Those who are not negatively affected by discriminatory policies, prejudices, and institutions tend to have defensive responses to equality activism. Without claiming that it is the most critical work in a given cause, I do argue that analyzing their perspective serves in the promotion of a constructive conversation.
Without understanding what causes such responses, it is easy to dismiss people as unreachable when we simply fail at reaching them. While succeeding in opening minds is part of the gritty work of trying to change the world, it often seems to be the least fruitful. However, comprehending how they came to a given viewpoint is critical in addressing, and ideally changing, it.
One tool we have in investigating people that are different from us is watching their space on screen. This is important for two reasons. First, it raises the stakes for having underrepresented people included and not reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes. Second, it opens an area of study for identifying overall social problems. The same discrimination found everywhere from the workplace, to the criminal justice system, to the public education is often reflected in film, television, news, magazines, and social media. A rudimentary understanding of privilege and marginalization informs our analysis of representation in media.
In order to glean information about social issues, one must first understand stratification and the social experience of oppression. There are generally two audiences that modern activists generally defer to in the conversation on privilege. Often, these are the same lines drawn between who is fairly and positively included in our mass market entertainment and who is not. As a result, these are also two audiences that are differently affected by representation and emerge differently as media consumers.
The first are the individuals that activists are trying to encourage to "own their space". These are people that we are hoping will learn to 'unlearn' what they've been taught about worthlessness. These individuals are socialized to minimize themselves and apologize for "taking up room", when in reality, they have less of a platform than their counterparts. This is a consequence of growing up marginalized. Likewise, these are also individuals who are demonized as non-normative when they reject that oppressive socialization by self-advocating, invest in self-care and self-love, and becoming involved in certain spaces (activism, education, entertainment, and so forth).
Stratification manifests differently on the other end of the spectrum. That would be the individuals that activists are trying to encourage to share their space. These are people that we are hoping will learn to 'unlearn' what they've been taught about entitlement for themselves and expectations for others.
These individuals are socialized to believe that they are entitled to all the space. They've are not used to someone who doesn't look like them with a platform in the communal forum (whether it be an industry, a profession, media, an academic field, or even public figures allowed within a given conversation). They feel threatened when others try to create space for themselves.
The individuals that profit from stratification don't see that they take up the majority of screen-time, the majority of the speaking roles, the majority of the conversations, the majority of the awards, the majority of of the jobs, and so forth. They feel they are entitled to all of it, are in a constant conquest to close in the gap between “majority" and “entirety". Anyone outside their groups seeking representation in any of those things feels threatening, thieving, and antithetical to their quest. These individuals actively treat social spaces like an extension of colonial “manifest destiny".
They believe that if there is a job, or a resource, or money, or space, it's theirs first. They believe they have more of a right to exist, to thrive, to have a job, to speak, to be seen, or to be represented, than anyone else. They believe that they have a birthright to being the center of every movie, the recipient of every award, the focus of constant attention, and the first and final authority on what is valid opinion, experience, and reality itself.
They were born with exclusive access to things no one else has, and they are threatened by the idea that they could be excluded from something they previously dominated. This threat is also found in the thought of never-before-experienced competition for inclusion.
They have yet to internalize that every other demographic has things – major areas of life and society – that they have no access to, or will always be second choice for. The acceptance letter. The job. The promotion. The role. The poster boy.
Anyone outside of this narrow, privileged group will always have somewhere that excludes them, treats them they don't fit, and goes to great lengths to make them feel like they don't. They will always have positions and spaces that they have to work so much harder for and be imaginative to picture themselves in. There will never be assurances of safety and security, and there will always be a presence of anxiety of how privileged groups will treat them and what's next on a political stage.
Have you ever heard someone casually say, “ugh, male bosses" or “We could never have a male president" or “He's playing the man card" or “I hate male superheroes" or “Men can't be comedians, they can't be funny" or “No one would ever watch a movie about a man" or “Kids won't want to buy a toy of a male lead" or “We can't have the male be too strong or prominent in this movie, viewers won't pay to see it"?
Have you ever been followed around in a store, or had decisions made about your adequacy for a position, or been prejudged on your personality and disposition, because of the color of your skin, the people you love, or the gender and presentation of your body?
Have you ever had someone who came in second believe that they were cheated, because they deserved it more, because you couldn't have earned your accomplishment, because of these factors?
Have you ever wondered if you were going to be denied a service, or face violence or threats or cruelty, because of the gender or color of you or your partner? Have you ever wondered if the gender of the person you love will be the thing that gets in the way of your ability to adopt children?
Have you ever had any of those fears without insisting that “affirmative action" or “'reverse' racism"* were to blame? (i.e. Common Man Myths about systems created in response to the actual, unspoken, undefined experience, stemming from confusion in the difference between 'prejudice' and 'institutional discrimination').
Consider your responses. They may be telling. While this may sound condescending for an article that claims empathy is vital, there is a difference between sugarcoating and identifying. All too often, when approaching a systemic study of things we experience in everyday life, we realize that we have the toolkit to detect these patterns. We may not like what we see.
Ask a heterosexual white man to name his favorite movies. Ask him if there's a single one of them that has no white people. Ask him if there's a single one of them that has no men, or no straight people.
Ask him if he can name ANY movie, favorite or not, with no white people, or no straight people. With no men that have a named, speaking role. With no men that have an important “protagonist" part. With no men at all. Ask him to consider how many or how few he is represented in. Ask him if he ever noticed how prevalent role models and figures that look like him are in these stories.
Now ask a woman if she has a favorite film with no women, or no women with a named, speaking role, or no women with an important, “protagonist" part. Ask her what it means to her to see a woman she can relate to and see herself in on screen.
Ask the same of a black woman. Of a black, gay, woman. Of a black, gay, transwoman. Or an Asian woman. Or Latina or middle eastern women.
You're not going to find many, if any, films without men. Without straight people. Without white people. Without cis people.
That is your representation problem in Hollywood in a nutshell. One might wisely argue that it is an extension of stratification within a society as a whole and a direct reflection of the contemporary power structures behind these social issues.
The point here is not a call for the erasure of straight, white male presence in entertainment. Rather, it is that out of the hundreds of thousands of films made, recognized, and distributed, there is a startling absence of any content without white people and men. Especially men. I fully acknowledge that we are at a time when racial representation is critical, but even in the films that meaningfully contribute racial representation, the gender gap in media is ever-present.
So where does the privileged “audience", the hero on screen, handle becoming the sometimes-bad-guy in an activist's audience?
Have you ever written about ta given population's difficulties, but had to stop and explain to a minority that doesn't have those difficulties that you aren't saying you “hate them because they don't struggle"?
Say you are making a documentary on poverty in Appalachia. Do you spend most of the film explaining to Beverly Hills that you're not being hateful to them because they're not starving and uneducated in a rural, poverty-stricken area?
No. You are focused on the sociological problems of Appalachian poverty. If income inequality comes up, the conversation most effectively surrounds poor legislative regulations and issues in the distribution of wealth. The demonization of rich individuals is generally not the focus both because it's ineffective and it's not about them. It's about those affected.
Therefore, if Beverly Hills called, you might be inclined to say, “what? This isn't about hating you, although if you want to use your platform and obscene wealth to get involved, by all means…" The sensible and ethical heed the call to action with a simple: “Ah, you're right."
Say you teach a lecture on the slave labor involved in in producing chocolate on the Ivory Coast, or sweat shops for American companies in China to undergraduates. Do you spend the entire time telling students who wear jeans and enjoy Hersey's that you now "hate them"?
No, you talk about the problems – the systems that permit it, the ineffective regulations, the lack of empathy, and the oppression and trafficking of child workers. Then you try to educate students to understand something, have empathy, and maybe use that awareness to be wiser consumers.
Discussing racial inequality isn't innately an attack on white people.
Discussing gender inequality isn't innately an attack on men.
Discussing sexual identity inequality isn't innately an attack on heterosexuality.
Discussing gender identity inequality isn't innately on attack on cisgendered people.
It's removing them from the front and center for a second, and maybe having to deal with their offense. The reality is that the reaction of offense is irrational and a symptomatic product of the very systems with which they are offended by.
Imagine this: there is a bag of candy meant for an entire class, but a distracted teacher only handed the entire bag to a boy. Other teachers wander in and say there's something not right. They have to take the bag from the boy in order to leave him with the share he was always meant to have, and then distribute the same amount to everyone else in the room.
The boy's feelings are hurt. He thinks you hate him. He had a whole bag of candy, now he has just a handful. He got the candy first, it was handed to him, it's his, he deserved it right? Yet you have a room full of other children, the same age and class, equal in every way, who got nothing.
Candy is not income, like some critics like to propose, but rather, the opportunity at birth within social systems and overall institutions within a state. The boy is not an awful child, but rather, responds like anyone would in a position in which their benefiting from inequality of distributional mistakes is the stuff of dreams. 'Exclusive opportunity! Exclusive representation! The whole bag!'
You're only human – but “when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
