz surrounding relative newcomer Mo’nique for her role as the evil, welfare-dependent mother in this year’s token black, critically-acclaimed movie Precious (because we all know there has to be exactly one every year).  Having watched the movie last night, I can honestly say that this character is the most loathsome creature I’ve ever seen on a movie screen.  She’s physically and verbally abusive to her teenaged daughter (to an extreme that borders on sadism) she has the looks of a “before” model, she’s unintelligent, she’s a social and financial failure and she’s a serial pedophile enabler.  In other words, she’s has all the elements required for a black actress to garner the attention of the Academy.

Now, some might accuse me of being cynical, or even paranoid, and I may well be.  But is that enough to explain what I, and so many others, have recognized as a consistent pattern in Hollywood?  In an attempt to answer that question, I decided to investigate by looking at the numbers.  I devised a simple experiment in which I looked at all the Academy award winners in the acting categories over the past two decades and classified them according to race.  Then I broke each group down further based on whether I thought the actor’s role was positive, negative or neutral.  Positive characters were confident, they were strong mentally, they enjoyed some degree of social and professional success, and they had a positive effect on the lives of the characters around them, similar to a “hero”.  These characters often possessed an exceptional skill or talent, and were people that a typical viewer would tend to identify with and aspire to be like.  They were often benevolent (as in “good guys”) but not necessarily so, as in the case of Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas, a fearless badass who generally got what he wanted.

Negative characters fell into one of two categories.  They were either evil villains, whom a typical audience member would like to see dead (and often they did die before the end of the movie), or they were weak, pitiful, vulnerable characters, who were woefully unsuccessful in life and often they needed rescuing by the film’s hero, if there was one.  Neutral characters were people who didn’t fit neatly into either category.  Often their role was so peripheral that it was hard to get a sense of how they’d stack up under the designated criteria.  Other times they had one or two characteristics from both the positive and negative categories and so couldn’t be placed in either one.

The numbers told an interesting story.  Of the 76 acting awards handed out since 1990, 8 were awarded to African Americans.  This is slightly lower than the portion of blacks who make up the general population of the United States (13%) although not enough to assume racism in my opinion.  What was much more significant, however, was how the awardees from different races were distributed throughout the image spectrum.  Of the 63 white actors who won awards during this period (I tried my best to guess the race of the actors based on appearance, name, and in some cases, nationality), 37 – more than half - won for playing positive characters.  I found 14 characters to be neutral, and 12 characters were negative.

For the black actors and actresses, the numbers appeared to be inverted.  Of the 8 actors honoured during this period, 4 portrayed negative characters (Denzel Washington -Training Day [2001], Forrest Whitaker – The Last King of Scotland [2006], Halle Berry – Monster’s Ball [2001], Jennifer Hudson – Dream Girls [2006]).  Denzel Washington and Forrest Whitaker are pretty obvious classifications, but some might disagree with Halle Berry being included here.  My rational was that that Berry’s character, although beautiful, is in constant need of help, isn’t particularly intelligent, and ultimately gets rescued by her eventual lover, who, coincidently, happens to be a racist white male.  With the possible exception of finding love (if you want to call it that), all of her successes come by virtue of the handouts of others.  A smaller group of people might also disagree with Jennifer Hudson’s character being placed on this list.  But given the fact that she plays an overweight, depressed, welfare mother, who gets her man stolen by a much prettier woman, I figured the negative category would be the most appropriate.

*Breakdown of black and white characters whose portrayal has won an Oscar since 1990

Actors whose characters I found to be neutral were Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost [1990]) Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby [2004]) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire [1996]).  The only black actor, whose character was clearly in the positive category, was Jamie Foxx, who won for playing Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray.  It’s true that Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character in Jerry Maguire was talented and successful, but I also found him arrogant and self-absorbed, which meant that, when it came to connecting with the audience, he lacked the traits needed to make him a true protagonist.

I concede that my method of classification is somewhat unscientific and highly subjective, but I would submit that the glaringness of the discrepancy between the black and white characters is such that the gap can’t be explained by my personal bias alone.  Perhaps that most disheartening thing about all this is that, unlike in other areas of American society, blacks are probably the best represented among the visible minorities.  If I were to conduct an experiment with Asian characters, I’d have little more than a handful of stereotypical, effeminate, underdeveloped caricatures (à la The Hangover) from which to choose.

Another interesting observation I gleaned from this study was that, with the exception of Halle Berry, the black female winners’ characters were either completely asexual (Whoopi Goldberg) or sexually undesirable (Jennifer Hudson).  Also, in the cases of the male winners who portrayed non-negative characters, both characters conformed to racial stereotypes (i.e. an athlete and a musician).  I guess Hollywood just isn’t ready to give out an award for playing an attractive, black female professor who saves the world.  At least that’s what the numbers indicate.