GLAMOUR: In past interviews, you’ve bristled on the topic of race. Why
Zoe Saldana: Because ethnic is a word that doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. In Hollywood, you hear things like, “Oh, they loved you but they want to go more traditional.” That’s the new N word. So when [someone says] I look “dark,” I say, “Dark compared to whom? This is just my skin.”
If true, this isn’t terribly surprising for a few reasons. First, the left runs Hollywood and the left is unnaturally obsessed with race. Long after normal people in this country achieved actual colorblindness and started seeing each other only as fellow Americans and human beings, the left still can’t let it go.
Without even thinking about it, good people focus on what we share in common with those around us. And if there are differences between us, they have nothing to do with something as shallow as skin color or ethnicity.
Chris Matthews forgetting President Obama was black for a whole hour! is so typical of those leftist grievance mongers who see only our differences (and exploit them in order to retain power).
Second, the difference between Hollywood and the real world is that for whatever reason the entertainment industry is allowed to openly discriminate. If some racist producer believes casting a black actress as the love interest opposite a white man will damage the film’s profitability, he or she is free to not offer an actress like Saldana the job based solely on her skin color and his selfish desire to maximize profits.
On the other hand, if some racist producer wants to pick up market share in Mexico, he’ll openly discriminate against a white actor in order to hire a Mexican actor. This is another purely mercenary hiring decision based solely on race and profit.
McDonald’s could decide that the best way to improve market share in certain neighborhoods is to hire only hot-looking cooks and cashiers of a certain skin color. They could also empirically prove that this Hollywood-ish hiring decision brought them higher profits. They’re still going to be sued dry.
It’s just a fact that if any other American industry practiced the same hiring procedures as Hollywood for the exact same profit motives, they would face civil lawsuits of epic proportions and many a visit from the Labor Relations Board.
But Hollywood’s a special place above the laws you and I and every other business in America must abide by. In order to increase profits, they’re allowed to be just as racist and sexist as they accuse everyone else of being.
Just because you call it “demographics” doesn’t mean it’s not prejudice.